In The Worst Of Cities

18:1-11 After this Paul left Athens and came to Corinth. There he found a Jew called Aquila, who was a native of Pontus, but who had newly arrived from Italy with his wife Priscilla, because Claudius had decreed that all Jews must leave Rome. Paul went in to these people, and, because they had the same craft as he had. he worked with them; for they were leather workers to trade. Every Sabbath he debated in the synagogue and he won over both Jews and Greeks.

When Silas and Timothy came down from Macedonia, Paul proceeded to devote himself entirely to preaching and he kept testifying to the Jews that Jesus was God's Anointed One. When they opposed him and spoke blasphemous words he shook out his raiment against them and said, "Your blood be on your own head; I am clean; from now on I will go to the Gentiles." So he removed from there and went to the house of a man called Titus Justus, who was a worshipper of God, and whose house was next door to the synagogue. Crispus, the president of the synagogue, believed in the Lord with all his household. And many of the Corinthians listened and believed and were baptized. The Lord said to Paul in a vision by night, "Stop being afraid; go on speaking and do not be silent, because I am with you and no one will lay hands on you to hurt you, for many people are mine in this city." He settled there for a year and six months, teaching the word of God among them.

Here we have a vivid light on the kind of life that Paul lived. He was a rabbi and according to Jewish practice every rabbi must have a trade. He must take no money for preaching and teaching and must make his own living. The Jew glorified work. "Love work," they said. "He who does not teach his son a trade teaches him robbery." "Excellent," they said.. "is the study of the law along with a worldly trade; for the practice of them both makes a man forget iniquity; but all law without work must in the end fail and causes iniquity." So we find rabbis following every respectable trade. It meant that they never became detached scholars and always knew what the life of the working-man was like.

Paul is described as a tent-maker. Tarsus ( Greek #5019 ), was in Cilicia ( Greek #2791 ); in that province there were herds of a certain kind of goat with a special kind of fleece. Out of that fleece a cloth called cilicium was made which was much used for making tents and curtains and hangings. Doubtless Paul worked at that trade, although the Greek word used means more than a tent-maker; it means a leather-worker and Paul must have been a skilled craftsman. Always he gloried in the fact that he was a burden to no man ( 1 Thessalonians 2:9 ; 2 Thessalonians 3:8 ; 2 Corinthians 11:9 ). But very likely when Silas and Timothy arrived they brought a present, perhaps from the church at Philippi, which loved Paul so much; and that present made it possible for him to devote his whole time to preaching. It was in A.D. 49 that Claudius banished all the Jews from Rome and it must have been then that Aquila and Priscilla came to Corinth.

Just when Paul needed it God spoke to him. Often he must have been daunted by the task that faced him in Corinth. He was a man of intense emotions and often he must have had his hours of reaction. But when God gives a man a task to do, he also gives him the power to do it. In the presence of God Paul found his courage and his strength.