WWUTT 2677 Paul Shares the Gospel in Corinth (Acts 18:5-17)

The Apostle Paul in Corinth preaches the gospel, plants a church, and leads those Corinthians not only in the gospel, but also to live lives of holiness that they would remain fixed on Jesus when we understand the text.

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Here once again is Pastor Gabe.

Paul Devotes Himself to Preaching Christ in Corinth

Thank you, Becky. In our study of the book of Acts, we come back to chapter 18 and back to Corinth, where Paul plants a church, shares the gospel, and does ministry there for a year and a half. Let me pick up where we left off yesterday.

I'll start in verse 5 and go to verse 17. Hear the word of the Lord. When Silas and Timothy came down from Macedonia, Paul began devoting himself completely to the word, solemnly bearing witness to the Jews that Jesus is the Christ.

But when they resisted and blasphemed, he shook out his garments and said to them, Your blood be on your own heads. I am clean. From now on I will go to the Gentiles. Then he left there and went to the house of a man named Titius Justus, a God-fearer, whose house was next to the synagogue.

And Crispus, the leader of the synagogue, believed in the Lord with all his household, and many of the Corinthians, when they heard, were believing and being baptized. And the Lord said to Paul in the night by a vision, Do not be afraid, but go on speaking and do not be silent, for I am with you, and no man will lay a hand on you in order to harm you, for I have many people in this city.

And he stayed there a year and six months, teaching the word of God among them. But while Galileo was proconsul of Achaia, the Jews, with one accord, rose up against Paul and brought him before the judgment seat, saying, This man persuades men to worship God contrary to the law.

But when Paul was about to open his mouth, Galileo said to the Jews, If it were a wrongdoing or vicious crime, O Jews, it would be reasonable for me to put up with you. But if there are questions about words and names and your own law, see to it yourselves.

I am not willing to be a judge of these matters. And he drove them away from the judgment seat, and they all took hold of Sosthenes, the leader of the synagogue, and began beating him in front of the judgment seat.

But Galileo was not concerned about any of these things. And this is what Acts 18 records for us about Paul's time in Corinth, which we should be able to finish up today. Let me come back up to verse five.

Silas and Timothy came down from Macedonia. Remember that when Paul had left from Thessalonica and then Berea, he was pursued by the Jews. So he departed from the rest of them and went on to Athens, while Silas and Timothy remained in the region of Berea.

So now Paul has gone on to Corinth. He has been with Aquila and Priscilla, who we read about at the very beginning of the chapter. And then Silas and Timothy come and rejoin Paul. And when they arrive, it says he began devoting himself completely to the word.

So up until this point, he's been bivocational. He was a tent maker. He had a business that he was doing with Aquila and Priscilla. So they were sharing the gospel with people. He was reasoning in the synagogue, it said in verse four, every Sabbath and trying to persuade both Jews and Greeks.

But it seems like he was only invested in laboring on the Sabbath in the ministry of the word. When Silas and Timothy arrive, then he devotes himself completely to the word and solemnly bears witness to the Jews that Jesus is the Christ.

So the focus, first of all, becomes to the Jews. We've seen that before with Paul. He'll go to the synagogue. He'll go to the Jews first. When they reject him, then he goes to the Gentiles. And that is what happens.

Paul's Warning to Those Who Reject the Gospel

Verse six, but when they resisted and blasphemed, he shook out his garments and said to them, your blood be on your own heads. I am clean. From now on, I will go to the Gentiles. Now this looks pretty similar to something that we see in Ezekiel chapter 33, where you have the Lord's charge about the watchman on the wall.

Let me read this in Ezekiel 33 verse one. The word of the Lord came to me, son of man, speak to your people and say to them, if I bring the sword upon a land and the people of the land, take a man from among them and make him their watchman.

And if he sees the sword come upon the land and blows the trumpet and warns the people, then if anyone who hears the sound of the trumpet does not take warning and the sword comes and takes him away, his blood shall be upon his own head.

He heard the sound of the trumpet and did not take warning. His blood shall be upon himself. But if he had taken warning, he would have saved his life. But if the watchman sees the sword coming and does not blow the trumpet so that the people are not warned and the sword comes and takes any one of them, that person is taken away in his iniquity.

But his blood I will require at the watchman's hand. So when the watchman knows that the judgment of God is coming, that's what's being illustrated here by the sword coming upon the land. When the watchman sees the judgment coming, he needs to sound the alarm.

And in the case for us who are sharing the gospel, it is warning people that the wrath of God is coming. They need to turn from their sin to the Lord Jesus Christ and they will be saved. That's sounding the alarm for us.

