Acts 18:12-22 meaning

Acts 18:12-22 shows how after a time of peaceful ministry, enemies of the gospel put pressure on Paul in Corinth.

Paul, Timothy, and Silas have settled down in Corinth for a year and half. After preaching in the synagogue for some time, Paul was rejected by many of the Jews, so he announced he would only preach to the Gentiles in Corinth from then on. A church formed in the house of the man who lived next to the synagogue, and the leader of the synagogue and his household believed in Jesus. Many more Corinthians believed, both Jew and Greek, and were baptized.

Paul received a vision of Jesus. Jesus told Paul that he would be safe from physical violence in Corinth, because Jesus has many people in Corinth who serve Him and will protect Paul. Paul has been able to preach and grow the Corinthian church for one year and six months.

After a year and a half, there is a change of authority in Achaia, the Roman province which covered much of modern Greece. A man named Gallio becomes proconsul, and his promotion opens the door for the Jews who are hostile to the gospel to take action against Paul:

But while Gallio was proconsul of Achaia, the Jews with one accord rose up against Paul (v. 12).

When governments change hands, it is an opportune time to test what the new authority figure will tolerate, or who he will side with. The Jews who are hostile to the gospel probably saw this opportunity to gain influence with Gallio concerning Paul, to see if they could sway his opinion and get rid of Paul. So with one accord they formed a mob and rose up against Paul.

They seized Paul and brought him before the judgment seat of Gallio the proconsul, saying,

“This man persuades men to worship God contrary to the law” (v. 12-13).

The Jews’ grievance against Paul only concerns Judaism. In their prosecution of Jesus before the Roman Governor Pilate, the Pharisees and Sadducees made a similar charge, and Pilate dismissed the complaint as a religious matter that did not concern Rome (John 18:31). The Pharisees and Sadducees revised their complaint against Jesus to have relevance to Roman rule (Luke 23:2, John 19:12, 15), but the Jews in Corinth are not as shrewd.

Their charge is simply that This man, Paul, persuades men to worship God contrary to the Jewish law. For a year and a half, Paul has been winning over Corinthians, many of whom were Jewish, to believe in Jesus as the Messiah. The Jews opposing Paul see this as a corruption that is contrary to the law, when it was actually a fulfilment of the law and a fulfilment of the prophecies in the Hebrew scriptures (Matthew 5:17). The fact that this church of Christ-believers assembles in the house next door to the synagogue likely added to the resentment of the Jewish opponents (Acts 18:7).

But the complaint has nothing to do with Gallio’s actual job description. He has no interest in placating the Jews and punishing a stranger because of a debate over how to worship the Jewish God.

Luke writes that Paul tries to speak, and was about to open his mouth, but is cut off by Gallio:

But when Paul was about to open his mouth, Gallio said to the Jews, “If it were a matter of wrong or of vicious crime, O Jews, it would be reasonable for me to put up with you” (v. 14).

Gallio explains that he would take their complaint seriously if it were a matter of criminal law. But they have not brought to him a matter of right or wrong, a matter of justice for a vicious crime. There is a sense of disdain in Gallio’s response; he addresses them by their ethnicity, O Jews, and implies that speaking with them is irritating.

It is not reasonable for them to bring a religious teacher they don’t like to the judgment seat and expect the proconsul to do anything about it. Only in the case of an actual crime would Gallio deign to put up with the Jews. Otherwise, he is not interested in hearing from them.

Gallio makes clear that he will never have anything to say to them if they come to him with matters of religion and culture:

“but if there are questions about words and names and your own law, look after it yourselves; I am unwilling to be a judge of these matters” (v. 15).

Gallio’s dismissal is comprehensive. All questions about words and names and your own law is for the Jews to figure out amongst themselves. Gallio’s mention of words and names indicates that as far as he can tell, this is a debate between scholars about how to interpret the words of their religious texts, and what names are appropriate to use in reference to God. Anything to do with the Jews’ own law is for them to look after themselves. Gallio will not act as judge over such matters as these. He is entirely unwilling.

He displays how unwilling he is by chasing them out of his court:

And he drove them away from the judgment seat (v. 16).

Luke does not describe Gallio as merely dismissing the crowd that came to him, but that he drove them away. Perhaps he ordered his guards to escort them out with drawn weapons to make his point clear.

