Acts 20:28

Acts 20:28. Take heed therefore unto yourselves, and to all the flock over which the Holy Ghost hath made you overseers. ‘So be watchful,' Paul went on to say. ‘My part is done. For the future the grave responsibility of guiding this precious flock will be yours, elders of the Church of Ephesus yours the care of providing that it be kept from error; and first I press home to you to take heed to your own lives, to the example you set, to the influence you exert.' The Greek word rendered here ‘overseers' (ε ̓ πισκο ́ πους) is usually rendered ‘bishops,' as, for instance, the same word in the singular in 1 Peter 2:25, ‘Shepherd and Bishop of your souls.' The Holy Ghost as in Acts 13:2, when the same Holy Spirit directed the prophets and teachers of Antioch to choose Barnabas and Saul for the mission work in Gentile countries had probably guided Paul in the first instance in his selection of these pastors. In this reference to the work of the Holy Ghost also the inward call is referred to, that secret impulse which first drew the man to the holy work and office of an ordained minister in the Church.

To feed the church of God, which he hath purchased with his own blood. In this most important doctrinal statement a grave variation in the reading in the original Greek of the most ancient authorities exists. For ‘the Church of God,' some MSS. of great weight read ‘the Church of the Lord.' This would water down the immense importance of the doctrinal assertion here. But later research has now decidedly inclined the balance in favour of the reading of the received text, ‘the Church of God.'

The words of Dr. Scrivener, the most distinguished living English critic, on this point are most weighty. ‘The reading of the received text,' he says, ‘though different from that of the majority of copies, is pretty sure to be correct. It is upheld by the Sinaitic and Vatican MSS., Codices א and B, by all the known MSS. and editions of the Vulgate (except the Complutensian). Patristic testimony also slightly inclines to the same reading, the “Church of God.” Foremost among these come the words of Ignatius (A.D. 107), who speaks in his Epistle to the Ephesians, chap, 1, of the “blood of God.”

The same Ignatius (Epistle to Romans, 6) also uses the expression, ‘the Passion of my God.' In Clement of Alexandria, too, we have the very phrase, ‘Blood of God.' Tertullian (Ad Uxorem, Acts 2:3) also uses these same words.

We therefore unhesitatingly adopt the words of our English Authorised Version as the correct translation of the original Greek words, and possess in these words a distinct expression of the belief of the Apostolic Church in the absolute Divinity of the Son and of the nature of His work as Redeemer; in other words, Paul authoritatively taught here that, ‘As for the Church of God, God purchased it with His own blood.'