The Word of God’s Grace

False teaching will be a threat to the church until the return of Christ, for “the devil prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour” (1 Peter 5:8). Therefore, we must “resist him, firm in [our] faith” (v. 9). Our faith can be made firm only when church leaders pay close attention to themselves and to the church, growing in their knowledge of the counsel of God, as Paul explains in his farewell speech to the Ephesian elders (Acts 20:1–30). In turn, church members are to heed the sound instruction of their leaders and choose for eldership only those who are qualified according to what God has revealed (see 1 Tim. 3:1–7; Titus 1:5–9).

Today’s passage concludes Luke’s account of Paul’s farewell speech. In the very last words of the Apostle to the Ephesian elders, he entrusted them to “God and to the word of his grace, which is able to build you up and to give you the inheritance among all those who are sanctified” (Acts 20:32). This refers to the word that is able to impart grace and that proclaims the truth of the gracious gospel of God. Essentially, Paul is saying that in the absence of the Apostles, the church and its elders are to keep and to follow the Apostles’ teachings. Note that Paul does not direct the church after him to follow a pope, mystical experiences, or an undefined body of traditional practices. Instead, he called them to commit themselves to follow what the Apostles taught, and the only sure source of this teaching today is the Scriptures. The twentieth-century evangelical Bible commentator F.F. Bruce writes: “In due course Paul, with all of the apostles, passed from earthly life, but the teaching which they left behind to be guarded by their successors as a sacred deposit, preserved not only in their memory but eventually in the New Testament scriptures, remains to this day as the word of God’s grace. And those are most truly in the apostolic succession who receive this teaching, along with the rest of Holy Writ, as their rule of faith and life.”

In addition to exhorting the church to entrust itself to the Apostolic teaching, Paul also instructed the church to help the weak and to be generous (Acts 20:33–35). Authentic Christianity addresses spiritual needs and physical needs, for human beings are creatures of body and soul, and both are essential. Like Paul, we should be eager for true doctrine and to remember the poor (Gal. 2:10). Paul then prayed with the Ephesian elders, and there was a tearful goodbye as the church leaders saw him off (Acts 20:36–38).