The Jews mount a united attack on Paul (4:1; 6:12; 17:5), bringing him into court (literally, "to the judgment seat"). Lucius Junius Gallio, the proconsul who hears the case, was the son of Spanish orator and financier Marcus Annaeus Novatus, who, after the relocation of his family to Rome, participated in the highest and most influential circles of society. Gallio's brother Marcus Annaeus Seneca, a Stoic philosopher, politician and dramatist, was tutor to the young Nero. Gallio pursued a career in government and between his praetorship and admission to the consulate served as the governor of the senatorial province of Achaia. A series of inscriptions help us date his tenure fairly precisely and give us good extrabiblical evidence for placing Paul in Corinth between A.D. 49 and 51 (Barrett 1961:48-49). Seneca described his brother's affable personality thus: "No other human being is so charming to just one person as he is to all people" (Naturales Quaestiones 4A, preface 11). Paul probably appeared before Gallio at the beginning of the governor's tenure and near the end of the apostle's stay in Corinth (A.D. 51).

The Jews bring an ambiguous charge. Who are the people Paul is persuading (better, "inciting")? Are they Jews or Gentiles? More to the point, are they Roman citizens? Against what law are they being incited to worship God? Is it the Roman law against proselytizing citizens for "foreign cults" (see note at 16:20-21; compare 17:7)? Is it the Jewish law as Gallio understands it (18:15)? Or is it an application of the edicts of Claudius that the Jewish people are to be treated as a collegium lictum—a legal, social and in this case religio-ethnic entity whose customs and practices are to be respected and whose lives are to be left undisturbed (Josephus Jewish Antiquities 19.278-91)? Possibly the Jews mean for Gallio to extend Claudius's edicts into their internal affairs. In their view Paul's teaching of the word of God is contrary to the Jewish law and creates an internal disturbance. In this sense he is violating the edict.

Before Paul can utter a word in his defense, Gallio decides not to render a verdict in the matter. God is fulfilling his promise of protection. Gallio evaluates how the charges relate to the spheres of necessary and discretionary jurisdiction. Using technical legal language (kata logon aneschomen hymon, "I would have been justified in accepting your complaint"), he says that some misdemeanor, open or violent wrongdoing, or serious crime, an offense involving fraud, deception, unscrupulousness (13:10), would be a legitimate matter for his jurisdiction. But the Jews have brought him controversial questions (15:2; 26:3) about words (literally, "a word"—the gospel message, 18:11) and not deeds, about names (messianic titles and Jesus' identity as the Christ, v. 5) and about [their] own law (a law-free gospel for the Gentiles, vv. 6-8). I will not be a judge of such things.

Here Gallio articulates two principles of church-state relations that, when lived out in any political structure, will pave the way for the gospel's unhindered progress. First, by saying that Paul is not accused of a misdemeanor or serious crime, Gallio declares Christianity's innocence before the state. Missionary activity is not illegal (contrast the Jewish leaders' assessment: 4:18, 21; 5:28). Second, by refusing to adjudicate an intramural religious dispute, Gallio declares that religious questions do not fall within the competence of secular state powers (Lk 20:25). For the fifties of the first century this was truly a precedent-setting decision. The decision of so eminent a proconsul would carry weight wherever such issues arose throughout the Empire (Longenecker 1981:486).

Yet there is a dark side to Gallio's lack of involvement. Not only does he eject the defendant and plaintiffs—possibly by physical force through the lictors—from the court, but he takes no action when the Jews begin to beat one of their own, Sosthenes. If Sosthenes is a Christian sympathizer (compare 1 Cor 1:1), then this breakdown of law and order within the collegium lictum is a warning that a state's hands-off policy in religious matters may simply make room for persecutors to continue opposing the gospel. Paul's instructions concerning prayer for state rulers should always be on our hearts (1 Tim 2:1-4).