"For I have not shunned to declare to you the whole counsel of God.
For I have not shunned to declare unto you all the counsel of God. By which is meant, not the purposes and decrees of God, latent in his own breast, these the apostle could not declare;
but his revealed will in the Gospel, concerning the salvation of men by Jesus Christ, even the whole of the Gospel, every truth and doctrine of it, necessary to salvation, and to the peace, joy, and comfort of the saints; together with all the ordinances of it, and everything that had any tendency to promote the glory of God, and the good of souls; see Luk_7:30 none of these things did the apostle withhold from the knowledge of the church at Ephesus, but freely imparted and communicated them to them;
Gill.
More simply-
For I have not shunned to declare unto you all the counsel of God] The Rev. Ver. as in Act_20:20, “For I shrank not from declaring unto you the whole, &c.” The “counsel of God”
means the whole plan of salvation; what God offers and what he asks of men. This includes the “repentance and faith” as well as the “grace and mercy.”
Cambridge.
ου γαρ υπεστειλαμην του μη αναγγειλαι υμιν
πασαν την βουλην του θεου
shunned to declare to [them] the whole counsel of God.
i. The whole counsel of God: Paul thought of himself as a watchman, there to bring forth the whole counsel of God’s word
. This doesn’t guarantee the people will be saved, but it will guarantee Paul is without guilt before God.
He has done his job!
ii. Where are those who today declare the whole counsel of God? Paul warned that in the last days, people would not endure sound doctrine, but look for teachers who would tell them what they want to hear - teachers who will scratch their itching ears (2Ti_4:3).
iii. Many preachers today simply use a Bible text as a launching pad, and then go on to say what they want - what the people want to hear. Others throw in Bible quotations to illustrate their points, or to illustrate their stories! But who will simply let the Bible speak for itself and let it declare its own power?
Taking Paul’s testimony at full strength, we must say that those preachers who deliberately fail to declare . . . the whole counsel of God are guilt of the blood of all men. The preacher who preaches what his audience wants to hear, and not the whole counsel of God, hurts both his audience and himself!
iv. We also must demand that we are being taught the whole counsel of God;
not just interesting topics, not just what we want to hear, not just the things that will “grab” people, but what God says to all of our lives.
v. “That man does not preach the whole counsel of God who does not let God’s Word speak for itself in its own pure, simple language . . . He will not shirk the truth. He will dare to look at it straight in the face himself and then he will bring it up into the pulpit, and there say to it, ‘O Word, speak for thyself, and be thou heard alone. Suffer me not, O Lord, to pervert or misinterpret thine own heaven-sent truth.’”
(Spurgeon)
Johann.