Acts 18:10
Acts 18:7-10
Then he left there and went to the house of a man named Titius Justus, a worshiper of God, whose house was next to the synagogue. Crispus, the leader of the synagogue, believed in the Lord with all his household, and many of the Corinthians when they heard were believing and being baptized. And the Lord said to Paul in the night by a vision, “Do not be afraid any longer, but go on speaking and do not be silent; for I am with you, and no man will attack you in order to harm you, for I have many people in this city.” And he settled there a year and six months, teaching the word of God among them.
Arminian, Robert Shank: “Who were these ‘many people’ whom God considered His? Obviously they were people as yet unknown to Paul and therefore not among those already won to faith in Christ in Paul’s initial labors in Corinth. We must therefore conclude that they were people who, not having heard and believed the Gospel as yet, already were positively disposed toward God--people in whom the Gospel would find ready acceptance. Peter’s words in the house of Cornelius are pertinent at this point: ‘Truly I perceive that God shows no partiality, but in every nation any one who fears him and does what is right is acceptable to him’ (Acts 10:34f. RSV) The point is not that such people do not need the Gospel, but rather that such people are disposed to believe the Gospel even before they hear it because they are positively disposed toward God, a fact of which God takes account, as the Scriptures imply.” (Elect in the Son, pp.195-196, emphasis mine)
Laurence Vance: “The ‘much people’ are defined in the chapter as Aquila and Priscilla (Acts 18:2), Sila and Timotheus (Acts 18:5), Justus (Acts 18:7), Crispus and his family (Acts 18:8), and ‘many of the Corinthians’ (Acts 18:8). There is no such animal as an ‘elect unregenerate’ child of God.” (The Other Side of Calvinism, p.336)
Titius Justus was “a worshiper of God” (Acts 18:7) whose house was next to the synagogue. This seems to be the most plausible meaning for, “I have many people in this city.” (Acts 18:10) According to Acts 16:14, a woman named Lydia was also designated as a “worshiper of God,” who went on to receive the Gospel when the Lord opened her heart to receive it. This also becomes a nice image of God drawing His own (i.e. worshipers of God) to His Son. It seems most plausible that in this city there were many Titius Justus’, Lydia’s and Nathanael types, all worshipers of God whom the Lord counted as His own, and would receive the Gospel and protect Paul. Acts 19:1-6 bolsters this perspective: “It happened that while Apollos was at Corinth, Paul passed through the upper country and came to Ephesus, and found some disciples. He said to them, ‘Did you receive the Holy Spirit when you believed?’ And they said to him, ‘No, we have not even heard whether there is a Holy Spirit.’ And he said, ‘Into what then were you baptized?’ And they said, ‘Into John’s baptism.’ Paul said, ‘John baptized with the baptism of repentance, telling the people to believe in Him who was coming after him, that is, in Jesus.’ When they heard this, they were baptized in the name of the Lord Jesus.”
Question: Is it possible that the, “I have many people in this city,” means actual Christians, who were praying for a powerful testimony of the Gospel to reach their city, such as Paul?
Answer: It could be. Acts 16:9-10 states: “A vision appeared to Paul in the night: a man of Macedonia was standing and appealing to him, and saying, ‘Come over to Macedonia and help us.’ When he had seen the vision, immediately we sought to go into Macedonia, concluding that God had called us to preach the gospel to them”? The answer could even be both, that is, Christians and receptive worshipers of God.
Question: Why did the Lord need to encourage Paul?
Answer: It was a similar situation with Elijah who thought that he was the last prophet left in Israel, when yet God still had 7,000 faithful. (1st Kings 19:14-18) Obadiah had hidden 100 prophets in caves. (1st Kings 18:4) The whole point was that Paul was not alone. There were legitimate worshipers of God present. So on this basis, the Lord encouraged him not to be afraid, but to keep pressing on in his evangelistic work.
Calvinist, William MacDonald: “There were many people in the city who belonged to the Lord in the sense that He was working in their lives and they would ultimately be saved.” (Believer’s Bible Commentary, p.1641, emphasis mine)
From the “worshiper of God” standpoint, such as Titius Justus (Acts 18:7), this could be true.
Calvinists, of course, infer that the “many people” are the Calvinistically elect. However, the passage doesn’t mention anything of an alleged upper caste of a Calvinistic elect or Irresistible Grace, but the Calvinist nevertheless reasons that these are both truths of Scripture, and therefore can be implied literally anywhere in Scripture.
The Calvinist paraphrase of verses 9-10 is therefore: “Do not be afraid any longer, but go on speaking and do not be silent; for I am with you, and no man will attack you in order to harm you, for I have many [Calvinism’s elect] people in this city [who have yet to receive their Irresistible Grace].”
John Calvin: “Even though these people might then reasonably be counted outsiders, the Lord calls them his own because they were written in the book of life and were about to be admitted into his family. We know that many sheep wander outside the flock for a time, just as there are many wolves among the sheep.” (Acts: Calvin, The Crossway Classic Commentaries, p.312, emphasis mine)
The part about the book of life was Calvin’s inference of a Calvinism’s elect. (For a discussion on the Book of Life, refer to Revelation 13:8.) The challenge for the Calvinists is that Scripture doesn’t say what they need for it to say. So how much presuming can a Calvinist endure before they realize that Scripture doesn’t say what they insist that it means?
