Acts 20:28 says that Jesus is God

When you read the twentieth chapter of the book of Acts you read of Paul’s travels, through Macedonia, Greece and Troas (vv. 1-6), where he restored the life of a young man, Eutychus, who fell from a window during a late night sermon (vv. 7-12). Further travels (vv. 13-17) led him to Miletus where he summoned the Elders from the church in Ephesus to come to him. Verses 18 through 35 comprise Paul’s words to them.

Verse 28 is of special importance for this article as it contains a reference to Jesus which identifies him as “God.” The following is the rendering of the English Standard Version,

Pay careful attention to yourselves and to all the flock, in which the Holy Spirit has made you overseers, to care for the church of God (ἐκκλησίαν τοῦ θεοῦ), which he obtained with his own blood (διὰ τοῦ αἵματος τοῦ ἰδίου). (Acts 20:28)

There are a few considerations which need to be addressed. Some manuscripts read “the church of the Lord” rather than “the church of God.” And it is possible to translate “with his own blood” as “with the blood of his Own” (taking τοῦ ἰδίου, his own, in the absolute sense).

The church of God or of the Lord?

The difference between the English “God” and “Lord” is between a 3 letter word and a 4 letter word. Each has an “o” and a “d” but to move from one to the other means dropping a “G” and adding a “L” and a “r” (or vice-versa). In Greek God (in the genitive, the case used in the verse above) is θεοῦ, and Lord is κυρίου, this is clearly a larger difference than the difference between their English counterparts. So why the mix up? Well, a few possibilities surface. First, there is a phenomena in NT Greek called nomina sacra, where scribes would contract sacred names. This would be indicated by a horizontal line above the abbreviation.

For the nominative case:
God = Θεός = ΘΣ
Lord = Κύριος = ΚΣ

For Acts 20:28, the genitive would have been used. This would have made the difference between “God” and “Lord” a matter of a single letter switched out for another.

For the genitive case:
God = θεοῦ = ΘΥ
Lord = κυρίου = ΚΥ

Bruce Metzger’s textual commentary records the following insights:

The expression ἐκκλησία κυρίου occurs seven times in the Septuagint but nowhere in the New Testament. On the other hand, ἐκκλησία τοῦ θεοῦ appears with moderate frequency (eleven times) in the Epistles traditionally ascribed to Paul, but nowhere else in the New Testament. (The phrase αἱ ἐκκλησίαι πᾶσαι τοῦ Χριστοῦ occurs once in Ro. 16.16.) It is possible, therefore, that a scribe, finding θεοῦ in his exemplar, was influenced by Old Testament passages and altered it to κυρίου. On the other hand, it is also possible that a scribe, influenced by Pauline usage, changed κυρίου of his exemplar to θεοῦ.
In support of the originality of κυρίου is the argument… that copyists were likely to substitute the more common phrase ἡ ἐκκλησίαν τοῦ θεοῦ for the more rare phrase ἡ ἐκκλησίαν τοῦ κυρίου.
On the other hand, it is undeniable that θεοῦ is the more difficult reading. The following clause speaks of the church “which he obtained διὰ τοῦ αἵματος τοῦ ἰδίου.” If the is taken in its usual sense (“with his own blood”), a copyist might well raise the question, Does God have blood?, and thus be led to change θεοῦ to κυρίου. If, however, κυρίου were the original reading, there is nothing unusual in the phrase to catch the mind of the scribe and throw it off its balance. This and other considerations led the Committee (as well as a variety of other scholars) to regard θεοῦ as the original reading.^[1]

To sum up this quotation: Paul spoke and Luke faithfully recorded his words under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit. Metzger contends (above) that “the church of God (θεοῦ)” is a more difficult reading than “the church of the Lord (κυρίου).” Since it is more likely for a well-meaning scribe to change from a more difficult (original) phrase to a less-difficult phrase, we have an explanation of why κυρίου is a variant reading. I contend, with Metzger, that “the church of God (θεοῦ)” is the original reading.

With his own blood?

The choice between “with his own blood” and “with the blood of his Own” needs to be examined. The phrase διὰ τοῦ αἵματος τοῦ ἰδίου breaks down like this: διὰ with a genitive can be translated “through,” “by means of” or “with” (in the case of Acts 20:28 in the ESV, KJV, NKJV, NASB, NIV). τοῦ αἵματος (blood) is genitive and linked to τοῦ ἰδίου (one’s own) also genitive.

An interesting suggestion was made that υἱοῦ was dropped out from the text at the end of the verse (which would render it “with the blood of his own son”). Some translations take the liberty to insert the word “son” (see RSV, NRSV) with no textual support. This is clearly a last ditch effort to abandon an original variant in favor of a poorly attested one (not to mention, one with a lower christology).

Metzger notes that there is a “slight probability that τοῦ ἰδίου is used…as the equivalent of τοῦ ἰδίου υἱοῦ”.^[2] This “slight probability” goes against an absence of examples of such usage in the New Testament and Early Christian literature. τοῦ ἰδίου (“his own”) is linked to τοῦ αἵματος (blood) in case and number. The best reading of this passage is, therefore, what we find in the ESV, “the church of God, which he obtained with his own blood.”

It should go without saying that the only person of the Godhead which had any blood to obtain a church with was Jesus Christ, God incarnate. God the Father is a spirit (John 4:24) which we know does not have a physical body. Likewise, the Holy Spirit does not dwell in a fleshy body with blood coursing through his veins. The only reasonable way to interpret this comment from Paul is that Jesus, who shed his blood to redeem the elect, is God.

Paul calls Jesus “God” elsewhere

The New Testament witness to Jesus’ deity is uniform. When you consider Paul’s comment in Acts 20:28, made to the Ephesian elders it is prudent to ask if Paul anywhere else taught that Jesus was God. Surely if this was the only instance of him teaching the deity of Jesus we would have good reason to be concerned. But in order to put such concerns to rest, we might turn to Paul’s words in Titus 2:13 where he mentions “the glory of our great God and Savior Jesus Christ,” or to Romans 9:5 where he blesses “the Christ who is God over all,” or to Colossians 2:9 “For in him [Christ] the whole fullness of deity dwells bodily.” These direct statements are supplemented by numerous others which all point to the undeniable fact that when Paul called Jesus God he was not mistaken. Rather, his proclamation of Jesus’ deity is well attested in the New Testament documents and in the faith of the 1st generation church.