Sunday, March 9, 2025 AM

Christian Arrivals and Departures in Acts 20

Let's go to the Lord together in prayer. Heavenly Father, we thank you for this day that you have made. Thank you for the singing of the birds this morning, filling your trees. Thank you for the sky and the way you paint it, the weather and how you master it, our needs, how you provide for them.

Thank you for leading us to trust you, always showing yourself to be faithful. We ask you today that as we look at your word and think about what it is you have to say, that you would encourage us, conform us to the image of your Son, Jesus Christ, and may his hope ever be warm in our hearts by your Spirit.

We are a needy bunch, but you already know that. We thank you for your long-suffering and your kindness and your grace towards us. And we pray all these things in the name of Jesus Christ, your Son, the one with whom you are well-pleased.

Amen. Well, I invite you to open your Bibles in turn with me to the book of Acts, Acts chapter 20. We're going to read verses 1 through 16 again. This week, rather than looking at the names of the places to which Paul and company traveled, we're going to focus on the people he traveled with, those that he left, those that he met, those that went with him, and how it is that they all got along.

So Acts chapter 20 in verses 1 through 16, continuing with this theme of arrivals and departures. When we think about the journeys of Paul, very often as we work through his coming and his going, missed in the midst of that is the fact that he's leaving, generally, someone's house and going to someone else's house, traveling from home to home, traveling from one household to the next household.

I think sometimes it's easy to miss that, especially in this missionary journey where, with the exception of Troas, no new churches were planted. He's simply going back to the churches that had already begun, ministering to the saints that had already gathered there, and the ongoing church.

So when he shows up, he shows up to the household of a saint, and when he leaves, he departs from the household of a saint. And as he comes and as he departs, all is done in embrace. He is embraced when he arrives, he is embraced when he leaves, and I think we should pay attention to that.

We should pay attention to the blessing of Christian embrace that we are reminded of here in this passage. I invite you, if you're able, to stand with me as we read God's Word, Acts 20, beginning in verse 1.

This is the word of the Lord. After the uproar had ceased, Paul called the disciples to himself, embraced them, and departed to go to Macedonia. Now, when he had gone over that region and encouraged them with many words, he came to Greece and stayed three months.

And when the Jews plotted against him as he was about to sail to Syria, he decided to return to Macedonia. And Sopater of Berea accompanied him to Asia, also Aristarchus and Secundus of the Thessalonians, and Gaius of Derbe, and Timothy, and Tychicus, and Trophimus of Asia.

These men, going ahead, waited for us at Troas. But we sailed away from Philippi after the days of unleavened bread, and in five days joined them at Troas, where we stayed seven days. Now, on the first day of the week when the disciples came together to break bread, Paul, ready to depart the next day, spoke to them and continued his message until midnight.

There were many lamps in the upper room where they were gathered together, and in a window sat a certain young man named Eutychus who was sinking into a deep sleep. He was overcome by sleep, and as Paul continued speaking, he fell down from the third story and was taken up dead.

But Paul went down, fell on him, and embracing him, said, Do not trouble yourselves, for his life is in him. Now when he had come up, he had broken bread and eaten, and talked a long while, even till daybreak he departed.

And they brought the young man in alive, and they were not a little comforted. Then we went ahead to the ship and sailed to Asos, there intending to take Paul on board, for so he had given orders, intending himself to go on foot.

And when he met us at Asos, we took him on board and came to Mytilene. We sailed from there, and the next day came opposite Chios. The following day we arrived at Samos and stayed at Tragillium. The next day we came to Miletus, for Paul had decided to sail past Ephesus so that he would not have to spend time in Asia, for he was hurrying to be at Jerusalem, if possible, on the day of Pentecost.

This is the word of the Lord. Thanks be to God. You may be seated. Preparing for a big trip takes a lot of planning and labor. At least in our family it does. Maybe it's the same with you. Some families are more courageous, bigger risk-takers than we are.

We tend to plan everything out, have our cars serviced and repaired. We even practice pack to see if it's all going to fit. We secure a house sitter. We make sure the pets in the home are going to be taken care of, security issues.

We have a travel budget. We do food prep. We even get maps, like the old-fashioned paper maps. We have those just in case. We even have a preview schedule of the trip and what it's going to look like.