That was sounding the alarm for the apostle Paul as he was preaching here in Corinth. Judgment is coming. He's saying to the Jews, persuading Greeks also, there is judgment. Remember the sermon that he delivered at the Areopagus.

Kind of the climax of the sermon was him saying that God has fixed a day on which he will judge the world in righteousness. And he has shown by whom he will judge the world through one man by raising him from the dead.

So it is only by faith in Jesus that we would escape that judgment that God has set, even plan the day on which this judgment is going to happen. So Paul would declare the same kind of thing here to the Jews and to the Greeks regarding the judgment of God.

The Gospel Call to Escape God's Coming Judgment

The wrath of God is coming. Save yourselves, turning to the Lord Jesus Christ. This is the way that we've seen the gospel shared throughout Acts, isn't it? Peter did the same thing at Pentecost. Save yourselves from this crooked and depraved generation.

Save yourselves from the wrath of God. Turn to the Lord Jesus Christ and you will live. And we've seen this again and again and again. A lot of times this call of the gospel also includes this warning of judgment that is to come.

So the good news is that Jesus has died on the cross for our sins. He has risen from the dead so that whoever believes in him will not perish in the judgment, in the judgment that we all deserve. But he will have everlasting life.

So Paul has proclaimed something like this as well, even in the synagogue in Corinth. When they resist Paul, when they resist the testimony that he has shared, when he has argued from the scriptures that Jesus is the Christ, this is whom you must believe in, in order to be saved.

When they resist him and they blaspheme God, because rejecting Christ would be blaspheming God, you're rejecting his son. Paul shook out his garments and said to them, your blood be on your own heads.

Just like we saw in Ezekiel 33, I am clean. From now on, I will go to the Gentiles. Paul has no guilt upon himself. He has taught them what they need to know in order to make the connection from the law and the prophets that Jesus is the Christ.

So they would turn from their unbelief to Jesus and be saved. But since they are resisting this message and the clear truth that Paul proclaims, he says to them, well, first he shakes out his garments.

That's somewhat similar to Jesus' instruction to his disciples. If they won't receive you, then kick the dust off your feet and go on to the next town. Rather than shaking the dust from his feet, he is shaking out his garments as if he is shaking himself free of them.

Your blood is on your own heads. I would not be guilty at all when the judgment of God comes upon you. And then he says from now on, I will go to the Gentiles. He's been called to be an apostle to the Gentiles.

So now the ministry moves from the synagogue into the Greek streets where he is taking the word so that even Gentiles would be saved. Now we still see a connection with the synagogue. Paul would still have access to the synagogue, be able to teach from there because of who he's connected with as we go on.

Gentiles and Jewish Leaders Believe in Corinth

So in verse seven, Paul left there and went to the house of a man named Titius Justice, a God-fearer whose house was next to the synagogue. So he's been right there. Looks like he's a Greek. And this is why he would be referred to as a God-fearer.

It would be automatically assumed that the Jews who listen to the law and the prophets are God-fearers, but not God-fearers to the extent that they would believe in his son. So it doesn't necessarily have to be said that the Jews are God-fearers, but with regards to the Greeks, it would be said of them or, you know, the Gentiles, it would be said of them that they are God-fearers so that we see this was a person who had faith, had faith in the true God.

And so their hearts are already toward God that they may hear also of his son and believe in him. And Titius Justice is just such a guy. He's a Greek, lives next door to the synagogue, has been hearing Paul's proclamation in the synagogue, and he becomes a believer.

But then not just him, the leader of the synagogue himself also has a Greek name. That's not unusual though. As I said to you previously, James is also a Greek name. The Hebrew equivalent of James would be Jacob.

But here you have Crispus, a Greek name, who is the leader of the synagogue. He could only have been a Jew. So even though he has a Greek name, this man is a Jew who was also the leader of the synagogue.

So he's still able to give Paul access to the synagogue that he would read from the scriptures and be able to testify from the word of God, showing to other people that Jesus is the Christ who fulfills what is written in the law and the prophets.

Crispus also, though the leader of the synagogue, he believes in the Lord with all his household and many of the Corinthians. Other people from the city, when they heard, were believing and being baptized.

You know, we're led to believe here from the way this pattern of conversion takes place in Acts chapter 18, that a good number of Corinthians end up becoming Christians. It's very likely that the church in Corinth was very large when Paul wrote to them in 1 Corinthians, which is actually the second letter.

So in Canon, we have 1 and 2 Corinthians, but 1 Corinthians is the second letter that Paul wrote to them because he alludes in that letter to a previous letter he had written to them. We don't have record of that.

We don't know what that letter said. Well, we have an idea of what it said, but we don't have the letter itself that we can go back to and read. So 1 Corinthians is really the second letter that Paul wrote to them.

Second Corinthians is really the fourth letter. So there are letters in between. There was a 0 Corinthians and a 1 .5 Corinthians, apparently. We just, the Holy Spirit, for whatever reason, decided that those letters were not going to be preserved for us, and we do not have them in Canon.

But we do have reason to believe that Paul was addressing a sizable church when he was addressing these things, especially with all the different issues that he has to talk about with them when we read 1 and 2 Corinthians.

So Paul is going to the Gentiles. Crispus, the leader of the synagogue, becomes a believer as well and with all of his household. Now, as we had read this back in chapter 16, remember in 16 we read of the conversion of the Philippian jailer.

We read that his household believed with him and everybody was baptized. There are the baby baptizers who believe from that, that therefore there were infants in the household who were also baptized. But note what it is said here in chapter 18.

His entire household believed along with him. So these were those people of the household that could also hear the gospel and therefore believe. All in that sense is just talking about all who would come to faith, all who could believe and did believe.

That was the household of Crispus. And then there were many other Corinthians when they heard they were believing and being baptized. Now, the name of Crispus actually comes up again later. Crispus is one of the persons that Paul says in 1 Corinthians 1 he baptized.

So in 1 Corinthians 1 .14 he says to the Corinthians, I thank God that I baptized none of you except Crispus and Gaius so that no one may say that you were baptized in my name. I did baptize also the household of Stephanus.

Beyond that, I do not know whether I baptized anyone else. The names that Paul is using here would have been recognizable to the Corinthians. I've heard some people say that they think Stephanus could have been the Philippian jailer.

Whether or not that's true, we don't know for sure. But I would argue that it's unlikely because the name that's used is somebody that the Corinthians would have recognized. I also baptized the household of Stephanus.

It's just not talked about in Acts chapter 18, but this was apparently another household that Paul had shared the gospel with and baptized them. There were some people in the church in Corinth, very puffed up with pride, still kind of fleshly thinking in themselves, and they would boast in their baptism.

Baptism, Household Conversion, and Boasting in Christ

I have the baptism of Cephas, who was Peter. So Peter baptized me. I have a better baptism than you. And some would say I was baptized by Paul. So Paul is saying here, the only people I baptized were Crispus and Gaius.

Gaius is mentioned again later on in Acts chapter 19. Crispus is the same Crispus that we're reading about here in chapter 18. And he goes on to say, so that no one may say that you were baptized in my name.

You were not baptized in my name. Anyone who is baptized is baptized in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, or as said in Matthew 28, in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. That's whose name we bear when we are baptized, not the person who baptized us.

So Paul is saying, I'm thankful that I didn't baptize any of you so that none of you would go on boasting of man. You must instead boast of Christ. And that's what he says at the end of 1 Corinthians 1.

Let the one who boasts, boast in the Lord. But you have these name drops of these three guys, Crispus and Gaius, baptizing also the household of Stephanas. And again, when we read household, we're talking about those people who have believed and are therefore baptized.

You're reading something into the text that isn't there when you want to argue that Paul was also baptizing infants. There's actually a progression of infant baptism when you look at church history. The first mention of infant baptism we don't have until the late second century.

And even then, it's negatively described. When Tertullian wrote about infant baptism, he actually discouraged the practice. And we see a gradual acceptance of it then come about in the early centuries of the early church.

Anyway, that's kind of a side note. But I find it necessary to add that in there, considering this description of a household coming to faith, that does not mean that infants were baptized. That's the way a lot of the Presbyterians and other infant baptizers will use that passage to try to justify the practice as being described in the book of Acts, which it's not.

God's Protection and Paul's Long Ministry in Corinth

So going on in verse 9, the Lord said to Paul in the night by a vision, do not be afraid, but go on speaking and do not be silent. For I am with you and no man will lay a hand on you in order to harm you.

For I have many people in this city. That's another piece of evidence I think that we have here for the church in Corinth being a very sizable church. Could very well have even been a mega church. Hundreds, if not over a thousand people.

And then Paul stayed there a year and six months teaching the word of God among them. So far, this is the longest that we've seen Paul stay in one place when it comes to his missionary journeys. And we're still reading about the second missionary journey.

