36When he had said these things, he knelt down and prayed with them all. 37And they began to weep aloud and embraced Paul, and repeatedly kissed him, 38grieving especially over the word which he had spoken, that they would not see his face again. And they were accompanying him to the ship.
In one of the most tender moments recorded in the NT, Paul and the Ephesian elders knelt, prayed, wept, embraced, kissed, and grieved. Such deep love and intimate fellowship makes us long to experience such relationships ourselves. These relational elements cannot be put on a checklist to accomplish as part of our Christian discipline. No, they are the result of something else. They reveal the deeper truth of genuine love forged over a common affection—their love for the Lord and His Word. That is what knit their hearts together.
What would they have said in their final words to each other? The speech Paul had given them certainly would have been longer than the specific words recorded in Acts 20; conversations like this also last longer. Maybe he added words like this, which he wrote to them later:
Therefore I ask you not to lose heart at my tribulations on your behalf, for they are your glory. For this reason I bow my knees before the Father, from whom every family in heaven and on earth derives its name, that He would grant you, according to the riches of His glory, to be strengthened with power through His Spirit in the inner man, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith; and that you, being rooted and grounded in love, may be able to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ which surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled up to all the fullness of God. (Eph. 3:13–19)
Their actions revealed their hearts: they fell to their knees in prayer, for their relationship was centered on the Lord. They wept out of deep emotional attachment to Paul. The moment drew them all together in a physical embrace. While in our Western culture today, men don’t usually kiss other men as a show of affection, it was not unusual in the ancient Middle East. The record shows this as a supreme expression of affection between a spiritual father and his spiritual children, as fellow workers for the Lord. They had come to maturity, and like a father who has trained his children to be adults, now he must leave them to stand on their own before God and the word of His grace. The bittersweet farewell left them grieving, for they would never see Paul again on this side of heaven.
Lord, may I live a life of love for others, that our fellowship would run deep.
0 Comments