The Missionary and the Governor
“Then spake the Lord to Paul in the night by a vision, Be not afraid, but speak, and hold not thy peace: for I am with thee, and no man shall set on thee to hurt thee: for I have much people in this city. And he continued there a year and six months, teaching the word of God among them,” etc. — Acts xviii. 9-17.
WE may learn much of Paul’s inner character by observing what the Master promised him for encouragement in his difficulties at Corinth. The Lord knew the missionary’s heart — where its weakness lay, and what would avail to give him support. Now, by marking what the omniscient Physician prescribes, we gain an infallible diagnosis of the patient’s ailments. Two distinct grounds of comfort are supplied; therefore, we may conclude, two distinct fears oppressed the missionary’s heart. The twin comforts are assurance of personal safety, and the promise of many souls as his hire; the twin fears accordingly were, lest the violence of the persecutors should crush him, and lest his labour in the ministry of the Word should be in vain. The one fear shows Paul’s weakness, and the other shows his strength. In fear of danger and love of life, Paul was like other men, and needed the assurance of Divine protection; but the motive of his ministry was to save men, for he who knows his heart is able to assume, that the hope of winning souls will make him brave every danger in the prosecution of his work.
“Speak; for I have much people in this city.” Despondency was freezing the stream of motive, and the machinery of the missionary’s life was about to stand still: hope of success, given by the word of his Master, melted the ice, and the work went on. This demonstrates that Paul preached in order to win souls.
An interesting and comforting view of Divine sovereignty is opened up here, a view that tends to reconcile all differences of opinion among the disciples of Christ, and induce them to accept meekly all that the Scripture reveals, waiting for the solution of mysteries till the books are opened. The Lord intimates to Paul, “I have much people in this city,” at a time when these persons were Jews or heathen. It was in purpose and prescience as yet that he had them as his people, and not in accomplished fact. Now, whether we be able to understand that doctrine in its depth or not, the Lord, who revealed it, knows his own meaning. Observe what he considers is its tendency, and to what purpose he applied it. He gives no countenance to the dilemma, suggested sometimes in sadness and sometimes in scorn; “I am either chosen, or I am not: if I am chosen, I shall be saved, and so need not exert myself; and if I am not chosen, I cannot be saved, whatever exertion I may make.” Whatever the doctrine of election, as revealed in Scripture, may mean, it does not mean that. Oh, the Divine simplicity of the Word of God! “Speak; for I have much people in this city.” This prescience, instead of suppressing effort, is given as the encouragement to exertion. And Paul understood his Lord. The intimation that a multitude of the Corinthians would certainly be saved, spurred him on to instant and persevering labour in the gospel, that thereby he might save some. Let the doctrine be understood as the Lord then gave it, and as his servant then received it, and instead of placing a millstone on the shoulders of a missionary, it will take a millstone off.
“People” here is the exact equivalent of the term employed throughout the Old Testament to designate Israel the chosen nation. This people is now no longer Abraham’s seed according to the flesh; it is a community gathered from all kindreds and tongues, knit into a new brotherhood by faith in Christ. As the Lord had warned Paul at Jerusalem that the Jews would reject the gospel, he warns him at Corinth that the Greeks would receive it. The promise is transferred from a particular family to believers of every land.
The apostle” was not disobedient to the heavenly vision he continued there a year and six months, which, with his views of life and work, must have seemed to him a lengthened sojourn.
It was because his hands were full and his gains great that he remained so long in one place. I do not venture to say that we should exactly, in this matter, follow the apostle’s example; but I do venture to say that we should not exactly reverse it. If a minister should occupy one place for a lifetime, precisely because he was altogether unsuccessful, it would be a melancholy reversal of apostolic practice. The Church would be stronger in our day if the rule were, that those labourers who fail to” get gain 11 in one city, should quickly move on to another., In this history there is no account in detail of Paul’s labours in Corinth. We know, however, from hints given elsewhere (1 Cor. i. 2, 26-28; vi. 9-11), that he materially changed his method. In particular, he ceased to frame his address so as to suit the habits of the Greek philosophers, and simply told the story of the cross. This change might be due to a combination of two causes; he might think that his comparative failure at Athens did not encourage him to persevere in the plan he adopted there; and he might also find that busy merchants of Corinth required a simpler and more direct treatment than the literary circles of Athens.
