From the Intellect to the Sensual. Acts 18:1-5
Corinth was the seat of lust, lasciviousness and
sensuality in the ancient world. It was the good-time city of the Roman empire and there wasnÕt anything that didnÕt happen there.
Paul has just left Athens and is somewhat down. He has had a tough year from
being beaten and flagellated physically at Philippi by the Romans, facing
opposition in Thessalonica and Berea, and then going to Athens where he has
very little impact. In fact, Paul was almost dragging into Corinth with his
tail tucked between his legs. And he says that in his first epistle to the
Corinthians (2:1).
1 Corinthians 2:1 NASB ÒAnd
when I came to you, brethren, I did not come with superiority of speech or of
wisdom, proclaiming to you the testimony of God. [2] For I determined to know nothing among you except Jesus
Christ, and Him crucified.Ó He had a completely different style of teaching,
one that did not fit the norms and standards of oratory and rhetoric at the
time. He wasnÕt trying to appeal to them in the ways that oratory appeals to
people. He is trying to appeal to them in terms of laying out a strong,
rational biblical case for Jesus being the Messiah. [3] ÒI was with you in
weakness and in fear and in much trembling.Ó The term for weakness there is the
Greek word asthenes
which shows up numerous times in Scripture. In about half of its uses it
means physical weakness or illness, mostly in the Gospels. But even in the
Gospels about a third of the uses have to do with a spiritual weakness or just a mental attitude tiredness. In the epistles it reverses its
emphasis. There are a few cases where asthenes
refers to physical illness or sickness but in most cases if refers to spiritual
weariness, a mental attitude weariness.
Paul has had a tough time, and it is
important to understand that because of two passages in Acts chapter 18, one of
which he is compelled by the Holy Spirit to go to the synagogues and to teach,
and in the other one Jesus appears to him personally in revelation and encourages
him. In both cases these are unique manifestations of GodÕs presence in the
life of an apostle. We have to understand that Paul and the other apostles were
not like any other believer in history. They were a unique class of Christians
according to Ephesians 2:20. The apostles and prophets were the foundation of
the church. When you build a house you know that you never lay the foundation
but once. Once it is laid everything else is constructed upon that. So in the
early church there was the apostolic ministry, which laid doctrinal foundation
for the church and it was validated by the miracles. They performed signs and
wonders that in 2 Corinthians 12 are identified as the signs of an apostle.
That is how an apostle was identified. Not every Christian performed miracles.
And the apostles didnÕt perform them very frequently, but they did because that
validated their authority as an apostle. That is what set them apart as a
leader and founder of Christians thinking and doctrine.
Acts 18:1 NASB ÒAfter these
things he left Athens and went to Corinth.Ó
Corinth is approximately 50 miles west
of Athens, about a two-day walk or a dayÕs sail. The city was founded in the
distant past, probably before 750 BC. It was one of the wealthiest cities because it was located
between two ports. The city was destroyed by the Romans
in 146 BC, because there was a revolt against Rome at the time. All of
the citizens of the city were killed or enslaved, all of its treasures were
taken to Rome and according to Roman law the city was not allowed to rebuild
for 100 years. In 44 BC it was rebuilt by Julius Caesar and was officially renamed Laus Julia Corinthus. It became a
Roman colony that was settled by retired Roman military.
It served as the administrative center
for the province from 27 BC on, which made it a strategic location for planting
Christianity. From Corinth the Word could go out from converts on ships to all
parts of the Roman empire and beyond.
The Isthmian Games were held near here
as well, once every two years, and it is believed that near the time that the
apostle Paul first came was when the Games were present. And so it was an
opportunity for him to be in the tent-making business in order to provide tents
for the people who were coming to the Games.
It is estimated that the population of
Corinth was 250,000 to 300,000. It was an extremely prosperous city because of
all of the trade and opportunities for business, and it was also a town that
was noted for it licentiousness. In the ancient world to ÒCorinthianizeÓ
was a synonym for lewd, lascivious behavior; prostitutes were referred to
simply as Corinthians girls. Aphrodite, the goddess of love, was the most
popular of the deities in Corinth and her temple was the center of worship
where over 1000 cultic prostitutes plied their trade.
Acts 18:2 NASB ÒAnd he found
a Jew named Aquila ÉÓ It is interesting that Luke does not describe him as a
disciple. ÒÉ a native of Pontus, having recently come
from Italy with his wife Priscilla, because Claudius had commanded all the Jews
to leave Rome. He came to them.Ó This edict from Claudius probably refers to
the decree in AD 49. He expelled the Jews because of various riots and civil
disobedience that occurred at the instigation of Chrestus.
