Every team has someone whose name few remember, but without whom the work would not have happened. Silas, called Silvanus in Paul’s letters and in 1 Peter, though the NIV renders his name as Silas throughout the New Testament, appears alongside Paul on almost every page of Acts that narrates the growth of the early church, yet he rarely holds the center of the scene.
He first appears in Jerusalem as one of the leaders chosen by the church to carry the decision of the apostolic council to the believers in Antioch (Acts 15:22). The text calls him a prophet, someone who encouraged and strengthened the brothers with his own words (Acts 15:32).
When Paul and Barnabas parted ways over a disagreement about John Mark, it was Silas whom Paul chose as his new companion for the second missionary journey (Acts 15:40). Their partnership would be tested far sooner than either of them expected.
In Philippi, the two were publicly beaten and imprisoned without a fair trial. About midnight, chained in the innermost cell, they were praying and singing hymns to God while the other prisoners listened (Acts 16:25). An earthquake opened the doors and loosened the chains, and the jailer was converted that same night.
From Philippi they went on to Thessalonica and Berea, and then to Corinth, where Silas and Timothy joined Paul, arriving from Macedonia. There Paul devoted himself completely to preaching (Acts 18:5).
Paul himself would later recall that Silas had preached the gospel with him to the Corinthians (2 Corinthians 1:19), and he placed him as co-sender alongside his own name in the opening of two letters to the Thessalonians (1 Thessalonians 1:1; 2 Thessalonians 1:1).
Further on in the New Testament, the same name reappears at the end of another letter: the apostle Peter writes that, with the help of Silas, “whom I regard as a faithful brother,” he sent his letter (1 Peter 5:12). If this is the same man, he served two of the greatest apostles of the early church without ever writing a line under his own name.
Few will remember Silas’s name on a list of heroes of the faith. But the church has always needed people like him: someone who carries the letter written by another, sings hymns in the middle of the night when everything is falling apart, and is called faithful not for shining, but for remaining.