While Gallio represented the Roman Emperor as Governor of Achaia, the Jewish inhabitants of the city concocted a criminal accusation against Paul, and followed it up with tumultuous demonstrations. It was precisely thus that the Jews of Jerusalem dealt with Paul’s Master under the government of Pilate. By the combined action of fanatical J ews and a heathen ruler, the Lord was put to death; how shall Paul, in similar circumstances, escape a similar issue? How shall the promise, “No man shall set on thee to hurt thee,” be fulfilled now?
If Gallio should vacillate and yield like Pilate, the missionary’s life might indeed be spared for the time, for he could again exercise his privilege as a Roman citizen: he might have appealed to Csesar. But this would have put a stop to his preaching in Corinth, and how then could the “much people” be won to Christ? The time was not yet. The Lord hath need of this missionary for a while in Greece and Asia before he is sent to Rome.
How then was the promise of preservation fulfilled to Paul? Through the personal character of the proconsul Gallio. Some clear notes of this man’s history and disposition have been handed down to us. He received this name through adoption into the family of one Gallio, a rhetorician. His brother was Seneca the philosopher. He was a man of singular gentleness and amiability. His brother writes of him in terms of the most admiring affection. His health was feeble: he left Corinth sick, declaring that his illness was due to the climate of that region. His brother Seneca soon after fell a martyr to Nero’s cruelty; and there is a tradition that Gallio himself ultimately shared the same fate.
The Jews had obtained from the government a legal licence and protection for their religion; and they hoped that on their complaint the preaching of Paul would be suppressed by the magistrate. They stated their case before the proconsul’s tribunal; but when Paul, in turn, was about to speak in his own defence, the judge intimated to him that no reply was necessary. He would not enter into the case on its merits. He would dismiss it without argument as incompetent. If it had been any matter of civil right, he would have tried the case, and pronounced judgment; but as it related only to different views of the J ewish religion, he declined to interfere. It did not lie within his jurisdiction. Gallio seems to have seen pretty clearly the distinction which puzzles many legal and legislative heads in our day between things civil and things sacred — between that which touches a citizen in person and property, and that which lies between a man’s conscience and God. His refusal immediately afterwards to interfere when the Jews beat the ruler of their own synagogue in his presence, I rather think is not really inconsistent with this view; for it is altogether probable that the beating was only a formal affair, intended not to punish Sosthenes, who was their own rabbi, but to draw the governor out of his neutrality by a sort of trick.
How great the difference between Pilate and Gallio! And how great issues, in the purposes of God, depended on
Paul and A polios. that difference! Pilate was a cold-blooded, selfish man; he was consequently a weathercock when the storm arose and beat upon him from opposite directions in quick succession. But he settled down at last on the point to which he was driven by the popular breeze, and a selfish regard for his own interests, Gallio, on the contrary, was a man at once just and gentle and unselfish. He was proof alike against the legal pleas and the insurrectionary violence of the Jews. He saw through them, and despised them. He would not suppress Paul’s free speech to please his fanatical adversaries. He did what he believed right, without considering what it might cost him.
If Gallio, instead of Pilate, had been proconsul in J udsea when the priests conspired to put Jesus to death, what would have been the result? But we need not speculate. I have put the question in order to intimate that it should not get an answer. Christ, our Passover, was sacrificed for us. He offered himself; and all things conspired to fulfil his great design. If it had been his will to avoid the cross and leave mankind to perish, he could have placed a Gallio on Pilate’s judgment-seat.