Acts 6:5

Act 6:5-6. And the saying pleased the multitude — Who had been called together upon this occasion; and — After some little deliberation upon the choice that was to be made; they chose seven — It seems all Hellenists, as their names show; a measure which accorded very well with the occasion of their election; Stephen, a man full of faith and of the Holy Ghost — That is, not only endowed with the ordinary graces of the Holy Spirit, in a high degree, but even with his extraordinary gifts, as appears from the subsequent verses; and Philip — Who long continued an ornament and blessing to the church, being afterward raised to a yet higher character, that of an evangelist; and Nicolas — Who was not a Jew born, but a proselyte of Antioch — That is, one who by circumcision had been incorporated with the Jewish people; for if he had only been what was called a proselyte of the gate, he could not at this time have been a member of the Christian Church, no uncircumcised person being yet admitted into it. As he was a proselyte, others that were proselytes would the more readily apply to him for redress in any matter of grievance; and perhaps his peculiar relation to the Grecians might be a special reason why he was chosen to this office, the disciples being willing to cut off from them all cause of complaint. Whom they set before the apostles — That is, presented to them, as persons in whom they could put confidence, and whom they wished the apostles to accept, as proper for the intended work. And when they had prayed — Supplicated the divine blessing to attend all their ministrations: they laid their hands on them — Both that they might express their solemn appointment of them to the office, and confer upon them such extraordinary gifts as would qualify them yet more abundantly for the full discharge of it.

Joseph Benson's Commentary on the Old and New Testaments (1811–1818) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

Acts

FILLED WITH THE SPIRIT

Act 6:3, Act 6:5, Act 6:8.

I have taken the liberty of wrenching these three fragments from their context, because of their remarkable parallelism, which is evidently intended to set us thinking of the connection of the various characteristics which they set forth. The first of them is a description, given by the Apostles, of the sort of man whom they conceived to be fit to look after the very homely matter of stifling the discontent of some members of the Church, who thought that their poor people did not get their fair share of the daily ministration. The second and third of them are parts of the description of the foremost of these seven men, the martyr Stephen. In regard to the first and second of our three fragmentary texts, you will observe that the cause is put first and the effect second. The ‘deacons’ were to be men ‘full of the Holy Ghost,’ and that would make them ‘full of wisdom.’ Stephen was ‘full of faith,’ and that made him ‘full of the Holy Ghost.’ Probably the same relation subsists in the third of our texts, of which the true reading is not, as it appears in our Authorised Version, ‘full of faith and power,’ but as it is given in the Revised Version, ‘full of grace and power.’ He was filled with grace-by which apparently is here meant the sum of the divine spiritual gifts-and therefore he was full of power. Whether that is so or not, if we link these three passages together, as I have taken the liberty of doing, we get a point of view appropriate for such a day [Footnote: Preached on Whit Sunday.] as this, when all that calls itself Christendom is commemorating the descent of the Holy Spirit, and His abiding influence upon the Church. So I simply wish to gather together the principles that come out of these three verses thus concatenated.

I. We may all, if we will, be full of the Holy Spirit.

If there is a God at all, there is nothing more reasonable than to suppose that He can come into direct contact with the spirits of the men whom He has made. And if that Almighty God is not an Almighty indifference, or a pure devil-if He is love-then there is nothing more certain than that, if He can touch and influence men’s hearts towards goodness and His own likeness, He most certainly will.

The probability, which all religion recognises, and in often crude forms tries to set forth, and by superstitious acts to secure, is raised to an absolute certainty, if we believe that Jesus Christ, the Incarnate Truth, speaks truth to us about this matter. For there is nothing more certain than that the characteristic which distinguishes Him from all other teachers, is to be found not only in the fact that He did something for us on the Cross, as well as taught us by His word; but that in His teaching He puts in the forefront, not the prescriptions of our duty, but the promise of God’s gift; and ever says to us, ‘Open your hearts and the divine influences will flow in and fill you and fit you for all goodness.’ The Spirit of God fills the human spirit, as the mysterious influence which we call life permeates and animates the whole body, or as water lies in a cup.

Consider how that metaphor is caught up, and from a different point of view is confirmed, in regard to the completeness which it predicates, by other metaphors of Scripture. What is the meaning of the Baptist’s saying, ‘He shall baptise you in the Holy Ghost and fire’? Does that not mean a complete immersion in, and submersion under, the cleansing flood? What is the meaning of the Master’s own saying, ‘Tarry ye. . . till ye be clothed with power from on high’? Does not that mean complete investiture of our nakedness with that heavenly-woven robe? Do not all these emblems declare to us the possibility of a human spirit being charged to the limits of its capacity with a divine influence?

We do not here discuss questions which separate good Christian people from one another in regard of this matter. My object now is not to lay down theological propositions, but to urge upon Christian men the acquirement of an experience which is possible for them. And so, without caring to enter by argument on controversial matters, I desire simply to lay emphasis upon the plain implication of that word, ‘filled with the Holy Ghost.’ Does it mean less than the complete subjugation of a man’s spirit by the influence of God’s Spirit brooding upon him, as the prophet laid himself on the dead child, lip to lip, face to face, beating heart to still heart, limb to limb, and so diffused a supernatural life into the dead? That is an emblem of what all you Christian people may have if you like, and if you will adopt the discipline and observe the conditions which God has plainly laid down.

That fulness will be a growing fulness, for our spirits are capable, if not of infinite, at any rate of indefinite, expansion, and there is no limit known to us, and no limit, I suppose, which will ever be reached, so that we can go no further-to the possible growth of a created spirit that is in touch with God, and is having itself enlarged and elevated and ennobled by that contact. The vessel is elastic, the walls of the cup of our spirit, into which the new wine of the divine Spirit is poured, widen out as the draught is poured into them. The more a man possesses and uses of the life of God, the more is he capable of possessing and the more he will receive. So a continuous expansion in capacity, and a continuous increase in the amount of the divine life possessed, are held out as the happy prerogative and possibility of a Christian soul.

This Stephen had but a very small amount of the clear Christian knowledge that you and I have, but he was leagues ahead of most Christian people in regard to this, that he was ‘filled with the Holy Spirit.’ Brethren, you can have as much of that Spirit as you want. It is my own fault if my Christian life is not what the Christian lives of some of us, I doubt not, are. ‘Filled with the Holy Spirit’! rather a little drop in the bottom of the cup, and all the rest gaping emptiness; rather the fire died down, Pentecostal fire though it be, until there is scarcely anything but a heap of black cinders and grey ashes in your grate, and a little sandwich of flickering flame in one corner; rather the rushing mighty wind died down into all but a dead calm, like that which afflicts sailing-ships in the equatorial regions, when the thick air is deadly still, and the empty sails have not strength even to flap upon the masts; rather the ‘river of the water of life’ that pours ‘out of the throne of God, and of the Lamb,’ dried up into a driblet.

That is the condition of many Christian people. I say not of which of us. Let each man settle for himself how that may be. At all events here is the possibility, which may be realised with increasing completeness all through a Christian man’s life. We may be filled with the Holy Spirit.

II. If we are ‘full of faith’ we shall be filled with the Spirit.

That is the condition as suggested by one of our texts-’a man full of faith,’ and therefore ‘of the Holy Ghost.’ Now, of course, I believe, as I suppose all people who have made any experience of their own hearts must believe, that before a soul exercises confidence in Jesus Christ, and passes into the household of faith, there have been playing upon it the influences of that divine Comforter whose first mission is to ‘convince the world of sin.’ But between such operations as these, which I believe are universally diffused, wheresoever the Word of God and the message of salvation are proclaimed-between such operations as these, and those to which I now refer, whereby the divine Spirit not only operates upon, but dwells in, a man’s heart, and not only brings conviction to the world of sin, there is a wide gulf fixed; and for all the hallowing, sanctifying, illuminating and strength-giving operations of that divine Spirit, the pre-requisite condition is our trust. Jesus Christ taught us so, in more than one utterance, and His Apostle, in commenting on one of the most remarkable of His sayings on this subject, says, ‘This spake He concerning the Holy Spirit which they that believed in Him were to receive.’ Faith is the condition of receiving that divine influence. But what kind of faith? Well, let us put away theological words. If you do not believe that there is any such influence to be got, you will not get it. If you do not want it, you will not get it. If you do not expect it, you will not get it. If professing to believe it, and to wish it, and to look for it, you are behaving yourself in such a way as to show that you do not really desire it, you will never get it. It is all very well to talk about faith as the condition of receiving that divine Spirit. Do not let us lose ourselves in the word, but try to translate the somewhat threadbare expression, which by reason of its familiarity produces little effect upon some of us, and to turn it into non-theological English. It just comes to this,-if we are simply trusting ourselves to Jesus Christ our Lord, and if in that trust we do believe in the possibility of even our being filled with the divine Spirit, and if that possibility lights up a leaping flame of desire in our hearts which aspires towards the possession of such a gift, and if belief that our reception of that gift is possible because we trust ourselves to Jesus Christ, and longing that we may receive it, combine to produce the confident expectation that we shall, and if all of these combine to produce conduct which neither quenches nor grieves that divine Guest, then, and only then, shall we indeed be filled with the Spirit.

I know of no other way by which a man can receive God into his heart than by opening his heart for God to come in. I know of no other way by which a man can woo-if I may so say-the Divine Lover to enter into his spirit than by longing that He would come, waiting for His coming, expecting it, and being supremely blessed in the thought that such a union is possible. Faith, that is trust, with its appropriate and necessary sequels of desire and expectation and obedience, is the completing of the electric circuit, and after it the spark is sure to come. It is the opening of the windows, after which sunshine cannot but flood the chamber. It is the stretching out of the hand, and no man that ever, with love and longing, lifted an empty hand to God, dropped it still empty. And no man who, with penitence for his own act, and trust in the divine act, lifted blood-stained and foul hands to God, ever held them up there without the gory patches melting away, and becoming white as snow. Not ‘all the perfumes of Araby’ can sweeten those bloody hands. Lift them up to God, and they become pure. Whosoever wishes that he may, and believes that he shall, receive from Christ the fulness of the Spirit, will not be disappointed. Brethren, ‘Ye have not because ye ask not.’ ‘If ye, being evil, know how to give good gifts to your children,’ shall not ‘your Heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to them that ask Him?’

III. Lastly, if we are filled with the Spirit we shall be ‘full of wisdom, grace, and power.’

The Apostles seemed to think that it was a very important business to look after a handful of poor widows, and see that they had their fair share in the dispensing of the modest charity of the half-pauper Jerusalem church, when they said that for such a purely secular thing as that a man would need to be ‘full of the Holy Ghost and wisdom.’ Surely, something a little less august might have served their turn to qualify men for such a task! ‘Wisdom’ here, I suppose, means practical sagacity, common sense, the power of picking out an impostor when she came whining for a dole. Very commonplace virtues! -but the Apostles evidently thought that such everyday operations of the understanding as these were not too secular and commonplace to owe their origin to the communication to men of the fulness of the Holy Spirit.

May we not take a lesson from that, that God’s great influences, when they come into a man, do not concern themselves only with great intellectual problems and the like, but that they will operate to make him more fit to do the most secular and the most trivial things that can be put into his hand to do? The Holy Ghost had to fill Stephen before he could hand out loaves and money to the widows in Jerusalem.

And do you not think that your day’s work, and your business perplexities, come under the same category? Perhaps the best way to secure understanding of what we ought to do, in regard to very small and secular matters, is to keep ourselves very near to God, with the windows of our hearts opened towards Jerusalem, that all the guidance and light that can come from Him may come into us. Depend upon it, unless we have God’s guidance in the trivialities of life, ninety per cent., ay! and more, of our lives will be without God’s guidance; because trivialities make up life. And unless my Father in heaven can guide me about what we, very mistakenly, call ‘secular’ things, and what we very vulgarly call trivial things, His guidance is not worth much. The Holy Ghost will give you wisdom for to-morrow, and all its little cares, as well as for the higher things, of which I am not going to speak now, because they do not come within my text.

