Acts 20:32-38 (NIV)
“Now I commit you to God and to the word of his grace, which can build you up and give you an inheritance among all those who are sanctified. I have not coveted anyone’s silver or gold or clothing. You yourselves know that these hands of mine have supplied my own needs and the needs of my companions. In everything I did, I showed you that by this kind of hard work we must help the weak, remembering the words the Lord Jesus himself said: ‘It is more blessed to give than to receive.'”
When he had said this, he knelt down with all of them and prayed. They all wept as they embraced him and kissed him. What grieved them most was his statement that they would never see his face again. Then they accompanied him to the ship.
Paul closed his defense of his ministry to the Ephesian elders by first committing them and the whole Ephesian Church into God’s hands and to the shepherding made possible through His word. This was vital, because Paul wouldn’t be there in person to build up and equip the Church, but he knew that God would be there, and if they were diligent and consistent in their study of the Scriptures, God would work through those words to strengthen them and to build them up. (Yes, the words of Scripture can actually do all that!)
Next, Paul defended his work among them. He had not taken pay from the Ephesians (although it is clear from some passages in his letters that other churches were sending him support, for example 2 Corinthians 11:8 and Philippians 4:15-18), but he worked as a craftsman in leather and a tentmaker to provide for the majority of his own needs, and for those who ministered with him.
As support for his doing this, Paul quotes Jesus as saying, “It is more blessed to give than to receive.” Even though that is not recorded as a saying of Jesus in our gospels, there is no doubt that He said it, and that it was in the oral tradition of Jesus’ sayings until Paul wrote it down here.
The elders loved Paul and had no bones to pick with him. They were tearful as they knelt with him on the beach to pray for him, taking at face value his words that they would never see him again. But, in the end they were willing to commit him to God’s grace and walked with him to the ship that would take him on to Jerusalem.
Father, this points out not only the importance of following Your guidance, wherever that may lead us, but also of doing Your work faithfully and with absolute integrity. We never know when our time in a place, or even in the world, will be called to a close, and we want to be able, like Paul, to leave everyone on good terms and with no wrong between us and them. Thank You that Your Spirit can enable exactly that kind of integrity in our lives, just as He did in Paul’s. Amen.
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