Exhortation And Example
EXHORTATION AND EXAMPLE
ACTS 20:28-38
What do we learn about Christian leadership here?
Verses 28-35 are the concluding part of this pastoral charge, in which exhortation and example meet and mingle. Paul’s encouragements are given in such verses as 20:28,31,35. He holds himself up as a model to emulate in verses like 20:31,33-34. The call to vigilance and faithfulness is made all the more insistent and urgent because of the attacks of heretical teachers (20:29-30) whose influence in the later church became only too apparent (cf. 1 Timothy 4:1-3; Jude; 2 Peter 2:1-22; 1 John 4:1-6; Revelation 2:2 in particular). The saddest warning is given in the announcement that these men will arise “from among your own selves”—ie they will be apostate teachers who desert the church’s faith and introduce some distortion of Christian doctrine and ethics. Can you think of some modern counterpart to this “false teaching”?
20:28. The church as a flock (John 10) has a natural complement of its leaders as “overseers” (episkopoi) whose job it is to tend it and to protect it from marauding wolves (20:29). The Holy Spirit appoints such pastoral leaders over the church, purchased (as Israel of old, Psalm 74:2; Exodus 15:16) by the blood of God’s only Son (RSV margin gives the best sense in the light of Jesus’ relationship to God as his well-beloved, cf. Genesis 22:2; Romans 8:32).
20:36-38. The elders escorted him to the quayside—the place of many tender farewells.
Notes 20:29: heretical leaders are often likened to wolves (Matthew 7:15). 20:33: Samuel made a similar protest of disinterested concern (1 Samuel 12:3). 20:34: “these hands”—one can almost see Paul point to his toil-worn hands as he spoke. The two words are in an emphatic place in the sentence. 20:35: a saying of Jesus not recorded in the Gospels, but evidently widely known. This suggests that a collection of his teaching was already in circulation among the churches.
Thought The elders are to be built up (20:32) so that they may defend and tend the flock. The measure of one is the key to the other.