Acts 20:17-38
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. (v. 24) Paul’s life goals were fairly simple and straightforward, to testify to the Gospel! And if he continues to do that, he appears to be willing to end this life on earth whenever the Lord calls him home. Simple. Straightforward.
In all things I have shown you that by working hard in this way we must help the weak and remember the words of the Lord Jesus, how He Himself said, “It is more blessed to give than to receive.” (v. 35) These words from Jesus are spoken regularly at our church services prior to the Offering. I wondered and my Study Bible confirmed, these words ascribed to Jesus by Paul do not appear anywhere in the four Gospels. However, I have no doubt that Jesus spoke these words. They’re just not recorded – as are hundreds of thousands of words that He spoke.
The other item in verse 35 that struck me was …by working hard…we must help the weak… There seems to be a lot of resistance in our society to helping the weak, both here and abroad. I remember asking my classroom students, “Why are some people poor?” I got the natural variety of answers that you might expect, but I also got one unexpected: “Some people are just sorry.” By “sorry” this student meant lazy, welfare dependent. And I will grant you that some people are “sorry”, but I daresay that 90% of the men on welfare would prefer a good job to receiving welfare checks (sorry, I cannot speak for the women). And by “good jobs”, I mean good wages, no matter how hard the work. But I typically get nowhere if I try to make that argument with folks who are “anti-welfare”. I wonder what would happen if I appealed to Scripture instead of economic theory. I wonder…
Slava Bohu!