28 Keep watch over yourselves and all the flock of which the Holy Spirit has made you overseers. Be shepherds of the church of God,[a] which he bought with his own blood.[b] 29 I know that after I leave, savage wolves will come in among you and will not spare the flock. 30 Even from your own number men will arise and distort the truth in order to draw away disciples after them. 31 So be on your guard! Remember that for three years I never stopped warning each of you night and day with tears.
32 “Now I commit you to God and to the word of his grace, which can build you up and give you an inheritance among all those who are sanctified. 33 I have not coveted anyone’s silver or gold or clothing. 34 You yourselves know that these hands of mine have supplied my own needs and the needs of my companions. 35 In everything I did, I showed you that by this kind of hard work we must help the weak, remembering the words the Lord Jesus himself said: ‘It is more blessed to give than to receive.’ ”
36 When Paul had finished speaking, he knelt down with all of them and prayed. 37 They all wept as they embraced him and kissed him. 38 What grieved them most was his statement that they would never see his face again. Then they accompanied him to the ship.
Dig Deeper
When I was in high school I was privileged enough to be able to drive my own car. Technically it belonged to my parents but they pretty much let it be my car. I drove it and had total access to it but I had to pay for gas and otherwise take care of it. My car was a 1976 dark green Dodge Aspen and if you know anything about cars you know that this means that this beast was about the size of the Queen Mary and was made of solid steel. If you hit something with that car you would want to get out and see what destruction you had wrought on the other item but there was little danger of doing anything to mess that car up. In short, this thing was what we called a “beater.” You couldn’t really do any serious damage to it but it was such an old ugly car that it wouldn’t have mattered anyway. Because of that I didn’t mind letting anyone drive it. I wasn’t that concerned. Anyone could drive that car without worrying much about having to be super careful or damaging it because it just wasn’t worth much.
In contrast however, a few years ago a friend asked me to drive their very new and fairly expensive car for them for a weekend. To be honest I was quite nervous the entire weekend. When I drove, I was sure to drive extra carefully. I didn’t want to bring anything extra into the car for fear of spilling something and I took the care to even clean the bottoms of my shoes before swinging my feet into the vehicle itself. Throughout the weekend I went to great pains to make sure that I cared for that car because it was so valuable and meant so much to the owner. That couldn’t have been farther from the truth when it came to my old Aspen.
Behind these farewell words to the Ephesian elders lies something of that concept. Paul had put a great deal of effort, care, and tears into his ministry with them. He toiled and gave every ounce of energy and care he had because they were precious to him. He was careful in everything that he did and now he was urging the elders to take that same care and treat the congregation with the same love and tears that he had. But it was not because of how much they meant to him, although they meant a great deal. Paul understood how expensive and how valuable God’s flock was and knew that leaders should care for the flock very carefully because of how much it meant to God.
There is a great deal of shepherd imagery throughout the Old Testament where God is held up as the perfect shepherd (Psalm 23 for example), but he regularly calls the leaders of Israel to shepherd his flocks and tend for them well. In light of that call God often used his prophets to denounce judgment upon those leaders for not shepherding his people in a loving or selfless fashion. Standing most clearly behind the imagery and language that Paul uses here in his exhortation of the Ephesian elders was Ezekiel’s warning to Israel’s shepherds: “Woe to you shepherds of Israel who only take care of yourselves! Should not shepherds take care of the flock? You eat the curds, clothe yourselves with the wool and slaughter the choice animals, but you do not take care of the flock. You have not strengthened the weak or healed the sick or bound up the injured. You have not brought back the strays or searched for the lost. You have ruled them harshly and brutally” (Ezek. 34:2-4). Israel had failed to Shepherd God’s people and he didn’t take kindly to that, so as shepherds of God’s family in the new covenant, Paul warned these elders to guard the flock.
Their motivation for this watchful care was simple. The sheer value of the flock to God was inestimable. God had paid the highest price imaginable for his people; his very own blood, or more specifically, the blood of Jesus Christ. God had purchased his family at the steepest of prices and therefore expected those that he made overseers of the flock to handle with special care. The flock was no beater car but God’s prized possession and he wanted them shepherded with the same care and concern that he himself would love his people.
