EPISODE 63 ACTS CHAPTER 18 "Power Couple"

You're listening to Acts chapter 18. Now, when you hear someone use the term power couple, whose faces pop up into your mind? In this chapter, we'll meet God's idea of a power couple. It'll be clear before we're done why we call them that, and we'll see the enormity of their contribution to the expansion of early Christianity. Let's get started. Acts chapter 18, Power Couple.

Are you familiar with that term, power couple? In America, anyway, it refers to a husband and wife, or at least two people in a relationship, who both are famous and successful in their own right. For example, until recently, Tom Brady and Gisele Bündchen, who the gossip magazines just couldn't seem to write enough about, would be an example. He was a big football star in the NFL, and she was a supermodel, whatever that is. But each was an A-list celebrity in their own right. Today, we're going to meet a power couple of a completely different kind, people you may have never heard of until now, definitely not celebrities, but a husband and wife team who made an extremely valuable contribution to the success and spread of early Christianity.

Let's back up for a moment. A couple chapters ago, I described for you how Paul was directed to Macedonia through a vision, remember? There they experienced some ministry successes, but also conflicts and some opposition. Since Paul himself was the lightning rod, he decided to leave his partners in Macedonia to continue the work there while he traveled south to Athens. After a brief stay in that ancient city, in and about the year A.D. 52, he moved on, crossing the isthmus that connects the mainland of Greece to the Peloponnesus. Just at the southern end of that land bridge that connects those two parts of Greece lay a great city called Corinth in the first century.

Corinth was very much different than Thessalonica, Philippi, or even Athens, much larger and a somewhat intimidating place even for a man as bold as the Apostle Paul. It was huge by the standards of the day, more than a half a million inhabitants. It was very multicultural and was infamous for being a rough and immoral city. Paul arrived there completely alone with little if any money, still trying to heal, I'm sure, from the beatings that he and Silas had experienced in Philippi only weeks before. Humans can only take so much, you know, physically, emotionally, even a seemingly superhuman sometimes like the Apostle Paul. But at this point, he really needed some encouragement, some refreshment, you would say, and God had that exactly in store for him in this most unlikely place.

For in Corinth, through what seemed to be a chance meeting, he was about to connect with some very special people. What at first seemed like a chance meeting was clearly a divine appointment, a meeting God arranged which proved to be a very fruitful connection for the advancement of the early Christian movement in several key locations. A little more than a year before this, across the Adriatic Sea in the capital city of Rome, there had already been serious trouble between early Christians and the Jewish community, clashes significant enough that they were regularly disrupting the peace. Things got so bad that the Roman emperor then, Claudius was his name, actually expelled all the Jews from Rome, Christians and regular Jews. Ordered them all, get out of town. The Roman historian Suetonius recorded this, as well as Luke does here in Acts chapter 18.

One couple affected by that edict were early Christians by the names of Aquila and Priscilla. They were successful business people. Aquila was a Jew by birth, and his wife was apparently a Roman from a notable family. When the emperor ordered all Jews to leave the city, Aquila had to go. And this couple, probably leaving their business in Rome in the hands of some of her family, took this setback as an opportunity to expand their business interests in another city. Corinth was where they chose, a large commercial center in the empire.

It seemed like a logical choice, and that's where they went. So a year or two before Paul arrived in Corinth, Aquila and Priscilla had already relocated there because of the emperor Claudius's edict. They may well have been the only Christians in that large city when they arrived. Now when Paul got to Corinth, he had to find work to support himself, and that's how God providentially brought these people together. It just so happened that Aquila's business involved a trade Paul had learned growing up. Both of these men were tent makers and leather workers.

This was the kind of business Aquila and Priscilla had established in Corinth. So, soon after Paul arrived there needing income, he must have gone looking for work in the district of the city where those kind of tradesmen had shops, and that's how they met. Try to imagine their first conversation. He shows up at their place of business. Good afternoon. Nice to meet you.

My name is Paulus, and I've just arrived in your city. I'm actually a very experienced leather worker. Are you hiring by any chance? We haven't been long in the city ourselves. We had to leave Rome because of the order expelling Jews, so our business here is pretty new, but it is growing, and maybe we could use some additional help. Wait, you're Jews from Rome?

I'm also a Jew, a Jewish follower of Jesus the Messiah, actually. Have you heard about him? Yes, we're also Christians. Priscilla, come down here. Meet Paulus. He's a Christian newly arrived in our city.