This is either a misspelling or perhaps a reference to Christ, but it could
indicate that a certain amount of disturbance and physical violence had erupted
within the Jewish community over whether or not Jesus was the Messiah. It is a
tantalizing reference; we just donÕt have enough information. Apparently from
41-49 the Romans were having increasing problems with the Jewish community in
Rome, and when these riots and disturbances broke out in 49 Claudius just
expelled all of the Jews.
The population of Jews at the time of
the expulsion was about 50,000. So this was a significant event in the life of
the Jewish community in Rome. AquilaÕs wifeÕs name is mentioned here as
Priscilla. That is the diminutive form of Prisca,
which is the form used in several other passages. Luke uses Priscilla, which
indicates more of a familiarity and closer friendship with them. Paul mentions
them several other times. In Romans 16:3-5 he concludes his epistle to Rome (by
this time the Jews were allowed back in Rome): ÒGreet Prisca
and Aquila, my fellow workers in Christ Jesus, who for my life risked their own necks, to whom not only do
I give thanks, but also all the churches of the Gentiles; also {greet} the church
that is in their house. Greet Epaenetus, my beloved,
who is the first convert to Christ from Asia.Ó
In 1 Corinthians 16:19 NASB
ÒThe churches of Asia greet you. Aquila and Prisca
greet you heartily in the Lord, with the church that is in their house.Ó
Apparently they travelled with Paul. He spent a year and a half in Corinth and
then, as we will see in the rest of the chapter, he leaves and goes to Ephesus.
He is on his way to Jerusalem and ends up spending two years in Ephesus, Aquila
and Priscilla are with him there, and then they will leave with him to go to
Rome.
2 Timothy 4:19 NASB ÒGreet
Prisca and Aquila, and the household of Onesiphorus.Ó At that point Timothy is in Ephesus. So at
this time they are back. They apparently travelled and moved around quite a
bit.
Paul worked hard as a tentmaker. Other
passages allude to this. 1
Corinthians 4:12 NASB Òand we toil, working with our own hands; when
we are reviled, we bless; when we are persecuted, we endure.Ó Later on in
chapter seven he talks about the fact that he did not take up a collection or
live off of the grace offerings from the Corinthians. He worked to support
himself even though he said that the apostles had every right to earn their
living from the teaching of the Word.
Acts 18:3 NASB Òand because
he was of the same trade, he stayed with them and they were working, for by trade
they were tent-makers.Ó There is also a lot of debate about this—whether
or not this trade primarily meant dealing with leather goods, sowing leather
and being involved with tanning and other things of that nature, or whether it
was also involved in dealing with other textiles and other forms of materials. One
source (in the Mishna) indicates that tent making was
a common trade suggested for rabbis because they were not to profit from the
teaching of the Torah and they were also not to be idle. So tent making was a
commonly suggested trade for rabbis to be trained in.
Acts 18:4 NASB ÒAnd he was
reasoning ÉÓ Now we get into what Paul did. He arrives a little bit tired, a
little bit weary, spiritually weary. He had faced a
lot of opposition and didnÕt have a lot of impact in Athens. How many times do
we get discouraged in our lives? Paul was no different. It doesnÕt mean he is
out of fellowship or that he was a failure, it just means he was a human being.
We get tired and weary. God is going to encourage Paul as he ministers in
Corinth. ÒÉ in the synagogue every Sabbath and trying
to persuade Jews and Greeks.Ó
His pattern was always to take the
gospel to the Jew first. We have to understand this. Some people have been
heard to say that Paul didnÕt really understand that he was in the church age.
Really? Paul didnÕt understand that? They have to be kidding. He understood
that, nut he also understood that he was in a transition period. This is one of
the aspects that many scholars and people have missed. You canÕt go to Acts and
find prescriptive behavior. And there are a lot of denominations that do this.
The whole Pentecostal-Charismatic movement has gone to Acts as if Acts tells
them how to do church. Acts doesnÕt tell us how to do church; Acts tells us how
the church was born historically. What happened isnÕt the same as what ought to
happen. Just because things were done a certain way does not mean that that way
is a prescribed way of doing it. We have to go to the epistles to understand
what the prescriptions are, what the imperatives are, what the mandates are. In
Acts we simply see what happened. It represented a unique time in history.
