《The Biblical Illustrator – Acts (Ch.18~20)》(A Compilation)
18 Chapter 18
Verse 1
Verses 1-17
Acts 18:1-17
After these things Paul departed from Athens and came to Corinth.
Paul at Corinth
Paul entered, not the grand, classical Corinth, but a sort of afterglow Corinth. The old city had been destroyed by Consul Mummius 146 B.C. It was burned to the ground. The streets ran with molten metal from the innumerable statues and gothic buildings; the fused mass continued to be collected for years afterwards, and fetched a good price in the open market as “Corinthian brass”; it was exported in blocks. Julius Caesar rebuilt and colonised Corinth not long before Christ. It was a flourishing mercantile town in Paul’s time. Over its isthmus men dragged the ships from Port Cenchraea to Port Lechaeum, and thus the tide of commerce flowed from the East straight through to Rome, leaving in the city about one of the most unenviable and mixed moral deposits conceivable. Imagine Liverpool and Brighton, without a touch of Christian influence, rolled into one, and you have Corinth. They were traders, not manufacturers--money getters, not creators; engaged, not in producing (which requires invention and implies culture), but in transference. Mere money grubbing is not elevating, refining, or morally bracing. They were pleasure mad too--that was their reaction from toil. Drunkenness and debauchery--temples consecrated to it, priestesses devoted to licence; when your life is on a low moral plane, your recreation is certain to be on a lower one still. The Jewry was there, of course, but it had little moral influence--a protest against sin without a touch of sympathy for moral frailty, and I should like to know what good ever came of such a gospel as that. What could this poor, suffering Jew--apparently a very indifferent specimen of a sorry community of fanatics--do in such a Vanity Fair? Such he must have seemed to the fashionable tourist from Rome, to the Corinthian fop or merchant. Indeed, how hopeless the outlook upon a great city after nineteen centuries of Christian civilisation! But Paul looked upon that scene with other eyes. The fields which might appear to us burnt up and wasted were to him whitening to the harvest. He felt he could operate in that atmosphere--he believed in humanity, in Christ--that was quite enough. He had to deal with the slaves of pleasure, the dupes of money, the puppets of ambition. He knew that every one of them hungered for something different from what he had got. Bide your time, man of God! Watch and pray; the world will come round to you--the world can’t do without you. When the thrill of the senses is past--money gone, ambition a wreck--does not everyone cry out for something which the world cannot give or take away? Sensuality, drink, extortion. I have seen something like it not a hundred miles from London. “Truly a mad world, my masters!” this Corinth about A.D. 53. It was Paul’s opportunity. (H. R. Haweis, M. A.)
Paul at Corinth
Let us inquire--
I. Respecting Corinth.
1. Greece, in the time of the Roman dictators, had become worn out, corrupt, and depopulated. It was necessary, therefore, to repeople it and to reinvigorate its constitution with new blood. So Caesar sent to his re-erected city freedmen of Rome.
2. Another element was the Greek population. To understand this we must make a distinction. Greece was tainted to the core. Her ancient patriotism and valour were no more. Her statesmen and poets had died with her disgrace. Foreign conquest had broken her spirit. Loss of liberty had ended in loss of manhood. The last and most indispensable element of goodness had perished, for hope was dead. They buried themselves in stagnancy. But amid this universal degeneracy there were two classes.
3. The next thing which influenced Corinthian society was Roman provincial government--an influence, however, favourable to Christianity. The doctrine of Christ has not as yet come into direct antagonism with heathenism. Persecution always arose first on the part of the Jews; and, indeed, until it became evident that in Christianity there was a Power before which all the principalities of evil must perish, the Roman magistrates interposed their authority between the Christians and their fierce enemies. A signal instance of this is related in this chapter.
4. The last element in this complex community was the Jews. In their way they were religious, i.e., strenuous believers in the virtue of ordinances. God only existed to them for the benefit of the Jewish nation. To them a Messiah must be a World-Prince. To them a new revelation could only be substantiated by marvels and miracles, and St. Paul describes the difficulty which this tendency put in the way of the progress of the gospel among them in the words, “The Jews require a sign.”
