Instructions to Elders

Acts 20:28-30

Pay careful attention to yourselves and to all the flock, in which the Holy Spirit has made you overseers, to care for the church of God, which he obtained with his own blood. I know that after my departure fierce wolves will come in among you, not sparing the flock; and from among your own selves will arise men speaking twisted things, to draw away the disciples after them.

Acts 20:32

And now I commend you to God and to the word of his grace, which is able to build you up and to give you the inheritance among all those who are sanctified.

N. T. Wright, Acts for Everyone (Part Two)

More worrying still, some of the sheep, and even some of the shepherds, may turn out to be wolves in disguise (verse 30). And the attack will then take the form, not of direct contradiction or a clash of powers, but of distorting the truth. The greatest heresies do not come about by straightforward denial; most the church will see that for what it is. They happen when an element which may even be important, but isn’t central, looms so large that people can’t help talking about it, fixating on it, debating different views of it as though this were the only thing that mattered (137-138).

Aaron Orendorff

Paul’s remedy to the coming “wolves” is two-fold.

First, the elders are to “pay careful attention to [themselves] and the flock.” In other words, their vocation from the Lord via Paul is to know the sheep with which they have been entrusted, to know them intimately and personally, to care for them, understand them, watch over them and (in some cases) scrutinize them, closely and perhaps at times in ways quite uncomfortable to both the shepherd and the sheep. And yet all of this sheep-watching is to run parallel to the elders own self-watch: “[N]o good using your care for the flock as displacement activity to prevent you needing to think about your own discipline, obedience and maturity.”

Second, Paul commends the elders (and, by extension, the sheep) in general to God and in particular “to the word of his grace.” He describes this word, which would probably be better translated as “message,” as “able to build you up and give you the inheritance among all those who are sanctified.” In other words, running alongside watchfulness must be a positive presentation of what God’s word—the truth of the gospel—really says. This doesn’t mean that heresy is never to be confronted head-on, Paul’s own letters rule out such an outlandish assumption. But it does mean, as the saying goes, the best defense is a good offense.