He's looking for work. To actually, I've come to Corinth to share the gospel of Christ. The rest of my team will be along in a few weeks, I expect. I left them in Macedonia because we're ministering there and organizing new believers into churches. To, wait, your name is Paulus, and you have a team sharing the gospel and planting churches? You're not, you're not the Apostle Paul, for heaven's sakes.

That must have been quite some meet-up, and was certainly no coincidence. On the one hand, this meeting of kindred spirits, we would say, was exactly the kind of soul refreshment Paul needed at this point. And on the other hand, he was going to learn just what valuable friends and partners these two would become. By the way, do you realize God is still bringing people together like that for our benefit and for His purposes? I don't know Aquila and Priscilla nearly as well as I'd like, and I'm going to piece together the bits of information we have about them, both in Acts as well as in Paul's later letters he wrote to the New Testament churches. It might only seem incidental when you read these things, but it's not.

It's essential, as you'll see. Paul lived with and worked with this couple, Aquila and Priscilla, during the early months he was in Corinth. I'm sure they had some great discussions during that time, and it was a time Aquila and his wife really grew in their faith. Outside of their work at the leather shop, Paul was, as he always was, carrying on his ministry of sharing the gospel in that city. He attended the synagogue of the Jews in Corinth. He engaged people in discussions about why he believed Jesus was the Messiah.

Every Sabbath, Luke writes, that's where you could find him. As usually happened, some responded positively to Paul's witness. Others opposed him and his, to them, very strange new ideas. Once the rest of the team rejoined him in Corinth, he was able to devote even more time to evangelizing and teaching. The opposition didn't deter him, but it did grow. Tensions kept mounting, especially between Paul and Jewish synagogue leaders, to the point he decided to quit even trying to speak there.

He told them if they would not receive the good news about Jesus, the Messiah, he would turn to the Gentiles. But rather than retreat to some faraway part of the city, Paul, in fact, began holding meetings at the home of a man named Titius Justus, Luke says, lived next door to the synagogue. Right next door. Paul starting a church right next door. To make matters worse, one of the synagogue's key leaders joined him there, his whole family. Can you imagine?

The tensions started to grow sky high. God actually appeared to Paul again in a night vision at this point to reassure him. Don't be afraid, he said. Keep on speaking. Do not be silenced. I am with you.

No one's going to harm you because I have many people in this city. That had to be very encouraging and reassuring for Paul. It should also be encouraging to all of us who share the word because we never know what may become of it. When God said, I have many people in this city, those were people that hadn't even heard the gospel yet, but that God knew would respond to it. You know, I was cutting our lawn this past summer with my four-year-old grandson on my lap. He likes to zip around on our zero-turn mower, and we have in our yard some big silver maple trees.

Each time we rode under the largest of these, the oldest one of these, I noticed it was full of those helicopter seed pods that spin down to the ground. I mean, thousands of them. I stopped the mower at one pass to show Theo and explain to him how those little helicopters are how God designed this tree to reproduce itself. When the wind blows, they break loose from their stems and fly all around our yard, and eventually, some of them land on good ground. Some will land in a spot where the soil will suck them down. They will get rained on, germinate.

The sun will bring them up into new baby trees. In fact, I have several silver maple trees in my yard right now that all started from that one big tree. Theo was looking at me like, Oh, really, Grandpa? But I thought, You'll get this later, and I hope you get it now, because that's exactly how it was with Paul in sharing the gospel in these places. Some of the seed of God's Word landed on good soil, germinated, produced new believers. He wrote later, Faith comes from hearing the Word of God.

I don't know who or where, but God does. Maybe you've been listening to this podcast for a while now, and the seed of God's Word has been planted in your heart and life, and you've become a believer and follower of Jesus. We're so happy if that's the case. We may never have a chance to meet you or know you, but God knows you. That's the thought God was encouraging Paul with at the time when he really needed it. That is, if he shared the Word of God faithfully in Corinth, in that great intimidating city.

God knew there were souls there who would respond. They just needed to hear the message. Paul ended up staying in Corinth for 18 months, and one of the larger early Christian communities grew up there. At verses 12 to 16, Luke tells us something else significant for his overall account of how Christianity spread during these early years. The opposition of the synagogue leaders in Corinth finally grew so determined that they brought trumped-up charges against the apostle Paul, and he had to appear at a hearing before an important Roman official named Gallio. This man was not just a city magistrate.

