‘And from Miletus he sent to Ephesus, and called to him the elders of the church.'
Arriving in Miletus Paul then sent messengers to Ephesus to request the elders of the church there to meet him at Miletus, which would involve them in a journey of about thirty miles, so that he could give them his final words. This would mean a stop of a number of days in Miletus, which may well have been require for unloading and loading cargo. The finality of the statement, ‘You will see my face no more', may only signify that he was aware that once he had arrived in Rome, which was his intended destination after Jerusalem, his further intention was to go on to Spain and what lay beyond (Romans 15:24; Romans 15:28). It may simply suggest that he now saw his ministry in this part of the world as completed. Others could carry it through from now on. It need not be an absolute statement. We may often say, ‘you won't be seeing me again' when we mean in the foreseeable future. Thus he may simply have been indicating that he intended to go to regions far away and that therefore they must not be expecting to see him again within the foreseeable future. But because he was aware of what they might face he wanted to warn them before he went of the troubles that might lie in store.
The speech is typically Pauline with Pauline phrases and ideas in it. It bears his stamp. We may briefly analyse it as follows:
a Paul describes to them the personal pattern and full depths of his ministry to the Ephesians (Acts 20:18-21).
b He describes what has caused him to want to speak to them and the fate that awaits him (Acts 20:22-24).
c He confirms that he has faithfully proclaimed the Kingly Rule of God to them and has taught them ‘the whole counsel of God' so that they are fully knowledgeable about His ways and saving purposes (Acts 20:25-27).
d He warns them to watch over the church faithfully because of false teachers who will come among them and rise up among them, so that they must constantly be on the watch in order to combat them (Acts 20:28-31).
c He commends them to God, under Whose Kingly Rule they are, and to the word of His grace (the whole counsel of God) which can build them up and give them their inheritance among those who are made holy by faith in Him, thus fulfilling His saving purposes (Acts 20:32).
b He stresses that he has never personally taken advantage of them in any way while ministering to them (Acts 20:33-34).
a He finally describes what he has shown them in order to make them suitable for their ministry to the Ephesians (Acts 20:35)
Thus in ‘a' and its parallel he is describing his and their ministerial responsibility to the Ephesians past and present. In ‘b' he describes what he is to suffer, demonstrating his own willing self-sacrifice, and in the parallel that the same lack of self-seeking could be seen in the way he had behaved towards them. In ‘c' he lays out the foundation teaching that he had given them concerning salvation, and in the parallel commends them to it so that they will indeed be truly saved. It will be noted that the central feature of his speech in ‘d' is his warning concerning the troubles that will come on the church, followed by the assurance of His protection for those who trusted Him.
This last makes it significant that according to the introductory analysis above this speech is in parallel with the description of the terrible storms that Paul would later face, from which few would have escaped with their lives had it not been for the undeserved goodness of God and their readiness to trust Him. Thus the setting of the two together in this way was partly in order to give Luke's readers a picture of the storms and perils that lay ahead for the Ephesian church, and to indicate that their survival also would depend on God's unmerited goodness, in the same way as it would for Paul and all the people in the dreadful and protracted storm. But the corollary was that if they obeyed God not a man would perish (see Acts 27:30-44), just as none would perish in that horrendous storm if they obeyed God. In view of this it is an indication of the accuracy with which Luke gives us the content of Paul's words that he introduces no seagoing metaphors into the speech. It must have been tempting to do so. (Although the verb used in Acts 20:20; Acts 20:27 for ‘shunning, shrinking' can mean ‘reefing sail', but Paul would be hearing much seagoing language at the time and it is not directly related to the warnings as it would have been if Luke had introduced it).