Last Words

Scripture Text: Acts 20:17-38

Application Questions:

1. Reflect on the impact of last words in your own life. How did those words shape your perspective or influence your actions?

2. Read Paul’s words a few times slowly. In giving up his life to Christ, what did Paul gain in return and how does this give encouragement for faith in Christ?

3. Identify a specific area of your life where you recognize the need to submit to Christ's lordship. How might surrendering control in this area create space for God's grace to work?

Quotes for Reflection

Ernest Hemingway, A Farewell to Arms
“If people bring so much courage to this world the world has to kill them to break them, so of course it kills them. The world breaks every one and afterward many are strong at the broken places. But those that will not break it kills. It kills the very good and the very gentle and the very brave impartially.”

Willie James Jennings, Acts: A Theological Commentary
“Paul is following Jesus as a body at great risk of death. God knows intimately what it means to be a body at risk in this world, a body in imminent danger. Paul now knows this too. But imminent danger is the reality of so many people in the world. So what then is the difference? Paul is showing us that God has drawn that risk into the divine life so that the risk and dangers that may confront us in life will not define our life. Indeed Paul here articulates his life redefined by the pain and hope of Jesus. Luke is giving us the beginnings of a cruciform existence, where my life has been taken from me and given back to me, but not as my own but as God’s own life. The value of my life has been transferred to God, and I no longer hold it in my hands or by my efforts.”

John Calvin, Commentary on Acts
“Paul doth indeed speak of himself; yet, by his own example, he teacheth that all those go astray who have not God to be the governor of their course. Whereupon it followeth that his calling is unto every one of us a rule of good life.”

Ben Witherington III, Acts: A Socio-Rhetorical Commentary
“If greed is seen as a sign in Acts of one’s spiritual poverty, then Paul’s attitude here is seen as a sign of his largeness of soul.”