II. Respecting the apostle Paul. For his work the apostle was assisted and prepared--
1. By the fellowship of Aquila and Priscilla. Such an one as Paul thrown alone upon a teeming, busy, commercial population would have felt crushed. His spirit had been pressed within him at Athens, but that was not so oppressive as the sight of human masses, crowding, hurrying, driving together, all engaged in getting rich, or in seeking mere sensual enjoyment. In this crisis providential arrangements had prepared for him the companionship of Priscilla and Aquila.
2. He was sustained by manual work. He wrought with his friends as a tent maker. For by the rabbinical law, all Jews were taught a trade. So, too, it was the custom of the monastic institutions to compel every brother to work. A wise provision! In a life of gaiety or merely thoughtful existence, woe and trial to the spirit that has nothing for the hands to do! Misery to him who emancipates himself from the universal law, “In the sweat of thy brow shalt thou eat bread.” Evil thoughts, despondency, sensual feeling, sin in every shape is before him, to beset and madden, often to ruin him.
3. By the experience he had gained in Athens. There the apostle had met the philosophers on their own ground. His speech was triumphant as oratory, as logic, and as a specimen of philosophic thought; but in its bearing on conversion it was unsuccessful. Taught by this experience, he came to Corinth and preached no longer to the wise, the learned, or the rich. God had chosen the poor of this world to be rich in faith. St. Paul no longer confronted the philosopher on his own ground, or tried to accommodate the gospel to his tastes: “I determined to know nothing among you, save Jesus Christ, and Him crucified.” We know the result--the Church of Corinth, the largest and noblest harvest ever given to ministerial toil. (F. W. Robertson, M. A.)
Paul at Corinth
I. The servant labouring. He began by doing a double work--tent making during the week and reasoning in the synagogue every Sabbath--thus showing the possibility of working for one’s self, and yet finding time to work for the Master. Note--
1. His friends. Several things drew the apostle and Aquila and Priscilla together.
2. His work. Why did Paul labour with his hands (2 Corinthians 11:9)? He was sensitive about being a burden, although he believed in the duty of Churches supporting their own ministers (1 Corinthians 9:7-14; 1 Timothy 5:18).
II. The servant preaching. When Silas and Timothy came they relieved him of the necessity of manual labour (2 Corinthians 2:9). Then he was “constrained by the Word” (1 Corinthians 9:16). He felt forced to speak the Word--
1. To the Jews.
(a) The action of the Jews, “opposed themselves and blasphemed.”
(b) Paul’s action (Acts 18:6; Ezekiel 33:8-9).
2. To the Gentiles. Note--
III. The servant protected.
1. The promise of protection (Acts 18:9-10; 1 Corinthians 2:3). God knows our discouragements and when to comfort us. Paul was encouraged to go on because of the assurance--
2. The promise fulfilled.
(a) That Paul did not even have to defend himself.
(b) That it was based on justice.
(c) That the charge resulted disastrously to the accusers. “Whoso diggeth a pit shall fall therein; and he that rolleth a stone, it will return upon him.” (M. C. Hazard.)
Paul at Corinth
From the summit of the Acropolis at Athens one could plainly see through the clear atmosphere of Greece at a distance of forty-five miles, the lofty Aero-Corinthus, the temple-crowned mountain at whose base lay the wealthy and luxurious city. Thither the apostle now directs his course. As a great commercial centre from which the light of Christianity, once enkindled, will naturally radiate along all the lines of trade, he recognises the importance of establishing at the earliest possible moment a Church in this city. But a strange depression of spirit comes over him as he enters the great metropolis, such as we do not find him experiencing anywhere else. The evidences of it are manifold. Writing afterward to the Corinthian Church, he says, “For I was with you in weakness and in fear and in much trembling.” The testimony of the historian in this passage is that when Silas and Timotheus came to Corinth they found him “pressed in spirit.” But the chief evidence is in the vision which was accorded to him, and the words of encouragement it brings (verses 9, 10).
