Paul insisted that the elders must keep watch over their own spiritual condition. But they were also elders, so Paul told them to properly shepherd the flock “of which the Holy Spirit has made you overseers” (20:28). Paul was not speaking of a particular office, but rather of the elders’ function as “shepherds of the church of God, which he bought with his own blood” (20:28).
The last part of the phrase—“bought with his own blood”—is awkwardly translated by the NIV. The New Testament doesn’t speak of God shedding his own blood. An alternative reading would have the phrase read “the blood of his Own One,” with “Own” referring to Jesus.
David Williams writes, “The nature of their [the elders’] task is drawn out by a pastoral metaphor. The church is the flock (verse 28), a familiar figure for the people of God in both the Old Testament and the New; the elders are the shepherds (verse 28); and the danger threatening the flock is savage wolves, which will not spare them” (Acts, 355).
The “flock” is a familiar Old Testament metaphor for God’s people. Jesus capitalized on it, applying it to his disciples. The “shepherds” are the watchmen who keep a vigil over the flock. The “wolves” were the other element of Paul’s pastoral analogy. The wolves were the ones who threatened the herd, the church. As Paul looked toward the future, he painted a somewhat dismal prospect for the Ephesian church. He told the elders: “I know that after I leave, savage wolves will come in among you and will not spare the flock. Even from your own number men will arise and distort the truth in order to draw away disciples after them” (20:29-30).
In fact, 2 Timothy 1:5 referred to a wholesale revolt of the churches throughout the entire province of Asia. The apostasy in the Asian churches must have begun when Luke wrote Acts. No doubt his reference to Paul’s prophecy about a future insurrection was meant to comfort his readers who knew about it. The message was: the problems in the church should not surprise us, for these are the things that happen among human beings, and Paul even warned us about “wolves” before they tore apart the flock.
“Wolves” is a much-used metaphor for false teachers and apostates in the Bible. Jesus described false prophets as wolves in sheep’s clothing (Matthew 7:15). He told his disciples they would be like sheep among wolves (Luke 10:3). Now, Paul was telling the elders that he had warned them for three years—the entire time he was with them—about the danger of apostasy (20:31). But he would no longer be able to guide them, and they were on their own to deal with any future problems as best as they could.
