For I have not shunned to declare unto you all the counsel of God.
All Commentaries on Acts 20:27 Go To Acts 20
John Chrysostom
AD 407
Why then, this only is to be a teacher, to declare, to preach, to instruct, shrink from nothing, to exhort night and day: but if, while one is doing all this, nothing comes of it, you know what remains. Then you have another justification: I am pure from the blood of all men. Think not that these words are spoken to us only: for indeed this speech is addressed to you also, that you should attend to the things spoken, that you should not start away from the hearing. What can I do? Lo! each day I rend myself with crying out, Depart from the theatres: and many laugh at us: Desist from swearing, from covetousness: numberless are our exhortations, and there is none to hear us. But I do not discourse during night? Fain would I do this also in the night time, and at your tables, if it were possible that one could be divided into ten thousand pieces, so as to be present with you and discourse. But if once in the week we call to you, and you shrink back, and some of you do not even come here, and you that do come, depart having received no profit—what shall we do? Many I know even sneer at us, that we are forever discoursing about the same things: so wearisome are we become to you by very satiety. But for this not we are to blame, but the hearers may thank themselves. For he indeed who is making good progress, rejoices to hear the same things always; it seems to be his praises that he hears spoken: but he who does not wish to get on, seems even to be annoyed, and though he hear the same thing but twice, it seems to him that he is hearing it often.
I am pure, he says, from the blood of all men.
