Bible Study series: Acts 6:8-15. Never surrender to your opposition when you are in the right and God is on your side.
Friendly greetings and a warm welcome to this Bible study! I write to learn. Let’s learn together and apply these truths to our lives.
I also translate to learn. The translations are mine, unless otherwise noted. If you would like to see many others, please click on this link:
At the link to the original post, next, I write more commentary and dig a little deeper into the Greek. I also offer a section titled Observations for Discipleship at the end. Check it out!
In this post, links are provided in the commentary section for further study.
Let’s begin.
Scripture: Acts 6:8-15
8 Stephen, full of grace and power, did great wonders and signs among the people. 9 But certain members of the synagogue of the freedmen (as it was called), comprising Cyrenians and Alexandrians and some from Cilicia and Asia, rose up and disputed with Stephen, 10 and they were unable to counter the spiritual wisdom, which he was speaking. 11 So then they suborned men who said, “We have heard him speaking blasphemous words against Moses and God!” 12 They stirred up the people and the elders and teachers of the law and attacked and dragged him away and led him into the council. 13 And they set up false witnesses who said, “This man does not stop speaking words against this holy place and the Law! 14 For we heard him say that this Jesus, the Nazarene, will destroy this place and change the customs which were handed down to us from Moses!” 15 Everyone sitting in the council, as they fixed their gazes on him, saw his face like a face of an angel. (Acts 6:8-15)
Comments:
Polhill effectively describes why Stephen’s story is so pivotal: “The narrative about Stephen constitutes a major turning point in Acts. It ends a series of three trials before the Sanhedrin. The first ended in a warning (4:21), the second in a flogging (5:40), and Stephen’s in his death. The Stephen episode is the culmination in the witness to the Jews of Jerusalem, which has been the major subject of Acts 2–5” (comments on 6:8-7:1).
8:
The fullness of the Spirit’s power went beyond the twelve apostles and to Stephen.
“grace”: It is the Greek noun charis (pronounced khah-rees) and has these meanings, depending on the context: graciousness, attractiveness; favor, gracious care, help or goodwill, practical application of goodwill; a gracious deed or gift, benefaction. In some contexts, it means “exceptional effects produced by divine grace,” in other words, empowerment to accomplish a task. In this case it means his ability to do wonders and great signs. God gave him the grace and power to accomplish them.
Let’s go deeper, by repeating part of what I wrote in the post Do I Really Know God? He Is Gracious. Mounce in his Expository Dictionary of Old and New Testament Words teaches us about the Hebrew and Greek words. The Hebrew noun ḥen (pronounced khen) “describes that which is favorable or gracious, especially the favorable disposition of one person to another” (p. 302). The Greek noun further means “the acceptance of and goodness toward those who cannot earn or do not deserve such gain” (p. 303). The verb in Hebrew is ḥanan (pronounced khah-nan) and means to be gracious, “to show mercy favor, be gracious” (ibid.).
Here is a quick definition. God’s grace means he gladly shows his unmerited goodness or love to those who have forfeited it and are by nature under a sentence of condemnation.
Good news! We do not have to suffer condemnation for our past sins because God hands us his grace.
Here, however, it means Stephen was graced to move in the powerful gifts of the Spirit.
“Signs”: In the plural it is mostly translated as “signs” or “miraculous signs.” A sign points towards the loving God who wants to heal and redeem broken humanity, both in soul and body. Signs are indicators of God breaking into his world, to help people and announce that he is here to save and rescue them and put things right. Here Luke adds the modifier megala (pronounced meh-gah-lah). Not only did he do signs and wonders, but he worked great wonders and signs. There must have been an extra thrust of the Spirit in his ministry.
“Wonders”: It is often translated as “wonders” and is always in the plural in the NT. Only once does it appear without “signs,” in Acts 2:19, where wonders will appear in the sky. Wonders inspire awe and worship of God through Christ who performs the wonders. The purpose is to patch up and restore broken humanity. They testify that God in his kingdom power is here to save and rescue people.
For the phrase, see Acts 2:22, 43; 4:30; 5:12; 6:8; 7:36; 8:13; 14:3.
For nearly all the references of those two words and a theology of them, please click on:
What Are Signs and Wonders and Miracles?
Rather than celebrating the healings and other miracles, these religious leaders and extra-devout are about to attack Stephen. They valued the temple and their religion over kingdom blessings.
9-10:
The freedmen “were Jews who had been manumitted as slaves by their owners or were the descendants of emancipated Jewish slaves” (Schnabel, comment on v. 9).
Why were the Hellenists and the other diaspora Jews in Jerusalem and why raise such opposition? (Diaspora Jews are those who lived outside of Israel and set up their own synagogues in various towns and cities.)
Schnabel has a great answer to the question:
Since diaspora Jews retiring in Jerusalem were undoubtedly devoted to the city and to its temple, it is plausible that the increasing number of diaspora Jews who came to faith in Jesus—the “Hellenists” mentioned in 6:1—provoked a strong reaction against the Christian leaders who were particularly active among the Greek-speaking Jewish community in Jerusalem. They would have felt that the ancestral faith that brought them back to the center of the Jewish commonwealth was betrayed by those who believed that Jesus is Israel’s Messiah and Savior. (comment on 6:9).