The temple was still in existence until
AD 70. The church is given birth to on Pentecost in 33 AD. So there are roughly 37 years between the birth of the
church and the collapse and destruction of the temple when there is a
transition period going on. The Jews were still under obligation to observe
certain customs and rituals in relation to the temple because God hasnÕt ended
the temple worship yet. Not everything that went on in the temple had to do
with salvation related sacrifices. Those were all fulfilled in Christ. The
church has been given birth to but it is in its infancy; it doesnÕt have a
complete canon of Scripture yet. It doesnÕt even have revealed through the
apostles all of the unique aspects of the spiritual life of the church age. That
comes incrementally through progressive revelation, primarily through PaulÕs
epistles, beginning in approximately 48 or 49 with Galatians. But it is mostly
through the fifties when he writes 1 Corinthians, 2 Corinthians, Romans and
later the prison epistles in the early to mid-sixties that the Lord makes clear
what He is doing through this new body of Christ. If we think about the prison
epistles—Colossians, Philemon, Philippians, Ephesians—these
are at the heart of our understanding of the Christian life in the church age. These were written by Paul between 60 and the time of his
death (67 or 68) three years before the destruction of the temple.
Acts was in a transition when the
message was still to Israel, ÒRepent for the kingdom of heaven is near.Ó Peter
offered the kingdom in Acts 2 and again in Acts 3. Paul is still following this
pattern to the Jew first and then to the Gentile because God is still holding
out the gospel to the Jew. It is not necessarily set in stone yet, although it
most likely would be, but God is still extending grace before judgment
throughout this period of time before it becomes definite that the temple is
going to be destroyed. The option was still legitimately being offered and so
Paul is still giving the gospel to the Jews in a distinct way. Their rejection
of it was also providing further and further evidence of the necessity for the
judgment of AD 70 that was coming.
So Paul goes into the synagogue and
reasons every Sabbath. This implies more than one or two. Remember that he was
only there for a short time, three weeks or so, when he was in Thessalonica. Now
it seems a much longer period of time when he reasoned in the synagogue. This
is the Greek verb dialegomai, from
which we get our word dialogue, but he is not in a dialogue. He is reasoning
from the Scriptures and there would be question and answer at the end, but the
word dialegomai is not to be
understood as a dialogue. It has more to do with arguing or presenting a case
for his view. It is an imperfect case, which indicates continuous action in
past time as opposed to an aorist, which just summarizes the action. The
imperfect tense has several nuances and this is probably an inceptive imperfect,
which means that he began to do this.
So he began to reason in the synagogue,
and he ÒpersuadedÓ—peitho,
imperfect active indicative. This wouldnÕt be an inceptive imperfect; it would
be an iterative imperfect. Iterative refers not just to an ongoing action in
past time, but letÕs say that last month you exercised every day. You didnÕt
exercise continuously every day, you got up every morning and you exercised. So
it is referring to periodic activity that continued over time. That is the idea
here. So as he is reasoning in the synagogue there are Jews here and there, and
Gentiles as well, who are becoming persuaded. To persuade here is the main idea
of the verb peitho and it means to
bring someone to an understanding and conviction of the truth. The result of
that is that they believed. So this is a summary of what Paul was doing at the
beginning of his ministry in Corinth. He is building his case; he is explaining
the gospel from the Old Testament—something we all should be able to do.
In verse five there is a paragraph
shift, a change of topic. Acts 18:5 NASB ÒBut when Silas and
Timothy came down from Macedonia, Paul {began} devoting himself completely to
the word, solemnly testifying to the Jews that Jesus was the Christ.Ó There is
a textual problem here in this verse. In a KJV or NKJV
it reads very differently from the NASB, NIV, NET, ESV,
or any of the other translations based upon what is known as the Westcott-Hort theory of textual criticism.
In the NKJV it says, ÒÉ Paul was compelled by the Spirit.Ó ÒWas
compelled byÓ indicates a translation of a passive
verb. Paul as the subject of the verb is receiving the action of the verb: Paul is compelled by the Spirit. In the NASB we have a translation where it says, ÒPaul began devoting
himself.Ó That is more of an active voice idea. Paul is the grammatical subject
of the verb Òdevote,Ó he performs the action of devoting. ÒHimselfÓ
indicates a reflexive action, and this indicates a middle voice in the Greek
which has to do with reflexive action. There we read, Òhe devoted himself
completely to the word.Ó In the Majority Text it has the word pneuma there—he is Òcompelled by
the Spirit.Ó In some of the North African MSS, some of the uncials, the older MSS, it has the word ÒspiritÓ there.
Older isnÕt necessarily better when it
comes to textual criticism because a more recent copy that is a perfect copy of
an original text is a better copy, even though it may be 800 years more recent,
than a bad copy that is older. So age really isnÕt a significant factor.
