“Do not be afraid, but go on speaking and do not be silent, 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.”
— Acts 18:9–10
Context & Key Themes
Acts 18 takes Paul from Athens south to Corinth, the commercial and moral capital of Greece. He arrives tired. The Athens sermon had produced only a handful of converts. Thessalonica had driven him out. Berea had done the same. For the first time in his missionary career, Paul seems to be at the edge of discouragement, and the Lord meets him with a vision in the night that will keep him planted in Corinth for a year and a half. The chapter also introduces one of the most important ministry couples in the New Testament—Priscilla and Aquila—and closes with the arrival of a young Alexandrian preacher named Apollos who will need some gentle theological tuning.
Corinth itself is worth knowing. It was a Roman colony, a wealthy port city straddling the narrow isthmus between the Aegean and the Adriatic, and famously immoral even by first-century standards. The Greek verb to Corinthianize meant to act like a prostitute. If the gospel could plant a church in Corinth, it could plant a church anywhere.
Aquila and Priscilla
After this Paul left Athens and went to Corinth. 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, and because he was of the same trade he stayed with them and worked, for they were tentmakers by trade.
The detail is historical. In AD 49, the Roman emperor Claudius expelled the Jewish population of Rome, according to the historian Suetonius because of disturbances at the instigation of someone named Chrestus—almost certainly a Roman misunderstanding of disputes in the Jewish community over Christ. Among those expelled were Aquila and his wife Priscilla, a Jewish Christian couple who had apparently come to faith in Rome before their exile. They settled in Corinth, set up their tent-making shop, and were working there when Paul arrived.
Paul was also a tentmaker. Trade was how he supported himself on his missionary journeys. He rarely accepted support from the churches he was planting, preferring to work with his hands so that no one could accuse him of preaching for profit. Aquila and Priscilla took him in, gave him both lodging and employment, and became his co-workers in both trade and ministry.
This pattern—Paul making tents by day, reasoning in the synagogue on the Sabbath—lasted through the beginning of his Corinthian ministry. Every Sabbath he reasoned in the synagogue and tried to persuade Jews and Greeks.
Silas and Timothy Arrive
When Silas and Timothy arrived from Macedonia, Paul was occupied with the word, testifying to the Jews that the Christ was Jesus. Silas and Timothy had been left behind in Berea and had caught up with him here. Their arrival apparently allowed Paul to shift fully from tent-making to full-time preaching. The Macedonian churches, especially Philippi, had sent financial gifts with them—Paul refers to this in his later letters to the Philippians and Corinthians. The freedom to preach without working was a gift the Philippians had purchased for him.
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.
Paul has reached the limit of the synagogue’s patience. He shakes out his garments, a symbolic gesture of separating himself from the responsibility of the synagogue’s unbelief. He leaves. But he does not leave Corinth. He simply moves his teaching venue a few doors down the street.
Next Door to the Synagogue
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. 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.
Luke’s touch is almost comic. Paul does not go quietly. He sets up shop in the house of a God-fearer whose front door is directly adjacent to the synagogue’s front door. The synagogue leadership who had just rejected his message cannot walk to their own building without passing Paul’s new pulpit. And the ruler of the synagogue himself converts, along with his whole household, and presumably walks out the synagogue door and in the door of the house next door.
Many Corinthians believe and are baptized. The church Paul plants in Corinth will be the most intellectually and morally troubled of all his churches—his two letters to them are evidence of how much work it took to keep them on track—but the foundation here is solid.
The Vision of Assurance
And the Lord said to Paul one night in a vision, Do not be afraid, but go on speaking and do not be silent, 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. And he stayed a year and six months, teaching the word of God among them.
This is a rare window into Paul’s interior life. The fact that the Lord tells him not to be afraid implies Paul was afraid. The fact that the Lord tells him to go on speaking and not be silent implies Paul was tempted to go silent. After Thessalonica, Berea, and Athens, Paul had reached the point where discouragement was real. The Lord meets him there, with a vision, and gives him two promises. Protection for his person. Many of my people are in this city. Keep preaching.
The phrase I have many in this city who are my people is theologically remarkable. These people had not yet believed. Paul had not yet reached them. But the Lord already calls them his. The doctrine of election sits quietly in this sentence. The Lord knows who is his before they know they are his. Paul’s preaching is the instrument by which they will come to know. But they were already the Lord’s before Paul ever opened his mouth.
Paul stays for a year and six months. This is the longest ministry he has conducted in one place since Antioch. The Corinthian church grows through teaching and stability, not just initial evangelism.
Gallio
But when Gallio was proconsul of Achaia, the Jews made a united attack on Paul and brought him before the tribunal, saying, This man is persuading people to worship God contrary to the law.
Gallio was the brother of the Stoic philosopher Seneca, Nero’s future tutor, and a well-documented Roman official. His presence in Corinth in the early 50s AD is one of the anchoring historical data points of New Testament chronology. The Jewish leadership brings charges against Paul before him. Their accusation is careful—Paul is preaching a worship contrary to the law. They are trying to get Paul declared a religious innovator under Roman law, which would allow them to press charges more seriously.
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. 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. And he drove them from the tribunal.
Gallio’s ruling is significant beyond this scene. He effectively classifies Christianity as an internal Jewish dispute, not a new religion requiring Roman regulation. This ruling, from a proconsul of Paul’s social standing, will provide legal cover for Christian missionary activity across the empire for years to come. The church will still face persecution, but for some decades it will not face formal Roman prosecution as an illegal religion.
The crowd, whether Gentile or Jewish Luke does not clarify, seizes Sosthenes, the new ruler of the synagogue, and beats him in front of the tribunal. Gallio pays no attention. Interestingly, a Sosthenes appears alongside Paul in the greeting of his first letter to the Corinthians—possibly the same man, later converted. The beating outside the tribunal may have been a decisive moment in his own conversion.
