What Does Acts 20:32 Mean?

(32) **And now, brethren, I commend you . . .**—The Greek verb and its derivatives are characteristic of St. Paul’s phraseology. Teachers are to “commit” the truth they have received to others (2Timothy 2:2), and the truth so committed is the *depositum fidei* which they thus hold, as it were, in trust (2Timothy 1:14). **The word of his grace, which is able to build you up . . .**—It can hardly be said that the “word” here is used, as it is by St. John, for the person of Christ as the *Logos.* (See Notes on John 1:14; John 1:16; 1John 1:1.) There is, however, a quasi-personal character ascribed to it, “able to . . . give an inheritance,” which suggests the thought of something more than the written or spoken word. The true explanation is probably to be found in the thought of the “engrafted (or better, *the implanted*) word” of James 1:21, the “word of God, quick and powerful” of Hebrews 4:12; and in so far as this is identical with the “Light that lighteth every man” of John 1:9, we may find in these passages a preparation for the more fully developed teaching of St. John as to the *Logos.* We cannot pass over the word “build” without noting the recurrence of the same thought and word in Ephesians 2:20-21; Ephesians 4:12; Ephesians 4:16; Ephesians 4:29; Colossians 2:7. The figure was a natural one anywhere (comp. 1Corinthians 3:10), but it would gain additional vividness from the stately architecture of Ephesus, perhaps also from the presence of one among St. Paul’s companions who may have been himself an architect. (See Note on Acts 20:4.) **An inheritance among all them which are sanctified.**—Here also we find a thought specially characteristic of the teaching of the Epistle to the Ephesians. So we find the “earnest of our inheritance” (Ephesians 1:14), the “inheritance in, or among, the saints” (Ephesians 1:18), the “inheritance in the kingdom” (Ephesians 5:5). The participle is in the perfect tense: *those that have been sanctified, *or *consecrated.* That term was, of course, equivalent to and co-extensive with “the saints,” as applied to the whole body of believers. (See Notes on Acts 9:2; Romans 1:7; 1Corinthians 1:2; 2Corinthians 1:1.)