For I am with thee - I will attend, bless, and protect you. See the notes on Matthew 28:20.
No man shall set on thee - No one who shall rise up against thee will be able to hurt thee. His life was in God’s hands, and he would preserve him in order that his people might be collected into the church.
For I have - Greek: there is to me; that is, I possess, or there belongs to me.
Much people - Many who should be regarded as his true friends, and who should be saved.
In this city - In that very city that was so voluptuous, so rich, so effeminate, and where there had been already so decided opposition shown to the gospel. This passage evidently means that God had a design or purpose to save many of that people, for it was given to Paul as an encouragement to him to labor there, evidently meaning that God would grant him success in his work. It cannot mean that the Lord meant to say that the great mass of the people, or that the moral and virtuous part, if there were any such, was then regarded as his people; but that he intended to convert many of those guilty and profligate Corinthians to himself, and to gather a people for his own service there. We may learn from this:
(1) That God has a purpose in regard to the salvation of sinners.
(2) That that purpose is so fixed in the mind of God that he can say that those in relation to whom it is formed are his.
(3) This is the ground of encouragement to the ministers of the gospel. Had God no purpose to save sinners, they could have no hope in their work.
(4) This plan may have reference to the most frivolous, the most guilty, and the most abandoned, and ministers should not be deterred by the amount or the degree of wickedness from attempting to save them.
(5) There may be more hope of success among a dissolute and profligate population, than among proud, cold, and skeptical philosophers. Paul had little success in philosophic Athens; he had great success in dissolute Corinth. There is often more hope of converting a man openly dissolute and abandoned, than one who prides himself on his philosophy, and is confident in his own wisdom.