The final chapters of Acts are not a story of defeat or retreat, they are a story of the unstoppable advance of a gospel that no human power can contain. Paul is arrested in Jerusalem, testifies before the Sanhedrin, before Felix, before Festus, before King Agrippa, survives a shipwreck, is bitten by a viper with no ill effect, and finally arrives in Rome to preach the kingdom of God with all confidence. The chains that bind him cannot bind the Word of God. Acts 20–28 is the account of a man so consumed by the gospel that he preaches it from prison, on a ship in a storm, on a deserted island, and in a rented house in the capital of the Roman Empire. But first, in Acts 20, he gives the Ephesian elders a farewell address that contains one of the most powerful Oneness proofs in all of Scripture.
"Therefore take heed to yourselves and to all the flock, among which the Holy Spirit has made you overseers, to shepherd the church of God which He purchased with His own blood."
"And now why are you waiting? Arise and be baptized, and wash away your sins, calling on the name of the Lord."
"Therefore, King Agrippa, I was not disobedient to the heavenly vision, but declared first to those in Damascus and in Jerusalem, and throughout all the region of Judea, and then to the Gentiles, that they should repent, turn to God, and do works befitting repentance."
"Preaching the kingdom of God and teaching the things which concern the Lord Jesus Christ with all confidence, no one forbidding him."
Paul summoned the elders of the Ephesian church to meet him at Miletus, knowing he would not see them again. The speech he gives them is one of the most personal and theologically rich passages in all of Acts. He reminds them of his ministry among them, three years of serving the Lord with all humility, with tears, through trials that came from Jewish opposition; of testifying to both Jews and Greeks repentance toward God and faith toward our Lord Jesus Christ; of declaring to them the whole counsel of God. "I have not shunned to declare to you the whole counsel of God" (v.27). Paul did not pick and choose which parts of the gospel were palatable. He declared it all, including the hard parts, the costly parts, the parts that invited opposition.
He warns them about what is coming: after his departure, savage wolves would enter in among them, not sparing the flock. Even from among themselves, men would rise up speaking perverse things, to draw away the disciples after themselves. This is a sober prophetic warning about false teaching within the church, not from outside attackers, but from people who would arise from within the congregation and begin distorting the truth for their own following. Paul commends them to God and to the word of His grace (v.32), which is able to build them up and give them an inheritance among all those who are sanctified. He labored, he says, as an example, supporting himself by his own hands so that no one could accuse him of greed. He closes with the words of Jesus not recorded in the Gospels: "It is more blessed to give than to receive."
In the midst of this farewell address comes Acts 20:28, a verse that every Apostolic believer should know by heart and every Trinitarian theologian must reckon with. Paul tells the Ephesian elders to shepherd "the church of God which He purchased with His own blood." Read this carefully: God purchased the church. With His own blood. God's own blood. Every reader understands whose blood was shed at Calvary: Jesus Christ's blood. But Paul says it is GOD's own blood. This is possible only if Jesus is God, if the God who purchased the church and the Jesus who shed His blood at Calvary are the same being, not two separate persons. The Father has no blood. A Spirit has no blood. Only a man can bleed, and Jesus is God manifested in the flesh, which is why Paul can say without contradiction that God shed His own blood. This is Oneness theology embedded in the very DNA of this farewell address.
Prophets and disciples all the way from Tyre to Caesarea urged Paul not to go to Jerusalem, sensing through the Spirit that chains and tribulation awaited him there. Paul's answer is one of the most moving statements of consecration in the New Testament: "What do you mean by weeping and breaking my heart? For I am ready not only to be bound, but also to die at Jerusalem for the name of the Lord Jesus" (21:13). He knew what was coming and he went anyway, not recklessly, but surrendered. The name of Jesus was worth dying for. He had not survived shipwrecks and beatings and stonings to turn around at the final mile.
In Jerusalem, Paul was recognized in the temple by Jews from Asia who stirred up the crowd against him with false accusations. The mob attempted to kill him, and the Roman commander Claudius Lysias intervened with soldiers. Paul requested to speak to the crowd, and the commander gave permission. Paul stood on the stairs and addressed the crowd in Hebrew, and they gave him all the more silence (21:40). His speech in Acts 22 is one of three accounts of his Damascus road conversion in the book of Acts (the others are Acts 9 and Acts 26), and it contains the most important detail about his salvation: Ananias's command in Acts 22:16. "And now why are you waiting? Arise and be baptized, and wash away your sins, calling on the name of the Lord." Paul was recounting his own conversion to a hostile crowd in Jerusalem, and in that account, the most critical instruction he remembered was: be baptized, wash away your sins, calling on the name of the Lord. This is the testimony of the greatest apostle in history about his own salvation experience. There is no version of Paul's conversion story in which baptism is absent or optional.
When Paul mentioned his commission to the Gentiles, the crowd erupted. The commander ordered him to be examined by scourging, but Paul revealed his Roman citizenship, which immediately changed the commander's approach. The next day, Paul was brought before the chief priests and Sanhedrin. When he perceived that part of the council were Sadducees and part Pharisees, he cried out that he was a Pharisee being judged for the hope of the resurrection, and immediately the council divided against itself, the Pharisees defending Paul and the Sadducees opposing him. A plot to ambush and kill Paul was uncovered, and the commander sent him under heavy guard to Caesarea to Governor Felix.
