No Longer Living Like a Corinthian
No Longer Living Like a Corinthian by Rev. L. John Gable
August 30, 2020
As we come to this point in our study of the book of Acts Luke is giving us something of a travel-log as he tells the story of the spread of the Gospel and the growth of the early church, and he tells it as only he can, since Luke was part of the cohort traveling with Paul and Silas and Timothy at this point. Had he been traveling with any of the other evangelists of the day, Peter, Philip, Barnabas and John Mark, we would have gotten their stories, but since he is traveling with Paul we get “Paul” stories.
Just to bring us up to speed on this Paul’s second missionary journey, you may recall as they found themselves hemmed in by the Spirit in Troas they heard the cry of the Macedonian man, “Come over here and help us!” “Over here” meant taking the Gospel message from Asia Minor to Europe, something that had never been done before. From the beginning the call of Christ takes us to places we have never been before, to people who are yet to hear the Good News, whether that means across the globe or across the street.
They set sail north/northwest across the Aegean and landed in Neopolis (modern day Greece), then traveled inland to Philippi. It was there they met Lydia who along with her family was baptized and they became the first European believers. It was there they were also imprisoned for the first time for sharing their faith. It was also there that after a night-long of singing and praying the Lord opened the prison doors and set them free, so they traveled further inland through Amphipolis and Apollonia to Thessalonica where again they caused an uproar after their explaining that Jesus was the promised Messiah and some prominent citizens of that city believed them. An angry mob wanted to stone them but they made their escape, and at this point Luke goes in to even more detail in his travel-log.
The believers in Thessalonica stole Paul and his companions away in the middle of the night and set them on the road to Beroea just down the Via Egnatia, one of the major Roman roads of the day. The Beroeans warmly received their message but, having been schooled in the Scriptures, they studied carefully to make sure what was being told to them was true…a good practice for us still today. Paul didn’t stay long however because that mob of Thessalonians was still so angry they chased them all the way to Beroea (45 miles by foot) to attack them, so the believers sent the traveling evangelists on their way to Athens, by land and by sea.
As Oscar shared with us last week, Athens was the center of intellect and philosophy in the ancient world. If the Gospel could play there it could play anywhere, so Paul, surrounded by temples like the Parthenon, the Temple of Athena, and countless statues of the Greek gods, argued and debated with the Stoic and Epicurean philosophers on the Areopagus. While some believed, many others simply deferred saying, “We will hear you again about this.” That too is a response many give to hearing the Gospel message still today, but it is important that we continue to share it nonetheless, trusting that God can water the seeds of faith we plant.
We finally get to our lesson for today. Leaving Athens, Paul traveled due west to Corinth, where he met up once again with Silas and Timothy and befriended a couple, Priscilla and Aquilla, who had recently been exiled from Rome for their faith, who were also tent-makers, leather workers, as was Paul.
As something of a side note, this passage about Paul’s visit to Corinth is critical to the historic dating of Paul’s ministry and the historic accuracy of the book of Acts. Understandably it is difficult to put a specific date on any of the stories told in either the Old or New Testament since calendars and coins weren’t pegged to the time of Jesus until centuries later, but in this passage Luke tells us that Paul was in Corinth at the same time Gallio was proconsul (Roman governor) of Achaia (mainland Greece). He was proconsul there for one year, 51 AD, and from that firm stake in the ground scholars are able to date Paul’s ministry before and after using Roman sources, not just the Scriptures.
It is safe to say that Corinth was unlike anything Paul and his companions had ever seen. It is located on the isthmus which connects the mainland of Greece with the island-looking landmass call the Peloponnesus. The ancient city was razed by the Romans in 146 BC and then rebuilt by Julius Caesar in 46 BC, so it was a relatively new city, and it quickly became the capital of the province and a major commercial center as it was situated between two seas. There is a magnificent canal there that is still used today, cut through solid rock, an incredible feat of engineering, linking the two bodies of water. The city literally lay at the crossroads of Greece, north/south, east/west. Yet despite its wealth and influence, Corinth was best known in the ancient world for its lavish lifestyle and sexual immorality. It had been repopulated by the dregs of Roman society: former slaves, retired soldiers, displaced peasants, people with shady pasts who had little hope for the future. At the center of the city was the massive Acrocorinth, the mountain which housed both the city fortress and the Temple of Aphrodite, the goddess of love. The historian Strabo cites that there were 1000 cultic prostitutes servicing the Temple at any given time. There was an ancient proverb stating, “Not everyone can afford Corinth”, meaning it was a wealthy and expensive city, and another saying, “Not everyman’s concern is a trip to Corinth” which has the same ring to it as “What happens in Corinth stays in Corinth.” Needless to say it was in no way a compliment to say that someone was “living like a Corinthian.”