This was such a vital concern because Paul knew that savage wolves would come from within the flock and ravage it with selfish leadership and false teaching (Matt. 7:15-19; 2 Peter 2:1-22). Paul had given his blood, sweat and tears for three years, knowing that this was not just a possibility within the flock but a probability. No shepherd is above having wolves attack; no flock is safe. Sadly, it appears a possibility that at least some of the leaders standing there that day did not heed Paul’s words and may have even become wolves themselves. Just a few years later Paul would write Timothy, who was leading the church in Ephesus by then, on how to deal with the false teachers that had arisen. He goes on to instruct Timothy on how to choose elders and other leaders well, quite possibly because some of these very elders had abandoned the truth of the gospel and taken up teaching things that they did not even understand (1 Tim. 1:6-7). Not long after that, John wrote and praised the church for their dedication in testing false and true teachers and having stayed clean from false teaching, yet he did go on to rebuke them for having become unloving and passionate about their Christian faith (Rev. 2:1-6). By the close of the first century, however, the church leader Ignatius would write and affirm that Ephesus had indeed repented and had regained their first love and passion as well as still holding firm to the true gospel. It had taken some challenges, but they had learned Paul’s lessons well.
Paul knew the importance of holding to the word of God as the standard of obedience and the acid test for God’s people because it was the only thing that would give them the inheritance of being God’s family. Paul’s words here are not all that different from Peter when he urged that elders should “Be shepherds of God’s flock that is under your care, watching over them—not because you must, but because you are willing, as God wants you to be; not pursuing dishonest gain, but eager to serve; not lording it over those entrusted to you, but being examples to the flock. And when the Chief Shepherd appears, you will receive the crown of glory that will never fade away” (1 Pet. 5:2-4).
But Paul’s words were not empty. The call to be such careful shepherds had weight precisely because Paul could point to the way that he had carried himself among them as a shepherd. His life echoed Peter’s exhortation. Paul had shepherded them because he was willing and full of the love of God, never “pursuing dishonest gain” or leading for his own advantage as the shepherds of Ezekiel 34 had done.
Everything about Paul’s ministry exhibited love for others and he was confident in reminding them of that. He was confident in calling them to that way of life as their example. He had lived the life of Christ among them and could now, with a clean conscience, urge them to that same dedication in life. But Paul was no cock-eyed optimist. He understood that all of this was hard work. That is exactly why he felt the need to call them together one last time and urge them to keep their eye on the ball. Ministry and leadership must never become about the leaders being exalted, honored, or taken care. Shepherds are not in the business of shepherding so that the sheep can make the shepherd’s life easier. Shepherds are caretakers. The minute the focus of ministry is taken off of the sheep and put onto the shepherd is the minute it ceases to be godly ministry. But we must be on guard constantly. Poor shepherds don’t just come in the form of blatant false teachers and those that seek to become rich on the backs of members. Self-focus in ministry is usually far more subtle than that. It begins when we start to notice all the things we lay down and the many things we do to care for the sheep and we start to expect that the sheep start showing a little gratitude and appreciation for how difficult and demanding shepherding can be. The moment we start down that road as shepherds, Satan has gained a foothold of which he will not let go easily.
For that very reason, Paul reminded them of the words of Jesus himself that “It is more blessed to give than to receive.” This sentence doesn’t come from any of the gospels but must have been a well known oral memory or teaching of Jesus (or it possibly could have been something that Jesus said directly to Paul during their initial confrontation in Damascus). This principle should not be reduced to some pithy Christmas-time saying, though. Paul’s direct context was that of ministry. It is all about giving of our lives and not just receiving. Guarding the flock means that leaders stand ever-vigilant against the subtle temptress of getting just a little back in reward for their work.
As a true testament to Paul’s deep relationships with the elders in Ephesus was the tears that were shed after his words and their final prayer together. Paul had shed many tears with them and for them in ministry and now it was their turn to weep as they realized that they would not see him again. It was Paul’s deep and emotional relationship with them, in fact ,that allowed him to warn them so sternly and straightforwardly. Without the relationship his words would have seemed biting and bitter indeed but they embraced it as loving words of their brother because he had loved them so well. We must never forget, however, that the tears in a relationship don’t come easy. They must be worked for. Perhaps we will begin to see more shepherds in our churches today of the type that Paul called them to be when we start to see more tears.
Devotional Thought
How much effort do you put into your relationships within the body of Christ? Does it come even close to the level of tears? What would it look like for you to put that kind of effort into building deep relationships within the church family? What would be the rewards if you did put that type of effort in?
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