We have a briefing before we leave. That's a lot of foresight and forethought and extra effort, but why? Why to go to all the effort of packing up your family and leaving the comforts of your home and going someplace else?

As I think about all the preparations that we can make in such a journey, it really pales in comparison to the costliness and the courage we see in the life of the Apostle Paul and those who are with him as they're going on these missionary journeys, for example, the one we're reading about here in chapter 20, verses 1 through 16.

But I think I see a comparable desire here. One of the main reasons why we would go to such effort in preparing for a trip is thinking about those we want to see, thinking about those we want to see face-to-face, those with whom we want to speak in fellowship, those whom we want to embrace.

It changes the tone of the preparations. It makes all of that effort truly worthwhile. As we think about life, often life is a series of arrivals and departures, and so that's not unique to Christians.

But what is unique to Christians are the people that we embrace and why. And in all the arrivals and departures that make up the pattern of a Christian life, I just want to say my favorite arrival and departure is every Sunday and every time we meet together as a church.

I am aware many times in a week, and I think about you, I think about my brothers and sisters, and I think about the kinds of preparations that you make, the way that you organize your life, the kind of sacrifices that you make, the way that you have to gather up your family from the comforts of your home, having made provision and plans to gather together as the saints to embrace one another.

I find that that not only increases my love for you, but it increases my love for Christ. As we think about our fellowship in Christ, this is truly, He is the one who really compels us in our arrivals and departures to embrace one another, to love one another.

There are many other reasons that some might give, and that often we may be tempted ourselves to give. Reasons to avoid Christian embrace, to cut out Christian encouragement, to go without. Sometimes we can grant ourselves permissions so that we don't have to gather or to welcome or to exhort.

And that may not seem like a very pressing issue at the moment, having all of us gathered here, aren't we? And so at the risk of preaching to the choir, let us be reminded of the good that God intends for us.

Why is it that He wants us to gather? Why is that not an antiquated notion, but still a present desire of our good shepherd Jesus Christ? And I think that what helps us more than anything to lay aside selfish priorities and take up the interests of others as more important than ourselves, is to have that mind of Christ.

The Incarnation and the Basis of Christian Fellowship

To have the mind of Christ, to reflect on who He is and to reflect out His love when we consider the Incarnation. When we consider the Incarnation. Before we look at all these names, I just want to read to you 1 John 4, 7 -11.

And I think that provides a little context for reading a bunch of names of Christians all in a row and how they're all together and why they might be journeying together and what is the basis of their fellowship.

So 1 John 4, 7 -11 says, Beloved, let us love one another. For love is of God, and everyone who loves is born of God and knows God. He who does not love does not know God, for God is love. In this, the love of God was manifested toward us that God has sent His only begotten Son into the world that we might live through Him.

In this is love, not that we loved God, but that He loved us and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins. Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. That's the real basis for why we gather, why we go to that effort, why we embrace one another.

I want to think about the people that we read about here in Acts 20, the people that Christians embrace, and then also the pattern of Christian embracing we see in the Scriptures and what that actually looks like in practice.

But first of all, the people. Now, there are the people here in these 16 verses and in the context. There's the people who travel with Paul. There are the people who gather with his team when they arrive in each city, and there are those that embrace them and pray for them in their departure.

And I think these people should hold our attention for a little bit this morning. The names of these folks, especially the ones who are traveling with Paul, their names are particularly Gentile, meaning they're from the nations.

They're not Jewish names. These are names from various regions of the Roman Empire. Sopater is of Berea, Aristarchus, and Secundus are of Thessalonica, which means that those three men were from the Roman province of Macedonia, just north of the Roman province of Achaia, which we call Greece.

Gaius of Derbe came from the region of Galatia. Remember the letter to the Galatians. But also from Galatia was a young man named Timothy who was from the city of Lystra. Tychicus and Trophimus, we read, are from Asia.

And hidden in this list is also Luke, and Luke is a Gentile as well. And you hear him clear his throat a little bit and let you know that he's there. In verses 5 and 6, you'll see this. Verse 5 says, These men going ahead waited for us at Troas, but we sailed away from Philippi.

Did you see that?

That's Luke letting you know, I have now joined the party. He doesn't really put himself forward, doesn't talk a lot about himself, but he does say, here's why I caught up with this Christian expedition and I went along.