Back to Antioch, Then Out Again
After this, Paul stayed many days longer in Corinth, and then took leave of the brothers and set sail for Syria, and with him Priscilla and Aquila. At Cenchreae he had cut his hair, for he was under a vow.
The vow is probably a Nazirite vow, undertaken for some personal reason—perhaps gratitude for the Corinthian ministry, perhaps something we do not know. The hair-cutting marks its completion. Paul remains a culturally observant Jew even as he preaches a gospel that transcends the law.
They sail to Ephesus, where Paul leaves Priscilla and Aquila. He himself enters the synagogue at Ephesus briefly, reasons with the Jews, and is asked to stay longer. He declines. I will return to you if God wills. He sails to Caesarea, goes up and greets the church, presumably in Jerusalem, and returns to Antioch.
After spending some time there, he set out on his third missionary journey, passing from place to place through the region of Galatia and Phrygia in order, strengthening all the disciples. The same strategy as before. Revisit the churches planted on earlier journeys. Strengthen. Teach. Check on elders. Continue west.
Apollos in Ephesus
Meanwhile in Ephesus, during Paul’s absence, a remarkable young preacher has arrived. A Jew named Apollos, a native of Alexandria, came to Ephesus. He was an eloquent man, competent in the Scriptures. He had been instructed in the way of the Lord, and being fervent in spirit, he spoke and taught accurately the things concerning Jesus, though he knew only the baptism of John.
Apollos is a phenomenon—Alexandrian education, eloquent speaker, thoroughly scriptural, on fire for Jesus. But his theology has a gap. He knows only the baptism of John. He has not yet been taught the full gospel, probably because he came to faith through the ministry of someone who had been converted during John the Baptist’s ministry but had not stayed connected to the Jerusalem apostolic circle. Apollos has the message about Jesus but has missed the baptism of the Spirit and whatever else has developed since Pentecost.
He began to speak boldly in the synagogue. When Priscilla and Aquila heard him, they took him aside and explained to him the way of God more accurately.
The detail matters. Priscilla and Aquila do not correct Apollos in public. They do not challenge him in the middle of his sermon. They take him aside. Privately. Carefully. A couple of tentmakers, without any recorded formal theological training, gently correct an eloquent Alexandrian preacher by inviting him into their home and filling in what he had missed. The humility of the move and the willingness of Apollos to receive it are both exemplary.
And when he wished to cross to Achaia, the brothers encouraged him and wrote to the disciples to welcome him. When he arrived, he greatly helped those who through grace had believed, for he powerfully refuted the Jews in public, showing by the Scriptures that the Christ was Jesus.
Apollos goes on to Corinth and becomes a significant teacher there. He becomes so influential that a faction forms in the Corinthian church that prefers Apollos’ eloquence over Paul’s plainer style. Paul will address that faction in his first letter to the Corinthians with characteristic grace. But none of that is Apollos’ fault. He became a powerful preacher because two tentmakers in Ephesus took him into their home and taught him what he had not yet learned.
Reflection
Acts 18 offers some of the most practical lessons in the book on the texture of ongoing ministry. The heroes of this chapter are not primarily the converts or the miracles. They are the coworkers—tentmakers who opened their home, a proconsul who ruled well, a preacher who accepted correction.
Priscilla and Aquila are a model for every Christian couple who wants to know what ministry partnership looks like at the lay level. They were not apostles. They were not prophets. They ran a small business, opened their home to a traveling preacher, paid him by giving him work, traveled with him when he moved, took a promising young preacher under their wing and corrected his theology privately. Luke names them together in almost every appearance, sometimes with Priscilla listed first, which was unusual in the ancient world. They may be the most consistently mentioned lay couple in the New Testament. And their influence on church history through the preachers they shaped—Apollos most obviously, but probably others—is incalculable. The church needs Priscilla-and-Aquila couples in every generation. Their ministry is largely invisible and permanently consequential.
Paul’s vision is a reminder that even the most seasoned missionary can reach the point of discouragement where the Lord has to speak directly. After three hostile cities in a row, Paul was tired and afraid. He did not stop serving, but he was close to collapse. The Lord met him with a direct word. Do not be afraid. I am with you. I have many in this city who are my people. Every Christian worker who has reached the point of wondering whether any of it is making a difference should hold these words. The Lord has his people in every city. He knows where they are. He is pulling them toward himself. The discouraged worker is not alone, is not abandoned, and is not working in vain.
Gallio’s ruling is a quiet reminder that the Lord uses civil authorities for his purposes. Gallio was not a Christian. He was a Roman proconsul indifferent to Jewish religious disputes. But his ruling gave the early church legal space to grow for critical decades. Christians should not count on civil authority being friendly, but they also should not be surprised when the Lord uses a pagan magistrate to protect his people. Sovereignty works through whatever instruments the Lord chooses.
And Apollos’ story may be the most pastorally useful of all. He was brilliant, eloquent, gifted, and theologically incomplete. Most churches in history, presented with such a man, would either promote him too quickly or silence him entirely. Priscilla and Aquila did neither. They took him home. They filled in the gaps. They released him into ministry more complete than when he had started. And he accepted the correction without ego. The church needs both the Priscilla-and-Aquila kind of correction and the Apollos kind of humility. Most theological damage in any generation comes from missing one or the other. When an eloquent preacher has gaps, the loving thing is to take him aside and teach him more carefully. When a gifted preacher is offered correction, the holy thing is to receive it.
I have many in this city who are my people. The Lord still says this about every city his church enters. The work is never as alone as it feels. The harvest is never as small as it looks. The city that feels resistant is already full of people the Lord has been drawing toward himself. The missionary’s job is to be found preaching when they show up.