Gallio was the proconsul of the whole province of Achaia, in our terms, like the governor of a state. We know from secular history that he only held this office for one year, A.D. 51 through June A.D. 52, which pinpoints the date for when this actually occurred. This man Gallio was well connected to the court at Rome. His brother, the philosopher Seneca, in fact, a famous philosopher and teacher, was also the tutor of the young man who would succeed Claudius as the Roman emperor. Hope I'm not losing you yet. So this important, well-connected official is the man Paul stood before when the Jewish synagogue leaders in Corinth tried to convince him the apostles were troublemakers.

Realize the Roman Empire didn't have complete religious freedom. There were religions they allowed and ones they didn't allow. Christianity as yet fit in neither of those categories because it was so new. Sosthenes, the leader of Corinth's synagogue, tried to convince Governor Gallio that what Paul and Silas were teaching should be banned because it was strange and weird and caused problems. But Gallio didn't buy their arguments. The issues sounded to him like a theological dispute between Jews about something that he wasn't the least bit interested in.

In fact, Paul wasn't even asked to defend himself at that hearing. Luke describes the governor's reaction like this. He said, If you Jews were making a complaint about some misdemeanor or serious crime, it would be reasonable for me to listen to you. But since this involves questions about words and names and your laws, settle this matter yourselves. I'm not going to be the judge of such things. And Luke says he drove them off.

We'd say he threw their case out of court. This was very significant because had a Roman official as important and as connected as Gallio ruled against Paul and against Christianity at this early stage, that would have set a serious precedent. The upshot of the situation was just the opposite of what the Jews bringing charges against him hoped for. When Gallio rebuffed them, Luke says some people gathered there turned on the synagogue leader Sosthenes and they began to beat him. Jews weren't that popular. They had just recently, remember, been expelled from Rome for causing similar problems there.

Gallio actually turned a blind eye to this anti-Semitic outbreak right at his court. Luke says he showed no concern whatsoever as the guy got beat. Now here's an intriguing side note. Paul left Corinth after a year and a half of ministry there, but he wrote back letters to that church a few years later, which are actually in our New Testament. The opening line of First Corinthians says, Paul, called to be an apostle of Christ Jesus by the will of God, and our brother Sosthenes, to the church of God in Corinth. Sounds like that man, who was Paul's greatest antagonist when he was in Corinth, Sosthenes, the synagogue leader who got beat up at the courtyard that day, has since become a believer himself and someone Paul now considered a Christian brother.

What that tells me is that we shouldn't think of or treat people who oppose us as our enemies, but rather treat them with undeserved love and respect. Hadn't Jesus taught us exactly that and modeled exactly that? Love your enemies. Pray for those who mistreat you on my account. Hadn't Paul himself been the greatest enemy of the early Christians before God changed his heart? God is in the heart-changing business.

Don't forget that. Sosthenes, who tried to have Paul arrested and tried to have Christianity banned in Corinth, is another prime example of the power of the gospel to change people's hearts and minds. This is all very interesting history to me about Christianity's start in Greece. But now, in the last ten verses of chapter 18, we actually arrive at the big idea I most want to leave you with today. When Paul and the team left Corinth, as I said, after a year and a half there, we read at verse 18 that Aquila and Priscilla left with them. Once again, this couple uproots themselves, leaves their home and their business in Corinth now, and sails with Paul across the Aegean Sea to another important city called Ephesus.

This was another strategic city Paul had targeted for the gospel. Ephesus was a large commercial center and capital of the populous Roman province of Asia. Although Paul himself was on some kind of pressing schedule at this point and felt he needed to get back to Jerusalem and Antioch. He had brought Aquila and Priscilla to Ephesus because they had partnered with him planting a new church in Corinth. Now he was going to leave them in Ephesus to do the same thing there, spearhead the gospel outreach in that important city. So, Aquila and Priscilla, they were like seed pods.

Paul planted them there in Ephesus to be the nucleus of a new Christian church. And we know they were very successful. How do we know that, Paul? Well, a couple years later, Paul wrote in that same letter I mentioned a moment ago, 1 Corinthians, near its close, where he customarily included personal greetings, The churches in the province of Asia send you greetings. Aquila and Priscilla greet you warmly in the Lord, and so does the church that is meeting in their house. Remember, Corinth was the place where Paul first met this couple.