The Jewish opponents of the gospel react with aggression of their own. There seems to be a passage of time between verse 16 and verse 17, since the Jews were at first driven away from the judgment seat, but in 17 they have returned to the judgment seat. Whether or not Paul is still their prisoner is unclear. But Jesus’s promise to Paul that he will not suffer physical violence in Corinth holds true. However, physical violence is used against another man:

And they all took hold of Sosthenes, the leader of the synagogue, and began beating him in front of the judgment seat. But Gallio was not concerned about any of these things (v. 17).

In verse 8, a man named Crispus was the leader of the synagogue, but now a year and a half later, the current leader of the synagogue is Sosthenes. To make a point of how serious they were, these opposing Jews forcibly took hold of Sosthenes, brought him before Gallio on his judgment seat, and began beating Sosthenes.

This is a strange scene and its conclusion is not explicitly explained. This act of violence made no impression on Gallio as far as taking the Jewish complaint seriously. Luke writes that despite their beating Sosthenes, Gallio did not seek to placate them, rather he was still not concerned about any of these things—the Jewish religion, its culture, its law, its god, or this man Paul’s corrupting influence. Gallio was unmoved.

Gallio may have ordered his guards to stop the Jews from beating Sosthenes just after they began, since he was the proconsul and part of his job was to maintain law and order against vicious crime (v. 14), but otherwise he did not care about the religious squabbling among the Jews.

Sosthenes was probably a believer or at least friendly to Paul, since the Jewish opponents victimized him in this violent tantrum. There is another mention of a Sosthenes at the beginning of the first letter to the Corinthians (1 Corinthians 1:1), and it is possible that this is the same man as here in Acts 18.

Sosthenes may have travelled with Paul for some time, and co-authored 1 Corinthians, or at least acted as a scribe for its composition. It would make sense for him to be mentioned in the greeting portion of 1 Corinthians, if he had once lived in Corinth and served as the leader of the synagogue there, and was known to the Corinthians as a believer in Christ who had suffered persecution at the proconsul’s judgement seat. The Corinthian church would know Sosthenes personally and probably admire him.

Since Crispus and Sosthenes, both leaders of the synagogue, became believers, it seems Paul still has a foothold in the Jewish community in Corinth, even though he stormed out of the synagogue a year and a half earlier. His ministry was primarily directed at the Corinthian Gentiles, but that did not stop other Jews from believing in Christ as well.

Paul is probably shaken by what has happened to Sosthenes on his account. He does not leave the city right away, for Luke tells us that he remained many days longer after the beating of Sosthenes. Regardless, he made plans to leave eventually, and departed from Corinth:

Paul, having remained many days longer, took leave of the brethren and put out to sea for Syria, and with him were Priscilla and Aquila (v. 19).

Paul did not suffer physical violence in Corinth, just as Jesus promised him (Acts 18:9-10). This allowed Paul to minister in Corinth for eighteen months. But as soon as others began to suffer physical violence, Paul started thinking of where to go next. He had been away from his home church of Syrian Antioch for at least 2 years. So, having remained in Corinth for many days longer, he at last got on a boat and put out to sea for Syria, to visit the church of Syrian Antioch.

Interestingly, Priscilla and Aquila went with him. Presumably, Timothy and Silas went with him as well. Priscilla and Aquila had no roots in Corinth but were only there after being exiled from Rome (Acts 18:2). Though they were tent-makers by trade, after meeting Paul and believing in Jesus they became teachers of the gospel as well. Paul would later refer to them as his “fellow workers in Christ Jesus,” and they would eventually host churches in their homes in Ephesus and Rome (1 Corinthians 16:19, Romans 16:3-5).

So they join Paul’s ministry team on the voyage across the Aegean Sea from Cenchrea.

Paul takes a vow, which appears to be a Nazarite vow in the city of Cenchrea:

In Cenchrea he had his hair cut, for he was keeping a vow (v. 18).

The evidence for this vow being the Nazarite vow is that Paul had his hair cut. For the duration of the Nazarite vow, the one who was keeping the vow was forbidden from cutting their hair (Numbers 6:5). So sometimes those who took the vow would have their hair cut just before the vow period began. That way, by starting out with short or completely shaved hair, by the end of the vow their hair would not have grown to a ridiculous length. It may also have been a way of dedicating the new head of hair solely to God. At the end of the vow period, sacrifices were to be made to God, one of which was the cutting off of the hair and burning it at the altar (Numbers 6:18).

