The Arrest of Stephen

The men chosen to attend to the needs of the Hellenist Christian widows were tasked with what is often called “diaconal ministry,” which seeks to meet the physical needs of people (Acts 6:1–7). Yet as we see in today’s passage, the seven men whom the church selected did not always limit themselves to caring for the material needs of the earliest Christians. One of those men, Stephen, also engaged in teaching ministry, as indicated in Acts 6:8–15.

Luke explains that Stephen ministered “full of grace and power, . . . doing great wonders and signs among the people” (v. 8). In the course of this ministry, some individuals who “belonged to the synagogue of the Freedmen” rose up to oppose Stephen (v. 9). Freedmen were slaves who had been emancipated or the children of slaves who had been freed, so these men who came against Stephen were Jews who at one time had been slaves of Roman citizens. This group of men came from across the Roman Empire and included “Cyrenians [from North Africa], . . . Alexandrians [from Egypt], and . . . those from Cilicia [from the northeastern Mediterranean] and Asia [from Asia Minor].”

Why did these freedmen dispute with Stephen? Because they believed that his preaching of Christ represented an attack on Judaism and its institutions. More specifically, they said that Stephen told them that Jesus would destroy the temple (“this holy place”) and change the Mosaic law (vv. 10–14). Luke indicates that they “set up false witnesses” to make these charges (v. 13), which means that they opposed God and His truth and told lies about Jesus. Apparently, they took Jesus’ words about the destruction of the temple (e.g., see Mark 13) and badly mangled them to mean that the Christians were out to tear down the sanctuary when Jesus meant that the temple was going to fall because of God’s judgment for the Jews’ rejecting their Messiah. It could also be that they thought Jesus’ reference to the destruction of the temple of His body constituted a threat to the temple (John 2:19). The reference of these men to Jesus’ alteration of the customs of Moses probably reflects their misunderstanding of Jesus’ teaching on things such as the Sabbath (Mark 2:23–28).

Try as they might, the Jews who opposed Stephen could not refute his exposition and defense of the work of Jesus (Acts 6:10). So they seized Stephen and brought him before the council of the Jews to try him on their charges (v. 12).