He lived and worked with them there for a year and a half. They were key players in founding a church in Corinth. Now he is writing back to Corinth, sending greetings from Aquila and Priscilla, who are now living in Ephesus, and he says, There's a church now meeting in their home in Ephesus. We're going to see going forward, this church in Ephesus that started there became a very successful and influential ministry from which many satellite churches were planted over the next several years. At the end of Acts chapter 18, Luke tells us about another significant accomplishment of Aquila and Priscilla while they lived in Ephesus. A fellow showed up in that city who was all fired up about Jesus.

Luke describes him this way: Meanwhile, a Jew named Apollos, a native of Alexandria, came to Ephesus. He was a learned man with thorough knowledge of the Scriptures. He had been instructed somewhat in the way of the Lord, and he spoke with great fervor and taught about Jesus accurately, though he himself only knew the baptism of John. But he began to speak out boldly in the synagogue. So Aquila and Priscilla then in Ephesus heard Apollos boldly speaking about Jesus in their Jewish synagogue and invited him to their home. We don't know exactly from where he had gotten his knowledge about Christianity.

Alexandria, where Apollos was from, is actually in Roman Egypt. But in some roundabout way, he had heard about Jesus. He put together things in the Old Testament prophecies, and he could convincingly argue that Jesus was in fact the Messiah. He'd been baptized according to the call from John the Baptist to repent and be ready for the Messiah. But Apollos didn't yet understand the whole story. Apollos needed someone to sit down with him and explain everything in an orderly way, you know, the significance of Jesus' death on the cross, the evidence for his resurrection, Jesus' ascension back to heaven, the coming of the Holy Spirit, the birth of the church.

And that is exactly what Aquila and Priscilla did in his life. They helped him connect the dots and understand his faith much better. Apollos went on to be an important figure in the early church. In fact, many, including me, believe he's the author of the New Testament book we call Hebrews. Aquila and Priscilla are to be credited with spotting the potential in this man, investing their time and knowledge in him to lead him to a fuller understanding of the Christian faith. Let me push the envelope one step further before we finish today.

There's one more piece to the Aquila and Priscilla puzzle. We know from secular history that it was just at this time that the Roman Emperor Claudius was poisoned by his fourth wife, a lovely woman by the name of Agrippina, who wanted to put her own son from a previous marriage on the throne of Rome. Claudius, remember, was the emperor who had expelled Jews from Rome. That's why Aquila and Priscilla had to leave there in the first place. His death was the cue for many Jews to return to their homes and businesses there. Probably at Paul's urging, because sharing the word and planting Christianity in the imperial capital of Rome was one of his greatest life goals.

Once again, Aquila and Priscilla uprooted themselves, this time from Ephesus, and returned to their native Rome. How do we know that? Because in the New Testament letter Paul wrote to the church at Rome later, penned around A.D. 57, when he's again writing personal greetings to people he knows there, the very first people he mentions are, you'll never guess who, Greet Priscilla and Aquila, my fellow workers in Christ, he wrote. They risked their lives for me. Not only I, but all the churches of the Gentiles are grateful to them. Greet also the church that meets at their house.

I wish I knew more about Paul's enigmatic comment here about risking their lives for him. Something must have occurred at one of these stops that put Paul in mortal danger that Priscilla and Aquila, at great risk to themselves, managed to rescue him from. Hey, but are you seeing a pattern here? Once back in their original home city of Rome, again, Aquila and Priscilla are hosting another new church there. So in less than one decade, this couple had helped plant and develop Christianity in three of the empire's largest cities: Corinth in southern Greece, Ephesus in what is today western Turkey, and now, finally, back in Rome. From God's perspective, through the lens of His interests, I'm sure those two are really a power couple.

Not only were they mature believers who could effectively share their faith, they were also just exemplary people, exemplary Christians. They were hospitable, they were generous, they were loyal, they were brave, they were flexible, they were available, they were faithful. So, some food for thought. Compared to the so-called power couples our culture idolizes these days, to the Tom and Giselles, to the Travises and Taylors, or whoever is trending in the media when you hear this, at the end of the road, whose lives will have been better spent? I think we all know the answer to that question. Jesus could use some more followers just like Aquila and Priscilla today, don't you think?

We'd be hard-pressed to find better role models to emulate than those two. Thank you, Paul. Whether God calls us as individuals or as a power couple, the influence by our acceptance to do His will can have enormous impact on this world and for the building of His kingdom. Are you listening to the calling that the Holy Spirit is putting on your heart? Are you part of the Great Commission, and are you sharing His Word to those around you? It can be as simple as sharing a link.

Check out ShareTheWord.org for more information, as well as our archive of all the podcasts. From all of us at Share the Word, our blessings and prayers go out to all of you.