Acts 20:32

Acts 20:32. And now, brethren, I commend you to God, and to the word of his grace. In conclusion, Paul commends these brethren of his who are entrusted with the carrying on of his great work, who are charged with the solemn duty of keeping burning in Ephesus the torch of Divine truth to the mighty and faithful protection of God. He places, so to speak, these elders of his dear Ephesian Church under the solemn guardianship of the Almighty wings. He commends them not only to God, but to the Word of His grace. Most commentators understand by the ‘Word of His grace' not the personal Word, the Logos, but the doctrine of God, and suppose that these words are parenthetically introduced, thus: ‘I commend you to God' (and the word of His grace, i.e. the doctrine contained in His word), ‘to God who is able,' etc.; but such an interpretation seems in a high degree unsatisfactory and strained. It is surely better to adopt the obvious meaning, thus: ‘I commend you to God and to the Word of His grace,' the Word (Logos) the Second Person of the blessed Trinity.

Though the expression ‘Logos or Word' as used by St. John is not found in any other passage of the ‘Acts' or in the Gospel of St. Luke, it would not on this ground be right to distort this passage from its obvious meaning. The expression was known, no doubt, to St. Luke, though perhaps not in common use among Christians until St. John adopted it in his Gospel.

Which is able to build you up. ‘We cannot pass over the word “build” without noting the occurrence of the same thought and word in St. Paul's Epistle to the same Church of Ephesus' (Acts 2:20-21; Acts 4:12; Acts 4:16; Acts 4:29). ‘The figure was a natural one anywhere' (comp. 1 Corinthians 3:10), ‘but it would gain additional vividness from the stately architecture of Ephesus' (Plumptre).

And to give you an inheritance among all them which are sanctified. The inheritance is glorious for two reasons; it consists in ‘communion with God,' and also in a ‘blessed communion with all God's saints,' who have washed their robes in the blood of the Lamb. The same striking and beautiful thought almost in these very words occurs in the Ephesian Epistle, ‘that ye may know what' (are) ‘the riches of the glory of His inheritance in the saints' (Ephesians 1:18; see, too, Ephesians 1:14; Ephesians 5:5).

It is the thought of the vast crowd of the redeemed, that ‘multitude whom no man can number' of all peoples and nations and tongues, that broadly extended communion of saints, which constitutes one great feature in the glory of the inheritance, and which increases unspeakably the blessedness of the world to come.