(This is being posted early since I am traveling this week).
(Acts 18:1-28) I am inspired by the teamwork demonstrated in Luke’s account of Paul’s ministry alongside his associates, Aquila and his wife Priscilla. They had been forced out of Rome because of the persecution of the Jews. They lived and worked with Paul as tentmakers. They quickly became team workers with Paul, because when he left Corinth to go to Ephesus, they went with him (18:18). We don’t know if they had become Christians before leaving Rome, or if they became Christians in Corinth when they met and lived with Paul. If they were discipled by Paul, they were quick learners, because we find them helping Apollos to fine-tune his message. “They took him aside and explained to him the way of God more accurately” (18:26). God used their instruction to bless Apollos’s ministry. Luke reported: “(Apollos) powerfully refuted the Jews in public, demonstrating by the Scriptures that Jesus was the Christ” (v. 28).
Their spiritual discernment, their love of the gospel, must have made their relationship to Paul extremely important to him. Aquila and Priscilla had planted a church in their home in three cities, beginning with Corinth (1 Cor. 16:19). When Paul wrote the Corinthians from Ephesus, he revealed that Aquila and Priscilla had a church in their home also in Ephesus. “Aquila and Prisca greet you heartily in the Lord, with the church that is in their house” (1 Cor. 16:9). The third city was Rome. They returned to Rome at some point. Paul greeted them when he wrote his letter to Rome: “Greet Prisca and Aquila, my fellow workers in Christ Jesus…also greet the church that is in their house.” (Rom. 16:3). What a super couple who always used their home as a base for ministry and for gathering God’s people together for worship.
-Al Gary
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