So, thinking about these men, we see that they're all together. They're on a journey with Paul. They're not just catching a ride. They have a goal. They have a job. They have an outlook. Remember that Paul wintered in Corinth.

And not only did he write the letter to the church in Rome during that time in Corinth in the household of Gaius, but he also organized a relief effort from the churches in Achaia and Macedonia, gathering together funds to take to the church in Judea, church in Jerusalem, who were in great need.

And so this group of men, they are traveling together to carry this love gift from these churches to another church who is in need. And they're working together in this endeavor. Sopater, Secundus, and Gaius are from different cities.

They're from different regions. They grew up speaking different dialects. And yet, here they all are working together to get this gift to those who are in need. Aristarchus and Trophimus are from different regions altogether, but they both courageously suffer for the faith.

They risk their lives for the gospel. Aristarchus, you may remember, survived the mob in Ephesus and then joined Paul, as we read, as a fellow prisoner to Rome. Trophimus was falsely accused in Jerusalem of defiling the temple, and later on they had to leave him behind in Miletus on the journey to Rome because he was so deathly ill.

Tychicus and Timothy are from different regions, but both prove their usefulness to Paul's ministry. Tychicus delivered the letter to Ephesus. He delivered the letter to Colossae, and he helped strengthen the churches there and was later instrumental in serving the churches on the island of Crete.

Timothy, of course, we hear a lot about in the New Testament, a son of Paul in the faith, dearly beloved by Paul, recipient of two letters, and was very helpful to Paul in pastoring the churches and strengthening the churches that Paul had started.

Hidden in this list also, of course, are Luke and Titus, brothers greatly used by the Lord to bless Paul and advance the early church in critical ways. But when it comes down to it, what do we see? We have a great many people working together on this Christian expedition for the sake of the church, for the sake of serving Christ.

But apparently, they're getting along. Apparently, they're working together. Even though they have these different backgrounds and different experiences, they are loving one another. And this proves the ground of fruitful encouragement in Philippi and Troas and elsewhere.

Given the context of this journey, we can also remember other people. Paul, you may remember, wanted to embrace Titus when he left Ephesus for Macedonia, but he couldn't find Titus in Troas, and he was greatly burdened and discouraged.

But God sent Titus to him in Philippi, and he embraced him there and was greatly comforted. Paul was embraced by Gaius in Corinth and was hosted there for the winter. Paul embraced the new brethren in the church in Troas.

Paul embraced Eutychus after he fell out of the third-story window and died. And Paul waited in Miletus, according to verse 16, because in verse 17, he wanted the elders of Ephesus to travel 50 miles south to come to him that they may spend time together and be exhorted that they may embrace.

What do we see? We see that there is a growing pattern in just our passage. This is not even thinking about the other passages in the New Testament that make this such a priority, but we see that saints coming together to welcome one another, to rejoice in one another's lives, that this is a pattern, and we need to think about that, examine that, and apply that.

The word here in chapter 20, verse 1, where Paul called the disciples of Ephesus to himself and embraced them, same word that we have in verse 10 where Paul embraced Eutychus after he fell out of the third-story window and died.

This term, embrace, is used 60 times in the New Testament, and most often it comes in the form of a verb of greeting. It's just greet. Greet so-and-so in their household. Greet so-and-so. The end of the book of Romans is greet this person, greet that person, greet all those people over there and all these people over here.

Greet you and you and you. Greet, greet, greet, greet. Did anybody notice that when you walked in the front door today there was someone to greet you? That's not just a nice thing to do. It's a very biblical thing to do that the saints would greet one another.

It's a word that means to draw someone to yourself. It's the kind of handshake that draws you in. It's the idea of welcome. It's the idea of receiving someone joyfully. On departure, it's to wish someone well.

It's to say, I'll be praying for you. I desire good things for you. And the most basic sense of the term, it is to enfold somebody in your arms. And this word is used both in arrivals and departures. So the word embrace is something that is used throughout the New Testament to describe how Christians arrive and depart.

In the arrivals and departures of Christians, they embrace, they greet, they warmly receive one another and warmly desire good things for each other. To that precious term, we may add many other expressions in these 16 verses.

Perhaps you noticed some of them that the saints were encouraged, that they stayed, that they accompanied, that some went ahead but waited, others joined, some came together to break bread, others gathered together, they talked a long while, even till daybreak, they were comforted.

