Acts 18:1-17 English Standard Version Paul in Corinth 18 After this Paul left Athens and went to Corinth. 2 And he found a Jew named Aquila, a native of Pontus, recently come from Italy with his wife Priscilla, because Claudius had commanded all the Jews to leave Rome. And he went to see them, 3 and because he was of the same trade he stayed with them and worked, for they were tentmakers by trade. 4 And he reasoned in the synagogue every Sabbath, and tried to persuade Jews and Greeks. 5 When Silas and Timothy arrived from Macedonia, Paul was occupied with the word, testifying to the Jews that the Christ was Jesus. 6 And when they opposed and reviled him, he shook out his garments and said to them, “Your blood be on your own heads! I am innocent. From now on I will go to the Gentiles.” 7 And he left there and went to the house of a man named Titius Justus, a worshiper of God. His house was next door to the synagogue. 8 Crispus, the ruler of the synagogue, believed in the Lord, together with his entire household. And many of the Corinthians hearing Paul believed and were baptized. 9 And the Lord said to Paul one night in a vision, “Do not be afraid, but go on speaking and do not be silent, 10 for I am with you, and no one will attack you to harm you, for I have many in this city who are my people.” 11 And he stayed a year and six months, teaching the word of God among them. 12 But when Gallio was proconsul of Achaia, the Jews made a united attack on Paul and brought him before the tribunal, 13 saying, “This man is persuading people to worship God contrary to the law.” 14 But when Paul was about to open his mouth, Gallio said to the Jews, “If it were a matter of wrongdoing or vicious crime, O Jews, I would have reason to accept your complaint. 15 But since it is a matter of questions about words and names and your own law, see to it yourselves. I refuse to be a judge of these things.” 16 And he drove them from the tribunal. 17 And they all seized Sosthenes, the ruler of the synagogue, and beat him in front of the tribunal. But Gallio paid no attention to any of this. Paul leaves Athens and goes to Corinth next, a city in the southern region of Greece (we are probably familiar with this church from the letters of 1 Corinthians and 2 Corinthians that we have in the New Testament). Here Paul meets Aquilla and Priscilla who will be great helpers to Paul and his ministry, for they will eventually go ahead of Paul to be leaders in the church in Rome. We assume Aquilla and Priscilla are husband and wife as they are always mentioned together and working alongside one another, and they taught Paul how to be a tentmaker to earn some extra money to support himself and his ministry. We now get the phrase "tentmaker ministry" from this to signify a person that is working part-time to generate an income while working full-time in their God-given ministry to cultivate an outcome (as the host of the The Hamilton Corner, Abraham Hamilton, III, says about working parents nearly every day at the beginning of his show). Together Aquilla, Priscilla, and Paul ministered first to the Jews in Corinth, reasoning with them in the synagogues.
Silas and Timothy arrived later, coming from Macedonia (go back to verse 15 to see that Paul was in Athens without Silas or Timothy because they had stayed behind in Berea while Paul was conducted by friends to Athens) they found Paul ministering in the Word to the Jews, but Paul had reached a point where the community as a whole was unwilling to accept the true gospel, for we don't see any indications of Jews or Gentiles responding here like we have seen in other cities, and Paul is ready to shake the dust off of his clothes and speak condemnation over these Jews for rejecting the gospel of Jesus Christ and to tell them that this gospel they were rejecting was going forth to the Gentiles now. We see that God even used this proclamation to get the attention of some of the Jews and God-fearing Gentiles for Titus Justus, a devout, God-fearing Gentile let Paul and his companions stay at his home, and we see that the leader of the synagogue, Crispus, believed in the Lord along with his entire household. This is another one of those "entire household" baptism passages like we mentioned earlier with Cornelius and the Philippian jailer. We should not assume that this means that everyone in the family was considered saved because the head of the household was saved, but it's probably safe to say in that culture that the wife and children and the slaves and servants did follow the example of the head of household. We know of at least one time where that didn't happen in the New Testament where Onesimus, a slave to Philemon, did not become a Christian when his master Philemon did and Onesimus actually ran away from Philemon and ended up encountering Paul and his ministry team and becoming saved after Philemon did, so there was free will involved. It does seem the typical pattern though was for the husband/father/master to be saved first and then the wife/children/slaves/servants to be saved following this example that was set for them. God speaks to Paul in a vision in the evening and tells him to go on and keep on speaking here in Corinth even though there is danger and opposition at every turn because the Lord is not going to let any harm come to Paul (before the appointed time). Worldly wisdom would tell Paul that it was time to flee again, but the Lord tells Paul to stay put because there is much work to be done here and the Lord promises that He will protect Paul and his team. Paul is going to stay there 18 months. Paul stayed until there was a change in government where the new government leader seemed less favorable to the work Paul was doing. However, that leader did not want to be involved in trying cases of differences in theology between Jews and Christians. The ruler saw the Christians as still being under the authority of the Jews and told the Jews to hold court themselves and do what the Law required of the them since this was a violation of the Mosaic Law that they charged Paul, Silas, and Timothy with, and not a violation of Roman law. Once the Jews saw that they had been given blanket authority by the proconsul to deal with religious matters, they immediately took the leader of the synagogue (probably the one we saw named Crispus earlier--it appears he is referred to by a different name here, likely his Jewish name instead of his Greek name) and beat him in front of the tribunal, and the proconsul turned a blind eye to all of this. This was probably because the proconsul knew how the Jewish people had a tendency to riot and the unrest they had created in the whole region, following Paul from town to town and he didn't want his city to be the next epicenter for a religious mob. If the beating of this one man would quiet them, then he was willing to turn a blind eye to it, but this would only embolden the Jews there in the future. Comments are closed.
|
Daniel WestfallI will mostly use this space for recording my "journal" from my daily devotions as I hope to encourage others to read the Bible along with me and to leave a legacy for others. Archives
January 2025
Categories
All
|