In other words, the diaspora Jews made it their mission to retire in Jerusalem, so they were extra-zealous to maintain the temple rituals and religion. They did not come just to see it threatened by a preacher (Stephen) of a new sect (the Way or Christianity).
Luke 21:15 says that Jesus will give the disciples the “mouth” (words) and wisdom, which their opponents will not be able to resist. Promise fulfilled here in Stephen’s case. When one is full of the Spirit and wisdom, it is impossible to counter or resist the testimony or preaching.
“counter”: can also be translated as “resist” or “withstand.”
Saul, who was soon to be named Paul, was in Jerusalem at this time. We can have no doubt that he was right there observing Stephen. Paul’s hometown was in Cilicia, and could it be that he attended the local synagogue with his fellow-Cilicians in Jerusalem? Was he one of those who opposed Stephen in these preliminary debates, but could not defeat him? I say yes. Saul was the one who gladly approved of the ones who rushed him and grabbed hold of him and dragged him to the High Court. Or he stood by and egged them on. They roughed him up. Later, after his hard-hitting speech, they will stone him.
11-12:
The synagogue attenders were unable to stop him, so they took the issue to the highest level: the Jewish high court / council, that is, the Sanhedrin.
The twelve were persecuted because they brought Jesus’s blood on the heads of the Sanhedrin, not because they preached against the Law of Moses or his customs or the temple. Stephen will preach against the whole system and their guilt in killing prophets and Jesus. Moses set up anti-blasphemy laws, which prescribes being cut off from the people (Num. 15:30). Some may have interpreted “cut off” as executed.
After saying that later rabbinic ruling narrowed the definition of blasphemy to profaning the ineffable name of God apart from the high priest uttering it on the day of atonement, he goes on to say that at the time of Jesus and Stephen just a few years later, blasphemy more broadly included speaking against the temple (7:56) (comment on v. 11).
But, as the narrative of our Lord’s appearance before the Sanhedrin indicates, blasphemy was interpreted in a wider sense
13-14:
“this man”: it is a put down, and they were probably pointing at him, a sign of contempt.
This accusation reflects the same ones leveled at Jesus (Matt. 26:61 // Mark 14:58; cf. John 2:19). Apparently, the accusers remembered the accusation just a few years earlier. It worked in part back then. Why not now?
Here’s Mark’s version:
57 Some, standing up, were bearing false witness against him, saying: 58 “We heard him saying, ‘I shall destroy this temple made with hands and in the course of three days I shall build another one that is not made with hands!’” (Mark 14:57-58)
Then John adds:
Jesus said to them, “Tear down this temple, and in three days I will raise it up!” 20 So the Jews said, “For forty-six years this temple was built, and you raise it up in three days?”
21 But he was speaking of the temple of his body. 22 So when he was raised from the dead, his disciples remembered that he said this, and they believed the Scripture and the statement which Jesus spoke. (John 2:19-22)
These little tidbits spread around three very different texts (Mark, John, and Acts) are called “undesigned coincidences.” They show that the stories (traditions) handed down by the original eyewitnesses are reliable and mutually confirming without a human-centered master design or colluding with each other—which would be okay even if they did compare their notes. But here this comparison between the three authors is less likely. So they accurately recorded these traditions in tiny tidbits.
15:
Saul / Paul saw Stephen’s face glow like the face of an angel. Did it make an impact on him? Surely it did (consider 2 Cor. 3).
“fixed their gazes”: it means “stare intently or intensely.” Luke is fond of it: Luke 4:20; 22:56; Acts 1:10; 3:4; 3:12; 6:15; 7:55; 10:4; 11:6; 13:9; 14:9; 23:1. Then Paul uses it twice: 2 Cor. 3:7, 13.
His face looking like the face of an angel is supposed to remind us of Moses’s glowing face (Ex. 34:29-35; see 2 Cor. 3:7-11). Jews of Stephen’s day believed that the law was revealed by angels (Acts 7:38; Gal. 3:19; Heb. 2:2). Stephen is about to steer people away from the Old Covenant handed down at Sinai, so God made his face appear like an angel’s. Something better than the law is happening. His angelic face is also a signal to the readers that he has an extra-surge of power and the Spirit flowing through him.
Renewalists believe that you too can have an extra-strong power surge when things are tough, especially when you are about to be martyred!
God inspired and endorsed what he was about to say in his long sermon (Acts 7). It is a speech that Renewalists would do well to heed and study.
Saul was right there observing this supernatural phenomenon. What did he think? Did this sight influence his writing in 2 Cor. 3:7-11, in which he said the glory of the old law was fading? We’ll never know for sure, but it seems probable, when he looked at the martyrdom retrospectively, while writing that passage.
GrowApp for Acts 6:8-15
1.. Stephen seemed very calm during this persecution. How calm are you during your trials and troubles?
2. To answer the question, please study Philippians 4:6-7.
RELATED
The Historical Reliability of the Book of Acts
Book of Acts and Paul’s Epistles: Match Made in Heaven?
SOURCES
For the bibliography, please click on this link and scroll down to the very bottom:
Dr. Jim's Essential Bible Teaching 