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An Intertextuality Pair — one connection between two passages, shown as linked verse cards: the Later text and the Earlier text it quotes, alludes to or echoes. The Significance essay explains why the link matters and where it points in Christ.

Reference Type— how explicit the link is: Quotation, Allusion, or Echo
Connection Method(s)— how it carries meaning: e.g. Typology, Promise-Fulfillment, Analogy, Longitudinal Theme
Found via— where the connection was identified, e.g. the Treasury of Scripture Knowledge or an Anchor-Text Network

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Intertextuality Pair

Acts 20:26 → Ezekiel 3:18-21

Allusion

Later text

Acts 20:26BSB

Therefore I testify to you this day that I am innocent of the blood of all men.

Earlier text

Ezekiel 3:18-21BSB

If I say to the wicked man, ‘You will surely die,’ but you do not warn him or speak out to warn him from his wicked way to save his life, that wicked man will die in his iniquity, and I will hold you responsible for his blood. But if you warn a wicked man and he does not turn from his wickedness and his wicked way, he will die in his iniquity, but you will have saved yourself. Now if a righteous man turns from his righteousness and commits iniquity, and I put a stumbling block before him, he will die. If you did not warn him, he will die in his sin, and the righteous acts he did will not be remembered. And I will hold you responsible for his blood. But if you warn the righteous man not to sin, and he does not sin, he will indeed live because he heeded your warning, and you will have saved yourself.”

Significance

Paul tells the Ephesian elders, "I am innocent of the blood of all men. For I did not shrink back from declaring to you the whole will of God" (Acts 20:26-27), invoking Ezekiel's watchman charge. God had told Ezekiel that if he failed to warn the wicked, "I will hold you responsible for his blood," but if he warned and was unheeded, he would have delivered his own life (Ezekiel 3:18-21). Paul, having faithfully declared the whole will of God, stands cleared as a faithful watchman — his conscience clean not because he sought comfort but because he withheld nothing. The charge falls on every gospel minister, and it points to Christ, the faithful Witness (Revelation 1:5), whose blood, unlike the watchman's, was shed not to clear himself but to cleanse the very hearers whose blood might have been on his hands.

Found via: Treasury of Scripture Knowledge
Reference Type: Allusion
Connection Method(s): Analogy