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Context No. 403 of 4322 · Acts

Context · Reflection

Acts 19:8-14: in context

8He entered into the synagogue and spoke boldly for a period of three months, reasoning and persuading about the things concerning God’s Kingdom. 9But when some were hardened and disobedient, speaking evil of the Way before the multitude, he departed from them and separated the disciples, reasoning daily in the school of Tyrannus. 10This continued for two years, so that all those who lived in Asia heard the word of the Lord Jesus, both Jews and Greeks. 11God worked special miracles by the hands of Paul, 12so that even handkerchiefs or aprons were carried away from his body to the sick, and the diseases departed from them, and the evil spirits went out. 13But some of the itinerant Jews, exorcists, took on themselves to invoke over those who had the evil spirits the name of the Lord Jesus, saying, “We adjure you by Jesus whom Paul preaches.” 14There were seven sons of one Sceva, a Jewish chief priest, who did this.

Paul is at the height of his ministry in Ephesus. He teaches boldly, and when the synagogue turns against him he simply moves to a lecture hall, the school of Tyrannus, and reasons there daily for two years, until, the text says, all of Asia had heard the word. And God works remarkable things through him, so remarkable that people carry away cloths that had touched Paul's body to the sick, and the diseases and the evil spirits leave. It is a genuine outpouring of power through a man in real relationship with Jesus.

And that success attracts imitators, which is where the passage gets pointed. A group of traveling Jewish exorcists notice the results Paul is getting and decide to try the technique. They begin invoking the name of Jesus over people with evil spirits, and listen to exactly how they say it: I adjure you by Jesus whom Paul preaches. Whom Paul preaches. They are reaching for Jesus secondhand, borrowing his name through Paul, using it as a power-word they picked up from watching someone else, with no relationship to Jesus of their own. Seven sons of a man named Sceva are doing this. They saw the power and wanted to reproduce it as a formula, skipping the one thing that made it work in Paul, which was that Paul actually knew the one whose name he was speaking. The Jesus they invoked was not theirs; he was Paul's, borrowed.

The passage sets up their humiliating failure, but the warning lands before that. It is possible to try to use God as a technique, to reach for his name as a formula for results, borrowing the faith of the people around me, without ever actually knowing him myself. Have I ever done that, invoking a secondhand God, the one my parents believed in or my friends preach, as a kind of tool for the outcomes I want, rather than actually knowing him firsthand as someone whose name is really mine to speak?

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