After facing imprisonment in Philippi, riots in Thessalonica, examiners in Beroea and sceptics in Athens, Paul was facing his biggest challenge yet in Corinth. We get a hint of this when we consider that he stayed there for 18 months, visited there at least twice and wrote at least three letters to the church he founded there. The issues he faced there were daunting. I have often wondered how Paul could breeze in to a city, preach a time or two in a synagogue then move on after only a few days leaving behind a body of believers who formed a church that thrived and grew. I will admit that I am no Paul, but my shortest time in ministry in any one place was six years and even in that amount of time I always felt like I was only making a dent.
So it is telling that Paul spent 18 months in Corinth and we can only imagine the kinds of behaviors he encountered there, although we get some insights as we read the letters he later wrote to them. I’ll encourage you to read those on your own.
So what is the Good News for those who live in “Sin City”? It would be relatively easy for us to think that it is only “them” then or even “them” now, whoever “they” may be, who need to hear the Good News, but what if this message is intended not for “them” but for “us”, for you, for me? What if Corinth is not just an ancient city on an isthmus in Greece, but is your heart and mine? It is one thing to analyze and critique them for “their” sins and quite another to apply that same critique to our own. As one has said, “We detect in ourselves what others try to conceal from us, and we recognize in others what we try to conceal in ourselves.” In our sin nature we share a common heritage. It was C.S. Lewis who said “Heaven will show much more variety than hell, for all of our sins have a certain sameness about them. There is nothing quite so unoriginal as sin.”
I have been thinking about this shared sin-nature as we have been reading and discussing together a book by Jemar Tisby titled The Color of Compromise which recounts the history of the church’s complicity in the sin of racism. It was a difficult, but very worthwhile, read for many of us. As I read this difficult history of complicity, particularly as it got closer and closer to my lifetime, hence my own lifestyle and social interactions, I had to keep reminding myself that, agree or not with the assumptions of the author, I need to hear his story, told from his perspective, and allow it to become something like a mirror I can hold up and look at myself and examine my own behaviors. As one close to me once wisely said when she was lovingly confronted concerning her destructive addiction, “I don’t think I have a problem, but if you think I do, then I guess I do.” That’s how I read Tisby’s book about racism and how I try to read Scripture. If God says I have a problem with sin, then I guess I do, which means I need to do something about that.
When Paul entered Corinth he was a man on a mission. He went with a purpose: to share the Good News of Jesus Christ and his mission was modeled after that of Jesus Himself, who “came in to the world to save sinners”. And what is that Good News for them then and for us now?
It is, first and last, the message that God loves us. John 3:16, “For God so loved the world He gave His only Son” and John 3:17, “Indeed, God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through Him.” God’s first action toward us is always love, no matter who we are, where we’ve been, what we’ve done, or how many times we’ve visited Corinth. This is the message we must first hear for ourselves and then share with others. And, in our desire to share the Gospel message with others, we must make every effort not to make the Good News out to be anything other than what it is: Good News!
Admittedly it is difficult to hear someone tell us we are “living like a Corinthian”. No one likes to be “called out” on our destructive behaviors no matter how lovingly we may be told. It is natural that we would get defensive, even resentful, when someone tells us the truth about ourselves, but we need to hear the truth because the truth is what is going to set us free.
The Good News we have been given and are called to share is nothing more and nothing less than Jesus Christ, the One we call Savior and Lord, Rescuer and Redeemer. As we examine ourselves in light the way God designed and desires us to live we discover that:
If our sin is deceptive and seductive, Jesus is the Revealer of the Truth.
If our sin is shallow and empty, Jesus gives our lives meaning and purpose.
If our sin leads to brokenness and despair, Jesus offers healing and hope.
If our sin is a maze of entrapment, Jesus is the One who came to set us free, “and if the Son sets you free you will be free indeed.”
If “the wages of sin is death” then Jesus gives us life, abundant and eternal.
Friends, hear and believe the Good News of the Gospel: Anyone who is in Jesus Christ no longer has to live like a Corinthian, and that is Good News indeed, for you and for me and for the whole world. Amen.