All these terms are in the same idea of embrace, that there's a togetherness, there's a warm receptivity, there's a clear desire to spend time together, a real, genuine fellowship. What motivates these folks to do that?

We just noticed how disparate their origins are. They're from different countries, different nations under the same empire, but they're from different nations. Why would they want to gather together in the same place?

What compels these people from different nations to embrace one another? Why would men from various lingual and cultural backgrounds spend inordinate amounts of time together talking to each other? Now, this is not a pattern just from the days of Paul.

It's observed amongst all the saints. It's observed even among us. The pattern harkens from long ago, and it speaks of the goodness of Christ as a good shepherd that brings many different sheep into one fold.

I'm greatly encouraged by Acts 2, verses 41 through 47, but just here, verse 46, how the early church... This is the description of the church from the very beginning. This is the description of the church, the saints filled with the Spirit.

How did they relate to each other? Verse 46, so continuing daily with one accord in the temple and breaking bread from house to house, they were getting together in the big group, and they were getting together in smaller groups.

You hear that? And they ate their food with gladness and simplicity of heart, praising God and having favor with all the people, and the Lord added to the church daily those who were being saved. Those two verses alone are of great encouragement.

Just meditating on those verses, looking at how Jesus Christ builds His church, is of great encouragement. I am reminded that God who has begun His good work in His saints is going to continue it until the last day.

And what is that last day but one ginormous, victorious embrace? We knew we were going to win. We knew all along we were going to win. Guess what?

We've won!

And a massive celebration and embrace. But to answer the questions, what motivates these folks from far countries to gather in the same place? What compels these people from different nations to embrace one another?

Why would men from various lingual and cultural backgrounds spend all this time together talking with one another? To answer those kinds of questions, we really can't make sense of it by any other means than the wisdom that is treasured up in Christ.

It's the only way that it makes sense. Our love for one another as the saints is by the Spirit of Christ. Jesus Christ who builds us up into His own fullness of His own stature. He is the image of the invisible God.

He's building His church, and He has given us His Spirit, and the Spirit knits us together and matures us in Christ. The Spirit bears witness with our spirit that we are indeed the children of God by whom we know God our Father.

God the Father is our Father. We call Him our Father because of the love of God poured out in us. Our love for one another is defined by God's love for us in Christ, and the character of Christ is manifest in us as the fruit of the Spirit.

So our salvation is a triune work. God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit in unity saving us, sanctifying us, redeeming us to the full. And the love that we have for one another is of the grace of God defined by who Christ is.

1 John 3 .16 says,. By this we know love because He laid down His life for us, and we also ought to lay down our lives for the brethren. So when it comes to the way we embrace one another, the way that we love one another, we don't look to some cultural norm.

We don't think about our past experiences and what has worked well for us and what hasn't worked well. We don't look at perhaps the pattern of behavior of somebody to our right or to our left and say, well, that looks like it's more effective than this.

So it's not a matter of personal preference or experience or pragmatism. It's a matter of looking to our Savior Jesus Christ. The incarnation of the Person of the Son into two natures as God and man fulfills God's repeated gracious condescensions in times past.

Remember when God shows up and walks with Adam and Eve in the cool of the garden. When God shows up and speaks with Abraham as a friend does. When God visits with Moses and with Joshua. When God shows up time and again throughout the Old Testament, the fulfillment of all of those gracious appearances is the incarnation of Jesus Christ and establishes the basis of our pattern of continually embracing one another.

So back to 1 John 4. Back to 1 John 4, verse 9, and this is the love of God was manifested toward us that God has sent His only begotten Son into the world that we might live through Him. In this is love, not that we love God, but that He loved us and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins.

Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. I want you to think about what that means. Not only is there a pattern in the New Testament of Christians embracing one another, of welcoming one another, and we can expand on that, and we will.

But that pattern does not simply originate with a good idea in the church. That pattern originates with God Himself. God is love. Now you know what it means to love one another. God loves you, therefore love others.

I want you to think about how that pattern works. Our love for one another, that is to be expressed in practical, even tactile embrace, is not a sentiment of human reciprocation. If you're nice to me, then I will be nice to you up to that very same measure.

Now we're even. If you'll smile at me, I'll return the smile. If you extend your hand, then I will extend mine. I'm going to wait and see how you act, and then I will find it safe to respond. Actually, rather than waiting around to be loved by someone else, what is the pattern that we're given in the grace of God?

What did it say? In this is love, not that we loved God, but that He loved us. That's the pattern. He loved us without us ever loving Him first. Without us knowing Him first. Without any capacity in and of ourselves to properly love Him in the first place.

God loved us. So that establishes the pattern. We're not to wait around to be loved by somebody else before we embrace them. We are to love one another without waiting. Without waiting. No waiting involved.

Without waiting for somebody else to initiate. Without waiting for somebody else to notice. Without waiting for somebody else to respond. To wait and withhold our love and our embrace and our welcome and our joyous reception of somebody else until we see just how welcome and receiving they are of me.

But the pattern is that we love others.

Without waiting.

Meaning we run every red light of self-centered fear. We blow right through that intersection. Sorry. No, I know the stop sign is there. You might want to wait a little bit. It might get a little bumpy.

You might end up causing someone to feel awkward. You might get hurt. And all the stop signs are there. But you're like, no, I'm already loved by God. I'm blowing right through this intersection. Thank you very much.

I'm not going to wait.

That's the pattern that we have set for us in the Scriptures. Another side to that is Romans 15 v. 7. Therefore, receive one another just as Christ also received us to the glory of God. This is in the context of Romans 14 and 15 where we are reminded that there is not to be the tyranny of uniformity, but the liberty of unity.

Where there can be a great deal of differences in our convictions, and yet we still receive one another in Christ. There can be a variety of the saints together in unity because we have liberty in Christ.

Therefore, receive one another just as Christ also received us to the glory of God. And that term receive is one we looked at a few weeks ago in Acts 18. The way that Aquila and Priscilla received Apollos and welcomed him into their home and fed him and loved him and instructed him.

At every point, you see, in our fellowship, at every point in our love for one another, we're remembering something first. We're remembering Christ received me, therefore I receive you. God loved me in Christ, therefore I love you.

You see what we're remembering first? When we think about one another and how to embrace one another, we have to regard one another first and foremost as saints. By all the names that the Lord gives to us.

I look at you as one for whom Christ died. I look at you as one for whom Christ rose again from the dead. You're someone whom Christ intercedes for on a daily and nightly basis at the right hand of God.

Intercession never ceasing. You're someone whom Christ has given a special name. That's how I'm to think of you. Christ, the King, will raise this saint from the dead. Now how do I like him? Now how do I love him?

Jesus Christ died on the cross for this brother. Now how do I like him? Now how do I love him? Jesus Christ is going to return from the right hand of the Father, and He's going to raise this brother from the dead and receive him and welcome him in joy.

Now how do I love him? You see, this points us to a very basic issue. A very basic issue. As much as we can in the providence of God, we ought to be gathering together. We ought to be loving one another in all the varied ways that that looks like.

Because this is what our good Lord wants us to do. This is what our Shepherd desires for us to do. This is the way He's arranged matters for His local church. One of the greatest hindrances to Christian fellowship in our culture today is autonomy.

Which is the word which means self-law. Meaning, I make my own rules. I make my own rules. Meaning, I'll do what I want, when I want, how I want it, thank you very much. Because that's what's best for me.

So that's the whole idea of autonomy. Making rules for my own rules to follow. But do you know that there's something that happens before autonomy? Autonomy just doesn't show up out of the blue. Autonomy says, I'm going to prioritize myself over others.

I'm going to follow my own desires, my own whims, rather than prioritize the concerns of Christ and the needs of other Christians. That's what autonomy says. But where did that come from? It came from something else.

Autonomy.

Self-naming. Self-naming. And you'll hear this if you listen to folks say, here's why I do things this way. They'll tell you why, because they are a such and such or a this and that. I'm of this class, or I am this kind of case.

Therefore, I live this way. I'm of this type, or I'm of this race. Therefore. I lack this skill, or I'm at this stage. So, I have this hurt, and I'm of an age too young or too old. Before they say, here are the rules I've made for me, they justify the self-made rules with the self-given name.

Dearly beloved,.

In this interest of embracing one another, the whole time I've been talking about it, it's been on the basis of what the Lord names us. So embracing one another is not going to work if we live by how we name ourselves.

It only works in loving one another if we live by the names that our Lord gives to us. For example, in 2 Corinthians 5, verses 13 -21, Paul says if we are beside ourselves, it is for God. For if we are of sound mind, it is for you.