In the late 19th century
Westcott and Hort, Anglican scholars, developed a
theory of how to properly organize and handle these kinds of copyist errors and
differences in MSS. One of their primary theories was that these older MSS that had been found—Codex Sinaiticus,
Codex Vaticanus, and some others—because they
were older were better. So there are about three or four of these Alexandrian MSS from North Africa where if any two or three of them agree it
basically goes, thatÕs itÕ that is what it should be. But North Africa was a
hotbed of heresy in many ways in the early church and so that wasnÕt exactly an
area where theological accuracy was the best. Further north across the
Mediterranean in Greece and Turkey there is a vast storehouse of MSS. They are not as old but there are many hundreds more of
them, and more are being discovered, and from that has become what is a certain
text type known as the Majority Text.
The KJV and NKJV is based on a very small group of not so old MSS known as Textus Receptus or Received Text from the Middle Ages. At the time
of the Protestant Reformation a Roman Catholic scholar by the name of Erasmus
put together the first critical text. A critical text is where several
different MSS are compared. There may be some disagreements in them but
you make notations in the margin at the bottom as to where the disagreements
might be. A scholar can consult that and see the listing of the different
readings of that particular MSS. The
first edition of Erasmus used only eight or nine Greek MSS, the oldest of which went back to the eighth century. As he
studied more he found other MSS and
at most he only used thirteen, and they werenÕt that old and werenÕt very good.
Now we have hundreds and hundreds more of that same text type, so those 9-13 MSS that Erasmus used were not the best but represented a
certain type of MSS or region. ThatÕs why they are also sometimes called the
Byzantine text type. The KJV
and NJKV fits that pattern. We like to use
it but it is not always the best.
The verb sunecho is used but in the NASB it is an imperfect middle indicative—Òdevoting
himself completely to the word.Ó In the NKJV and KJV
in what is called the Majority Text it is an imperfect passive form. So the
voice is different. Also there is the difference of being compelled by the
Spirit in the Majority Text, or by the word or to the word in Textus Receptus. To complicate
things, this word sunecho has a
huge range of meanings. It can mean to sustain, to guard, to seize, to distress
(even with the idea of being ill), to control, to occupy oneÕs attention fully,
to urge, to direct, or to control. How do you choose? Context!
Which fits the context
better? The context is a time when Paul indicates he is fearful, concerned,
distressed. The Lord is going to appear to him in a vision in verse 9—ÒDo
not be afraid {any
longer,} but go on speaking and do not be silent.Ó The Lord wouldnÕt say that
if Paul werenÕt a little bit fearful at this particular time. He just needed a
little additional encouragement. So the idea of PaulÕs being specifically
compelled or led by the Spirit to go to Corinth at this time fits the context
that Paul needed this direction.
The
Holy Spirit doesnÕt lead every believer like this. This is unique to the
apostles and the apostolic era. It is not qualified anywhere else in the New
Testament. We donÕt even know how the Holy Spirit did this.
We
have this word used in one other place in a similar context. 2 Corinthians 5:14
NASB ÒFor the love of Christ controls (or, compels) usÉÓ This
compelling of something doesnÕt necessarily have to be a ÒfeelingÓ as much as
it may be through the Word. In other places in the Scripture the Holy Spirit works
through the Word. So when the Holy Spirit is compelling Paul it could be that
as Paul is reflecting upon the promises of God to sustain him in difficult
circumstances God the Holy Spirit is using that to strengthen him and encourage
him to ahead to Corinth and face whatever challenges there may be, similar to
the ones he has already faced.
ÒÉ testifying
to the Jews that Jesus was the Christ.Ó This is another important word that we
find in the Greek. It is summartureo
which means to witness together with something. It is the word that is
used most commonly in the Scripture. The ÒtestifyingÓ is used about nine times
in the New Testament. As in Acts 2:40; 8:25; 10:42; 20:21; 20:24;
23:11. Paul is fulfilling his ministry as an apostle to be a witness. Remember
Acts 1:8, a key verse in Acts, the LordÕs parting words to the apostles were, Òyou shall be My
witnesses.Ó The use of this word here is just one
way Luke is reminding us that Paul is fulfilling his mission, and he is going
to the Jews and giving testimony that Jesus is the Messiah.
Another use of the main
verb martureo which is used
several times in Acts, but not in the same sense, is in Acts 14:3 NASB
ÒTherefore
they spent a long time {there} speaking boldly {with reliance} upon the Lord,
who was testifying to the word of His grace ÉÓ So this idea of bearing witness
is common in Acts.