The text offers no explanation as to why Paul took the vow. It may have been in preparation for returning to Israel, to show that Paul still practiced Mosaic customs. The popular slander against Paul was that he preached against the Law of Moses (v. 13). Perhaps to get ahead of this slander, Paul began keeping a vow to help soften the suspicions against him, that he might preach the gospel uninhibited to the Jews in Ephesus, and not cause offense in Jerusalem when he eventually returned there (v. 22). He outlines his goal of goodwill to all cultures in a letter to the Corinthian believers,

“To the Jews I became as a Jew, so that I might win Jews; to those who are under the Law, as under the Law though not being myself under the Law, so that I might win those who are under the Law…I have become all things to all men, so that I may by all means save some.”
(1 Corinthians 9:20, 22)

On their voyage back to Syria, Paul and company stop in the port city of Ephesus, which was in Asia Minor (western modern-day Turkey). Paul had wanted to preach the gospel there years earlier during this second missionary journey, but the Holy Spirit had forbidden it (Acts 16:6). Now it seems the Spirit permitted Paul to preach in Asia Minor. Priscilla and Aquila look to have only had plans to go with Paul as far as Ephesus:

They came to Ephesus, and he left them there (v. 19).

There may have been better work for tent-makers in Ephesus, or perhaps there was a ministry strategy afoot. But whatever their reason, Priscilla and Aquila settled down there for the next several years. We know that Paul wrote the letter of 1 Corinthians from Ephesus during his third missionary journey (1 Corinthians 16:5-9), in which he mentions that Priscilla and Aquila send greetings to their old friends in Corinth,

“Aquila and Prisca greet you heartily in the Lord, with the church that is in their house.” (1 Corinthians 16:19)

We can see that their ministry continued in Ephesus, even though Paul soon left them there. On their own, guided by the Holy Spirit, Priscilla and Aquila led a church that congregated in their home. They will eventually return to Rome where they will be church leaders (Romans 16:3).

Before leaving Ephesus, Paul took the opportunity to preach Jesus to the Jews:

Now he himself entered the synagogue and reasoned with the Jews (v. 19).

The Jews of Ephesus were receptive to the gospel. They wanted Paul to remain in the city for a while and continue teaching them:

When they asked him to stay for a longer time, he did not consent but taking leave of them and saying, “I will return to you again if God wills,” he set sail from Ephesus (vs 20-21).

Though they asked him to stay for a longer time to preach further about Jesus, he did not consent to the request to remain. Paul was set on returning to Israel and Syria. He may have known he would not stay long in Syria, and would start again to trace his way back through all the churches he had planted (Acts 18:23). But it was time to go home, if briefly. Though he did not consent to stay in Ephesus for a longer time, Paul probably introduced these receptive Jews to Priscilla and Aquila, who would soon start an Ephesian church.

But as he was taking leave of them, telling them farewell, he promised he would come back if the Lord allowed it, “I will return to you again if God wills.” God would indeed ordain Paul’s return to Ephesus. During his third missionary journey, Paul will live and teach in Ephesus for at least two years (Acts 19:10), which is the longest period of time he stayed in any city while on mission. Thus, having planted a seed of the gospel and leaving it in the capable hands of Priscilla and Aquilla, Paul, Silas, and Timothy set sail from Ephesus.

At last Paul returns to Israel. It is estimated he was gone on this missionary journey for 2-3 years. His ship makes port in the large city of Caesarea by the Sea, where Philip the Evangelist settled down, and the first Gentile believer, Cornelius the Centurion, heard the gospel from the Apostle Peter (Acts 8:40, Acts 21:8-9, 10:1).

Luke sums up Paul’s return to Israel and Syria in brief:

When he had landed at Caesarea, he went up and greeted the church, and went down to Antioch (v. 22).

Paul and his team travel from Caesarea up into the Judean mountains to visit the church of Jerusalem, a journey of 70 miles. He greeted the church there, possibly speaking with the Elder James and the Apostles who were there at the time. Paul probably gave a report of his journey, as he and Barnabas had done after their first missionary journey in Cyprus and Galatia (Acts 15:3-4).

Paul might have told of the many cities he had visited, the trials through which God had delivered him, the churches he had established, the miracles the Holy Spirit had worked through him, and the many new believers who now followed Christ all throughout Greece. The church in Jerusalem surely rejoiced.

Afterwards, Paul went down from Judean hills and journeyed to Antioch in Syria (See Map). There he and his companions reunited with old friends and encouraged them with the wonderful things God was doing for the Jews and Gentiles abroad the Roman Empire as the gospel of Jesus Christ continued to spread.