Paul's two-year imprisonment in Caesarea produced three of the most extraordinary defense speeches in Acts, each one addressed to a different authority, each one a proclamation of the gospel. Before Felix, Paul declared his faith in all things written in the Law and the Prophets, his hope in the resurrection of both the just and the unjust, and his constant exercise to have a conscience without offense toward God and men (24:14–16). Felix, who had some accurate knowledge of the Way, deferred judgment, kept Paul in custody, and sent for him frequently to talk with him, apparently hoping for a bribe. But Acts 24:25 records that when Paul reasoned about righteousness, self-control, and the judgment to come, Felix was afraid. The gospel makes even powerful men tremble when it is preached in the Spirit.
When Festus became governor, Paul appealed to Caesar, his right as a Roman citizen. But first, Festus consulted with King Agrippa and Bernice who came to Caesarea, and they requested to hear Paul themselves. Paul's speech before Agrippa in Acts 26 is perhaps his most polished and complete self-defense in the entire book. He recounts his background, his persecution of the church, his Damascus road encounter, the voice that said "I am Jesus whom you are persecuting," and the commission he received to go to the Gentiles "to open their eyes, in order to turn them from darkness to light, and from the power of Satan to God, that they may receive forgiveness of sins and an inheritance among those who are sanctified by faith in Me" (26:18). His conclusion: "I was not disobedient to the heavenly vision" (26:19). After the speech, Agrippa said to Paul: "You almost persuade me to become a Christian" (26:28). Almost. The most tragic word in the book of Acts. Paul responded that he wished Agrippa were not almost but altogether a Christian. Agrippa and Festus agreed: "This man is doing nothing deserving of death or chains" (26:31). Paul could have been set free, if he had not appealed to Caesar.
The voyage to Rome is one of the most vivid narrative accounts in all of Acts, a sea journey through violent storms, an angelic visitation, a shipwreck, and survival on the island of Malta. Paul warned the crew early on that the voyage would end in disaster if they proceeded at that season, but the centurion believed the captain over Paul. The storm that came was so violent that all hope of their being saved was finally abandoned (27:20). It was then that Paul stood up and declared what the angel of God had told him: "Do not be afraid, Paul; you must be brought before Caesar; and indeed God has granted you all those who sail with you" (27:24). Two hundred and seventy-six people on that ship were spared because of the presence of one Spirit-filled apostle.
On Malta, a viper fastened onto Paul's hand when he put wood on a fire. The inhabitants expected him to swell up and fall dead. When nothing happened, they changed their minds and said he was a god. Paul healed the father of Publius, the leading man of the island, of a fever and dysentery. Others on the island who had diseases came and were healed. The gospel does not lose its power in a shipwreck or on a deserted island. The Spirit who filled Paul in Damascus is the same Spirit who heals on Malta.
Paul finally arrived in Rome and was allowed to dwell by himself with the soldier who guarded him. He called together the leaders of the Jews, testified about the kingdom of God from morning until evening, persuading them concerning Jesus from both the Law of Moses and the Prophets. Some were persuaded; others did not believe. And the book of Acts ends with one of the most significant final sentences in Scripture: Paul was "preaching the kingdom of God and teaching the things which concern the Lord Jesus Christ with all confidence, no one forbidding him" (28:31). The book of Acts has no formal ending, no conclusion, no summary, no "and then the church age ended." It ends mid-sentence, mid-ministry, mid-advance. Because the story is not finished. The blueprint is still being enacted. The promise is still being given. And the church God built with His own blood is still being filled with His own Spirit, generation after generation, to the end of the age.
Acts 20:28 is one of the most powerful Oneness verses in the entire Bible, and it appears in a pastoral farewell address, not in a doctrinal treatise, which makes it all the more striking. Paul tells the Ephesian elders to shepherd "the church of God which He purchased with His own blood." GOD purchased the church. With HIS OWN BLOOD. Everyone knows whose blood was shed at Calvary: Jesus Christ's. Paul is saying that the blood Jesus shed is the blood of GOD. This is only coherent if Jesus is God, not a second person separate from the Father, but God manifested in the flesh, the fullness of the Godhead bodily (Colossians 2:9). If Jesus were merely the second person of a three-person Trinity distinct from the Father, then the Father has no blood to shed, and Acts 20:28 would be impossible or at best incoherent. But if Jesus IS God, the one God who took on humanity in the person of Jesus Christ, then Acts 20:28 makes perfect, glorious sense: the very blood of God was shed to purchase the church. And the church that was purchased with that blood was built on the foundation of Acts 2:38. This is what the whole book of Acts has been about, building a church purchased at the highest price possible, established by the pattern God never revoked, and filled with the Spirit of the very God who died to bring it into existence. Acts 22:16, Paul's own account of his salvation, confirms that baptism in the name of the Lord was how he washed away his sins. The man who wrote half of the New Testament was not saved by a prayer. He was baptized and filled with the Spirit. The apostolic testimony is unanimous.
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