Furthermore, when I came to Troas. — The article, perhaps, indicates the Troad as a district, rather than the city, just as it does in the case of Saron. (See Note on Acts 9:35.) The case of the offender had come in as a parenthesis in 2 Corinthians 2:5-8. He returns to the train of thought which it had interrupted, and continues his narrative of what had passed after he had written the First Epistle. (On Troas, see Notes on Acts 16:8.) A Church had probably been founded in that city by St. Luke, but St. Paul’s first visit to it had been limited to a few days, and there are no traces of his preaching there. Now he comes “for the gospel’s sake.” That there was a flourishing Christian community some months later, we find from Acts 20:6.
A door was opened unto me. — Opportunities for mission-work, as we should call them, are thus described in 1 Corinthians 16:9. There is something of the nature of a coincidence in his using it of two different churches, Ephesus and Troas, within a comparatively short interval.