I. The sources of the apostle’s discouragement and the elements of encouragement afforded him.
1. The sense of personal loneliness. He came to land amidst bales of merchandise, throngs of merchants, trains of porters and beasts of burden. From the warehouses and shipping around him he looked upward to the temple of Venus, and entering the city over which she presided he saw that the hearts of the people were divided between wealth and pleasure. Between him and this people there was no congeniality. To add to this, he was entirely alone. In this state of loneliness what he needed to cheer him, what every Christian worker needs, is just the message, “For I am with thee” (verse 10).
2. A view of the lawlessness and liability to popular tumult and violence of a community held together merely by the love of pleasure or the greed of gain. In Jerusalem, where the priestly power was dominant, and in Athens, where the memory of the great lawgivers still held sway, there was some maintenance of order. But in volatile, licentious Corinth there was no knowing at what moment some enemy might fire the passions of the mob. To meet this element in the apostle’s discouragement what could have been more suited than “No man shall set on thee to hurt thee” (verse 10). In this doctrine of God’s sovereign control over the hearts of wicked men the missionaries of the Cross in heathen lands have found comfort.
3. Paul’s apprehension that the preaching of the gospel to such a people would be utterly unacceptable. With hearts immersed in business or intoxicated with pleasure, what effect could the preaching of the gospel produce? Many a servant of God, since called to minister in some centre of wealth and fashion, has felt this same chill of despondency. What is the comfort which the Lord gives to His discouraged servant? “I have much people in this city” (verse 10). Christ knew them, and had sent Paul to set in motion the instrumentalities by which they should be brought to repentance. How could Paul fail then? Cheer up, O desponding servant of God! The Master has an elect people here, and your feeble instrumentality has behind it the unchanging sovereignty and mercy of God.
II. The interweaving of God’s providence with His purpose of election, arranging all the conditions necessary to Paul’s success. The conditions are--
1. That Paul shall have the means of subsistence whilst he is preaching the gospel. Before he came to Corinth, God had brought to that city Aquila and Priscilla, who were forced to leave Rome, and, seeking the next best centre, came to Corinth; and so when Paul came he found employment with them, and thus his support was providentially arranged.
2. That he shall have efficient helpers in his work. To secure these we have first the acceptance of the gospel by Aquila and Priscilla, then Silas and Timotheus (verse 5), who had failed in some way to reach the apostle at Athens, were brought to him at the most opportune moment.
3. That he shall have some suitable place for holding religious services. This, too, is in the providence of God most agreeably arranged. For all informal services through the week the large room in which the tents and sails are stitched would amply suffice. So long as he directs his ministry to the Jews he has the use of the synagogue. When he turns to the Gentiles the Lord inclines the heart of Justus (verse 7) to throw open his dwelling as a place of worship; and so Paul has the two-fold advantage of a hall free to Gentiles, and next door to the synagogue, so that it is easily accessible to the Jews.
4. That he shall have protection from the violence of his enemies and liberty to speak boldly in the name of Jesus. Provision has been made for this also by a train of providential arrangements (verses 12-17). Just as this crisis is approaching, when so much depends upon the character of the Roman governor in Corinth, the Senate sends out Gallio, a great student and admirer of Roman law, and, in the oratory at least, an ardent advocate of a high tone of public morals, who, whilst he holds Paul under the protection which the law gives, sits quietly by whilst a disturbance takes place amongst the persecutors themselves, so that it becomes manifest to the Jews that they can expect no sympathy from him in any future attempts to interfere with the apostle’s preaching; and so he is able afterwards to speak the Word of God boldly, no man hindering him. (T. D. Witherspoon, D. D.)
Paul at Corinth
1. Not seeing sufficient encouragement to attempt to found a Church in Athens, Paul turned his steps to Corinth. Here the Greek mind was to be encountered under a new phase; not, as in Athens, devoted to science, to eloquence, but to gaiety and luxury. Approaching Corinth, the most conspicuous object was not, as in Athens, the Parthenon, dedicated to the goddess of wisdom, but the temple of Venus. Our subject for the present is, accordingly, Christianity in contact with gaiety, luxury, and refined sensuality.