commend you to God, and to the word of His grace' (Acts 20:32).  We must

exercise a little care as we use the word 'commend' here.  While the word

comes from 'com' and 'mando' to commit or to entrust, modern usage has

weighted the scale and made the word almost a synonym of 'recommend', even as

the word 'commendable' means 'worthy of praise', and has no reference

whatever to the idea of being 'committed' as it once meant.  The modern

reader, when he comes to Acts 20:32, can scarcely be blamed if this aspect of

the word should be uppermost in his mind.  Paul was not 'recommending' the

believer, he was 'committing' him into the hand of God.

Paratithemi, the word employed by Paul in Acts 20:32 is composed of two

parts, para a preposition meaning 'beside' and tithemi 'to place'.  The word

is used in its primitive sense in such passages as 'A friend of mine in his

journey is come to me, and I have nothing to set before him' (Luke 11:6).

Here the word is used in its active sense.  In Luke 12:48, however,

paratithemi is used in its middle voice,

'To whom men have committed much, of him they will ask the more'.

We have in this verse an example of unfortunate translation, for earlier in

the same verse we meet the word 'commit' which, however, is used to translate

an entirely different Greek word, and is used in an entirely different sense.

The reader should mark these pitfalls and avoid them.  The Revised Version

has rectified this, by reading instead of 'did commit things worthy of

stripes', 'did things worthy of stripes', leaving the word 'commit' to

translate paratithemi as we have seen.  This brings us to Luke 23:46,

'Father, into Thy hands I commend My spirit'.

These most sacred words are a quotation from Psalm 31:5, where the

Authorized Version reads 'Into Thine hand I commit my spirit'.  The Psalmist

was not 'recommending' his spirit to God, but 'entrusting' it.  So, in Acts

20:32, Paul 'commits' rather than 'commends' the believer to the Lord.  He

himself was to be withdrawn; they should see his face no more.  The earnest,

selfless ministry of the three years in Asia would become a memory.  They

need not fear however; Paul after all was but an earthen vessel, a channel

through which the Word was ministered.  It was that Word which was effectual.

Paul, himself, could no more build up the Lord's people, than he could save

them.  God could, and God remained, whatever the world might do to His

servant.  Theoretically, we should all agree that God could build up His

people without instruments or agents, but practically we know that this is

not the case.  God Himself has asked the question 'How shall they hear

without a preacher?', and so we are prepared, in this passage of Acts 20 to

find that if God sets aside one agency, namely that of a personal apostle, He

substitutes another, namely that of His effectual Word.  The Ephesian saints

were not simply 'committed to God', but 'to God and the Word of His grace'.

It is God, using the Word of His grace that is able to build up the believer,

even as by using His Word He gave them newness of life at the beginning.  The

Word has many adjuncts and titles.  Sometimes the context or purpose demands

that this Word shall be called 'The Word of promise', at other times

it will be called 'the Word of truth'.  At one time it is called 'the Word of

life', and another, 'the Word of righteousness'.  Grace however is uppermost

in the apostle's mind in Acts 20.  The ministry toward which he was pressing

was the testifying of the 'gospel of the grace of God' (Acts 20:24).  The new

dispensation associated with his prison ministry is called by him 'the

dispensation of the grace of God' (Eph. 3:2).  The Diaglott Version sees in

the repeated article, an emphasis which it renders into English as follows: