Request your free, three-month trial to Tabletalk magazine. You’ll receive the print issue monthly and gain immediate digital access to decades of archives. This trial is risk-free. No credit card required.
Try Tabletalk NowAlready receive Tabletalk magazine every month?
Verify your email address to gain unlimited access.
Acts 6:1–7
“The twelve summoned the full number of the disciples and said, ‘It is not right that we should give up preaching the word of God to serve tables. Therefore, brothers, pick out from among you seven men of good repute, full of the Spirit and of wisdom, whom we will appoint to this duty. But we will devote ourselves to prayer and to the ministry of the word’” (vv. 2–4).
Under the category of ecclesiology—the doctrine of the church—systematic theologians look at what the Bible has to say about the church’s identity, mission, structure, and more. Today we begin considering the church’s structure by focusing on one of the two offices that Jesus established for the governance of the church—namely, the office of deacon.
Acts 6:1–7 records what is likely the institution of the office of deacon in the Christian church. In the ancient world, widows were particularly vulnerable in society, having no husbands to provide for them. Widows who had no children typically lived in deep poverty. Early in the history of the church, Greek-speaking widows felt that they were being neglected in the church’s daily distribution of alms, and they cried out for help. The Apostles, seeing that they could not preach the Word and effectively minister to these poor widows at the same time, had the church select seven men full of the Holy Spirit, wise, and with good reputations to take care of the widows. Being set apart by the Apostles’ laying on of hands and prayer, these men became the church’s first deacons (vv. 1–6). God blessed this action, for with the Apostles freed up to focus on teaching and prayer and the deacons able to devote more time and energy to caring for poor widows, the number of disciples grew in Jerusalem. Even many Jewish priests became Christians (v. 7).
The office of deacon is what we call a perpetual office in the church, one designed to last until the return of Christ, unlike an office such as Apostle. Based on Acts 6, the Reformed churches have tasked deacons with caring particularly for those who are in physical poverty. John Calvin, for instance, writes in the Institutes of the Christian Religion that “Scripture specially gives the name of deacons to those whom the Church appoints to dispense alms, and take care of the poor, constituting them as it were stewards of the public treasury of the poor.” Deacons in Reformed churches also often take care of a church’s property, assist in meeting the physical needs of church members, care for those in need outside the church, and help encourage and instruct church members in looking after the poor in the church and beyond. While these are largely physical matters, we dare not forget that the office of deacon is a spiritual office that requires men of sound faith and wisdom for its proper exercise (1 Tim. 3:9).
Coram Deo Living before the face of God
Christ, through His Apostles, gave the church deacons not to be the sole caretakers of physical needs in the congregation but to be the leaders in seeing that these needs are met. We who are not deacons are called to assist them in their task, and making ourselves available to the deacons in our church to help in caring for others is one of the best ways that we can serve in the church.
For further study
- Leviticus 19:9–10
- Luke 14:12–14
- Galatians 2:10
- 1 Timothy 3:8–13
The bible in a year
- Lamentations 1–2
- Hebrews 8