PAUL THE APOSTLE ( PART 35 ) | THE SECOND MISSIONARY JOURNEY | PAUL AT CORINTH ( PART 2 )

Pastor Christopher Choo

Lesson 3135

PAUL THE APOSTLE ( PART 35 )

THE SECOND MISSIONARY JOURNEY
PAUL AT CORINTH ( PART 2 )

In Paul's time, Athens had lost out to Corinth in terms of being a financial hub and cultural center. It was like a university town resting on the laurels of its glory days as a disseminator of  Greek philosophy and classical learning that shaped the Western world. 

Thus the sin city of Corinth was a better prospect for evangelism:

1. In the first place, it was a large mercantile city, in immediate connection with Rome and the West of the Mediterranean, with Thessalonica and Ephesus in the Aegean Sea, and with Antioch and Alexandria in the East. The gospel once established in Corinth would rapidly spread everywhere.

2. Another reason for Paul to be in Corinth was the influx of Jews into the city - a greater number of Jews than usual, for they had lately been banished from Rome by the command of Emperor Claudius (Acts 18:2). Among the Jews who had been banished from Rome by Claudius, and had settled for a time at Corinth, were two natives of Pontus, whose names were Priscilla and Aquila.  They would prove to be godsend companions who took Paul under their wing in their common trade as tentmakers. The money they made would have paid for their own personal expenses and the spread of the gospel as team members.

At first, when Paul arrived in Corinth, he was dejected, lonely, and in need of fellowship and encouragement. But this Jewish couple proved to be a right tonic to his flagging spirit. By day they earned their keep by being tentmakers in the marketplace. But on their Sabbath days off work, they ministered in the Jewish synagogue sowing the seeds of the gospel that  "Jesus is the Christ" (Acts 18:5).

When Timothy and Silas returned from Thessalonica, they brought a good report of the church there before joining Paul in his evangelism of the Corinthian Jews and Gentiles. 

Paul was so inspired that he penned the first two of his epistles - to the Thessalonians - from Corinth.

When the Jews rejected the gospel as expected, Paul and his team went next door to the house of a Gentile believer called Justus. The wonder of it all was that Crispus, the ruler of the synagogue, believed in Christ with all his household (Acts 18:8 ) and joined their congregation.

Abba Father, it was not easy for Paul to handle the rejection of the gospel by the Athenians on his own. But thanks to Your encouragement, he was given new and trusted partners to minister to both the Jews and Greeks who thronged Corinth and made it a fertile ground for sharing the gospel. Although the Jews eventually resisted the gospel, the Gentiles were more open-minded. For they needed to hear the clear message of the gospel to salvage their lives from the messiness of fleshly Corinth. In fact, Paul told the rejecting Jews,  "Your blood be upon your own heads; I am clean. From now on I will go to the Gentiles" ( Acts 18:6 ). Corinth thus marked the decisive point in Paul's ministry to concentrate solely on evangelising the Gentiles rather than the Jews