The Man Who Held the Coats

1 Corinthians 1:1 "Paul, called by the will of God to be an apostle of Christ Jesus, and our brother Sosthenes."

Around AD 51, in a Roman administrative courtyard in the Greek city of Corinth, a man named Sosthenes was getting beaten in front of a judge.

Acts 18 tells the story. Paul had been preaching in the synagogue of Corinth for several months. The Jewish community had had enough. They organized, they grabbed Paul, and they hauled him before Lucius Junius Gallio, the Roman proconsul of Achaia. The ringleader was the synagogue's own ruler, a man named Sosthenes. He stood at the front of the mob, demanding the proconsul shut Paul down. Gallio listened for about thirty seconds, threw the case out, and ordered everyone removed from his presence.

And in the chaos, the crowd turned on Sosthenes. The same crowd that had gathered to attack Paul beat Sosthenes right there in front of the judgment seat. Gallio refused to intervene. The synagogue ruler who had tried to destroy the apostle was left bleeding on the marble.

That is the last we see of him in Acts.

Five years go by.

Paul is now in Ephesus, sitting down to write his most pastorally complicated letter to the church he had planted in that same city of Corinth. He picks up his pen, and he opens the letter with two names, side by side.

"Paul, called by the will of God to be an apostle of Christ Jesus, and our brother Sosthenes" (1 Cor 1:1).

Most New Testament scholars have believed this is the same Sosthenes. The man who beat at Paul's heels at the bēma of Gallio is now sitting at Paul's elbow, co-authoring the letter to the church he had once tried to crush. The synagogue ruler who hated the message of Jesus is now helping deliver it.

And what does Paul call him?

Brother.

Family.

Now we have to ask the question Acts does not answer. How? What did Sosthenes do between Acts 18 and 1 Corinthians 1 to deserve that name? The text gives us nothing. There is no recorded apology, no documented penance, no list of corrected wrongs. We’re not told he atoned. We’re told he was called. The same grace that found Saul holding the coats while Stephen was stoned (Acts 7:58) found Sosthenes bleeding on the courthouse steps. The same call that turned Saul into Paul turned the synagogue ruler into a brother.

This is the pattern of the New Testament, written in story after story. Mary Magdalene, who once carried seven demons. Matthew, who once cheated his neighbors at the tax booth. Peter, who once denied he’d ever heard of Jesus. Paul, who once held coats while a martyr died. Sosthenes, who once dragged Paul to a Roman judge. The ones whose old name nobody could forget were given a new name nobody could erase.

And the pattern hasn’t stopped.

August 1973, on the East Coast of the United States, a man named Charles Colson was sitting in a driveway outside Boston, weeping. Colson was the special counsel to President Nixon, the legendary Watergate hatchet man, the kind of operator a White House aide once said would walk over his own grandmother to get something done. He was about to be indicted. His friend Tom Phillips, the president of Raytheon, had just read to him from C. S. Lewis's book on the chapter about pride, and Colson had thanked him politely and left without praying.

He couldn’t get the car out of the driveway. He sat in the front seat, an ex-Marine White House tough guy, and cried out to God. By the next year he had pleaded guilty and was serving seven months in federal prison. By 1976 he had founded Prison Fellowship, a ministry that has now reached millions of inmates around the world. The man whose name had been a synonym for political dirty work became one of the most respected Christian voices of the twentieth century.

How? Same as Sosthenes. Same as Paul. Same as you.

Grace did the rewriting.

Now there’s a hard question we should sit with before this devo ends. Who in your orbit has been given a new name in Christ that you have refused to recognize? The relative whose past you keep bringing up. The neighbor whose conversion story you keep doubting. The brother or sister at church whose old life keeps showing up in your conversations about them. The God who calls Sosthenes brother is calling that person brother too. We aren’t asked to forget what they did. We’re asked to honor what He has done.

Today: Name that person before the Lord. Ask Him to soften you toward the new name He has already given them. Then, if it is the Lord's leading, reach out. A short note. A phone call. A simple word of welcome that says, in effect, what Paul said to Sosthenes: brother.

Prayer: "Father, thank You that grace does what reform never could and writes new names where the old ones used to be. Thank You for Sosthenes, for Paul, for Colson, for every brother and sister whose call we now share. Soften me toward the people You have already remade, and make my welcome match Yours. In Jesus' name, Amen."

-PK