So he's there for a year and six months, 18 months. And it is believed that while living in Corinth, Paul wrote the letters of first and second Thessalonians and possibly also Romans. And the evidence to him writing Romans from Corinth is because he mentions Phoebe of Sincreia in Romans chapter 16 and also Gaius being his host.

And remember, Gaius is with him there in Corinth. Gaius' name dropped in 1 Corinthians chapter 1. And then Erastus also, who is linked to Corinth even historically. So there's some evidence there from other New Testament books that Paul was living in Corinth when he wrote a few of the epistles that we have in the New Testament.

Gallio Rejects the Charges Against Paul

So anyway, going on from here, verse 12, while Galio was pro-consul of Achaia, the Jews with one accord rose up against Paul and brought him before the judgment seat. Now, Galio is going to reject the charges that the Jews bring against Paul.

Galio was notoriously against the Jews. He was an anti-Semite. In fact, I think it was his brother Seneca wrote about how much Galio hated the Jews. So in this case, it's not surprising. Even history affirms this, that Galio doesn't even want to hear these charges that the Jews are bringing before him.

He doesn't care about the Jews and their laws. They can take care of these matters by themselves. Galio referred to the Jews as a disease. When he left the region, he wrote that the disease is not of the body, but of the land.

And that was a reference to the Jews that he despised so much. So they bring these charges against Paul before Galio, and they say, this man persuades men to worship God contrary to the law. We've seen the Jews bring these same charges against Paul before.

But when Paul was about to open his mouth, Galio said to the Jews, if it were a wrongdoing or a vicious crime, oh Jews, it would be reasonable for me to put up with you. But if there are questions about words and names and your own law, you see to it yourselves, I'm not willing to be a judge of these matters.

So when they're saying, this man persuades men to worship God contrary to the law, Galio's going, well, that's your law. I don't care about any of this. I'm not even going to bother listening to it and be a judge over this.

So he drove them away from the judgment seat, and they all took hold of Sostenes, the leader of the synagogue, and began beating him in front of the judgment seat. But Galio was not concerned about any of these things.

Sosthenes Remains Faithful Amid Opposition

God said to Paul that he would not be harmed while he was there in Corinth, and true to his word, Paul is not harmed in this circumstance. But poor Sostenes, he does end up getting hurt in this circumstance, and he gets beaten instead of Paul, because he was the leader of the synagogue and was still giving rights to Paul to be able to access the synagogue and teach from the word and being on Paul's side and Jews are being converted.

So the Jews take matters into their own hands and beat Sostenes as a result of this. But Sostenes is praised for his faithfulness. At the very beginning of Paul's first letter to the Corinthians, it says, Paul called by the will of God to be an apostle of Christ Jesus and our brother Sostenes.

So Sostenes was with Paul when he had written even to the Corinthians, had remained with Paul after Paul wasn't there anymore in Corinth. He was not discouraged by the attitude of the Jews or the people of the city, nor was he tempted by the evils that were in Corinth, that he would turn away from the faith and go after the world.

He was holy. He was just in his preaching of the word. He loved that people so that they would turn from their sin to the Lord Jesus Christ and be saved. The apostle Paul preached fervently to the Corinthians in person and in his letters, telling them to turn from worldliness and fleshly passions and to be holy.

Running the Christian Race With Self-Control

In 1 Corinthians 9, 24, Paul said to them, do you not know that in a race, all the runners run, but only one receives the prize. So run that you may obtain it. Every athlete exercises self-control in all things.

They do it to receive a perishable wreath. But we an imperishable. So I do not run aimlessly. It's like, I'm not running in any direction. He is fixed on a goal. I do not box as one beating the air. Verse 27, but I discipline my body and keep it under control.

Lest after preaching to others, I myself should be disqualified. And that's upon each and every one of us as well, who have come to faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. Be disciplined. That you would not go after the things that the flesh may be tempted by, but you continue to remain fixed on Christ.

Using the same race analogy that we see in Hebrews chapter 12, looking to Jesus, the author and the perfecter of our faith, running the race that is set before us, looking to Christ. Endure to the end, my brethren.

Heavenly father, we thank you for what we have read. May we be kept unstained by the world. We keep our eyes fixed in the right place, looking to Jesus and not being tempted by the things that are around us, by our flesh, by the world, or even being led astray by the schemes of the devil.

But keep us in the way of righteousness that you have set before us in Christ, according to his word. It's in Jesus name we pray.

Amen. Thank you for listening to When We Understand The Text with Pastor Gabe Hughes. If you'd like to support this ministry, visit our website www .wutt .com and click on the Give tab in the top right corner of the page.

Join us again tomorrow as we continue our Bible study When We Understand The Text.