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"blasphemed". The Apostle himself knew only too well the dreadful hatred from which
this blasphemy came, for he confessed before Agrippa that he had himself "compelled
believers to blaspheme" (Acts 26: 11), while in Rom. 9: 1-3 he writes that his heart
was heavy for his kinsmen, for he himself used to wish himself accursed from Christ.
There are some who have attempted to draw the dispensational boundary either at
Acts 13: 46, or at Acts 18: 6, but just as Paul's turning to the Gentiles in Acts 13:
was followed by a series of synagogue visits from Acts 14:-18:, so again, after the
utterance given in Acts 18: 6, we find the Apostle once more in a synagogue in
Ephesus in Acts 19: 1. The synagogue witness ends in chapter 19:, but Israel as a
people are not set aside until after the critical conference at Rome (Acts 28:).
With reference to Acts 18: 6 Alford writes:
"Not absolutely, but only at Corinth: for we find arguing with the Jews again in the
synagogue at Ephesus. I have adopted the punctuation of Lachmann, erasing the colon
after ego: `I shall henceforth with a pure conscience go to the Gentiles'."
When the opposition of the Jews at the synagogue reaches the culminating point of
blasphemy, the Apostle withdraws and finds accommodation in the house of one named
Justus, "whose house joined hard to the synagogue". There may be more reasons than
one for the inclusion of this detail. It may indicate that Paul was still hopeful that many
of the Jews he had left would nevertheless come under the sound of the gospel--and in
this he was most certainly right, if Crispus and his household were brought in this way--
and the position of the house may also have indicated that the complete separation of the
church from the hope of Israel was not yet due.
The reader will remember that the vision seen by Paul here in Corinth is in
structural correspondence with the vision of the man of Macedonia, seen in Troas.
(For the structure of Acts 16: 6 - 19: 20, which shows this correspondence, see
Volume XXVIII, page 230).
"Then spake the Lord to Paul in 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" (Acts 18: 9, 10).
Athens, the city of culture and philosophy, has no such vision, and no such promise,
but Corinth, where sin was brazen and depravity enthroned, provides an arena for the
triumph of Jesus Christ and Him crucified (I Cor. 2: 2). The Lord tells Paul in the vision
that He has "much people in this city". Truly, as the Apostle wrote to the Corinthians:
"Ye see your calling, brethren, how that not many wise men after the flesh, not
many mighty, not many noble, are called. But God hath chosen the foolish . . . . . the
base . . . . . the despised . . . . . the things that are not, to bring to nought the things that
are; that no flesh should glory in His presence" (I Cor. 1: 26-29).
The Apostle continues at Corinth for a year and six months, teaching the word of God,
and upon the arrival of Timothy, who had been sent back from Athens to Thessalonica,