And if you can't tell the difference between when you're beside yourself or of a sound mind,.

It's okay.

It's all covered. It's still for the Lord and it's still for one another. Verse 14. Listen to this. For the love of Christ compels us because we judge thus, that if one died for all, then all died. And He died for all, that those who live should live no longer for themselves, but for Him who died for them and rose again.

See, the love of Christ compels us, and I'm looking at you, and you're looking at me, and we're saying of each other, Christ died for this saint and rose again. And this frees us from the taskmaster of the self when we belong to Christ.

Everything changes when we are no longer in the first Adam, but when we're in the last Adam. And we are compelled by love, and then our outlook is completely different. Let our taxonomy be informed of by heaven.

Yes, in the text we read that Sopater was from Berea and Aristarchus is from the Thessalonians and Gaius was from Derbe and so on and so forth. But they weren't saying, well, I'm a Derbian Christian.

Right?

They weren't saying, well, I'm a Galatian Christian. Thank you. They weren't labeling themselves. Luke's letting us know from all the different places they were because that glorifies God. That glorifies the Lord.

Look at what a great Savior He is that all these different people from all these different places and backgrounds are loving one another and working together for the glory of Christ. But they're not naming themselves.

They're being named by Christ. Verse 16, 2 Corinthians 5,. Therefore, from now on, we regard no one according to the flesh. Even though we have known Christ according to the flesh, yet now we know Him thus no longer.

Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. New creation. All things have passed away. Behold, all things have become new. You've been raised from the dead. You've been born again. You're a new creation.

What does that have to do with Christian embrace? What does it have to do with our fellowship? It's the basis of our acceptance of one another, of our reconciliation with one another. The very next thing we read is that God has committed unto us the ministry of reconciliation.

Christ has reconciled us to God. Therefore, we seek to reconcile sinners to God. Therefore, we work together, reconciled to one another in the Lord. Now let's think of some practical ways in which we live out this embrace towards one another.

I think we've sufficiently answered the question about how and why all of these men are working together in the way that they are. Even to the degree of people from Greece collecting money for Christians in Jerusalem.

See how they love one another. But what about the practice of Christian embrace? Well, simply, first of all, it's just the need to gather face to face. It may seem obvious, but it's important to say there's no opportunity to practice Christian embrace from isolation.

The one another's, the many one another's of the New Testament do not occur between me, myself, and I. Sometimes there is absence. Sometimes there is isolation. But there's no opportunity to live out the love of Christ when we isolate ourselves.

If you are sick and cannot gather, James says, call for the elders. If God is pleased to heal you, wonderful. If not, at least the elders gathered with you in your home. Look, you didn't fail to gather.

This reminds us that if somebody is absent, somebody is sick, reach out to them, visit them, the ones who are in need. Seek those who are missing. Seek the gathering, the fellowship, and the unity of the body.

There are many, many fears that keep us apart. You remember COVID? What was it that kept us apart? Fear of man. Fear of death. And as long as those reign, we don't gather. But there is another fear, the fear of the Lord, that leads us to submit to Him and to one another and to gather.

So gather face to face is just simply the first practical step to Christian embrace. The second one is to reach out. Reach out. The term that is used in the text about embracing is one that involves and assumes that you're making some kind of contact.

Tactile. And this is not anything strange. Jesus instructed His disciples to follow His example and wash one another's feet. Now that instruction, as we understand it to be an example, still calls for personal, physical, practical service to each other.

And later on in John 13, the same chapter, we read that John, the apostle, laid his head upon the breast of Christ when reclining at the Last Supper. Christ invited Thomas to touch his nail-scarred hands and spear-scarred side.

The elders of Ephesus will read in Acts 20 a little bit later on, they fall upon Paul's neck with weeping and kisses and hugs. It's their final farewell. If you knew that a dear brother in Christ, the last time you're ever going to see them this side of heaven, how would you interact with him?

And repeatedly, Christians are told to greet one another with a holy kiss, a saintly embrace. And I got it wrong the other day. I said it was twice in the New Testament. It's four times. Four times in the New Testament.

Romans 16, 16. 1 Corinthians 16, 20. 2 Corinthians 13, 12. 1 Thessalonians 5, 26. So, physical contact is as fundamental to Christian love as eating together and spending time together in one another's homes.