Untitled Sermon (3)

Acts 20:17–27 ESV

Now from Miletus he sent to Ephesus and called the elders of the church to come to him. And when they came to him, he said to them: “You yourselves know how I lived among you the whole time from the first day that I set foot in Asia, serving the Lord with all humility and with tears and with trials that happened to me through the plots of the Jews; how I did not shrink from declaring to you anything that was profitable, and teaching you in public and from house to house, testifying both to Jews and to Greeks of repentance toward God and of faith in our Lord Jesus Christ. And now, behold, I am going to Jerusalem, constrained by the Spirit, not knowing what will happen to me there, except that the Holy Spirit testifies to me in every city that imprisonment and afflictions await me. But I do not account my life of any value nor as precious to myself, if only I may finish my course and the ministry that I received from the Lord Jesus, to testify to the gospel of the grace of God. And now, behold, I know that none of you among whom I have gone about proclaiming the kingdom will see my face again. Therefore I testify to you this day that I am innocent of the blood of all, for I did not shrink from declaring to you the whole counsel of God.

The final characteristic of Paul’s ministry was the inclusiveness of his witness. He had preached to everyone, both Jews and Greeks (v. 21). No one had been left out. This had indeed been the case in Ephesus (19:10). Paul saw his own special calling as being the apostle to the Gentiles, but he never abandoned the synagogue. Perhaps more clearly than anyone else in the church of his day, Paul saw the full implications of his monotheism. God is the God of all. In Christ he reaches out for the salvation of all who will trust in him. There is no distinction (cf. Rom 3:29f.). There is no room for exclusivism in the gospel in the sense that the gospel is for Gentiles and Jews, slaves and free, and men and women. The gospel itself is, however, exclusive in its claims, “for there is no other name under heaven … by which we must be saved” (Acts 4:12). Salvation is available only in the name of Jesus.

The description of the gospel could hardly be more “Pauline” than as stated in 20:21. It is to repent, to turn from one’s former life to God and to “believe,” to place one’s trust in Jesus.

John B. Polhill, Acts, vol. 26, The New American Commentary (Nashville: Broadman & Holman Publishers, 1992), 425.