‘Full of grace,’-that is a wide word, as I take it. If, by our faith, we have brought into our hearts that divine influence, the Spirit of God does not come empty-handed, but He communicates to us whatsoever things are lovely and of good report, whatsoever things are fair and honourable, whatsoever things in the eyes of men are worthy to be praised, and by the tongues of men have been called virtue. These things will all be given to us step by step, not without our own diligent co-operation, by that divine Giver. Effort without faith, and faith without effort, are equally incomplete, and the co-operation of the two is that which is blessed by God.

Then the things which are ‘gracious,’ that is to say, given by His love, and also gracious in the sense of partaking of the celestial beauty which belongs to all virtue, and to all likeness in character to God, these things will give us a strange, supernatural power amongst men. The word is employed in my third text, I presume, in its narrow sense of miracle-working power, but we may fairly widen it to something much more than that. Our Lord once said, when He was speaking about the gift of the Holy Spirit, that there were two stages in its operation. In the first, it availed for the refreshment and the satisfying of the desires of the individual; in the second it became, by the ministration of that individual, a source of blessing to others. He said, ‘If any man thirst, let him come to Me and drink,’ and then, immediately, ‘He that believeth on Me, out of his belly shall flow rivers of living water.’ That is to say, whoever lives in touch with God, having that divine Spirit in his heart, will walk amongst men the wielder of an unmistakable power, and will be able to bear witness to God, and move men’s hearts, and draw them to goodness and truth. The only power for Christian service is the power that comes from being clothed with God’s Spirit. The only power for self-government is the power that comes from being clothed with God’s Spirit. The only power which will keep us in the way that leads to life, and will bring us at last to the rest and the reward, is the power that comes from being clothed with God’s Spirit.

I am charged to all who hear me now with this message. Here is a gift offered to you. You cannot pare and batter at your own characters so as to make them what will satisfy your own consciences, still less what will satisfy the just judgment of God; but you can put yourself under the moulding influences of Christ’s love. Dear brethren, the one hope for dead humanity, the bones very many and very dry, is that from the four winds there should come the breath of God, and breathe in them, and they shall live, ‘an exceeding great army.’ Forget all else that I have been saying now, if you like, but take these two sentences to your hearts, and do not rest till they express your own personal experience; If I am to be good I must have God’s Spirit within me. If I am to have God’s Spirit within me, I must be ‘full of faith.’

Alexander MacLaren, Expositions of Holy Scripture (1904–1910) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

Chapter 14

ST. STEPHEN AND THE EVOLUTION OF THE CHRISTIAN MINISTRY.

Act_6:5-6; Act_6:8-11

THE names of the seven chosen on the suggestion of the Apostles raises very naturally the question, To what office were they appointed? Did the seven elected on this occasion represent the first beginning of that office of deacon which is regarded as the third rank in the Church, bishops being first, and presbyters or priests second. It is agreed by all parties that the title of deacon is not given to them in the sixth chapter of the Acts, and yet such an unprejudiced and fair authority as Bishop Lightfoot, in his Essay on the Christian Ministry, maintains that the persons selected and ordained at this crisis constituted the first origin of the diaconate as it is now known. The Seven are not called, either here or wherever else they are mentioned in the Acts, by the name of deacons, though the word διακονϵῖν (serve), which cannot be exactly rendered into English, as the noun deacon has no equivalent verb answering to it, is applied to the duties assigned to them. But all the best critics are agreed that the ordination of the Seven was the occasion of the rise of a new order and a new office in the Church, whose work dealt more especially with the secular side of the ministerial function. The great German critic, Meyer, commenting on this sixth chapter, puts it well, though not so clearly as we should like. "From the first regular overseership of alms, the mode of appointment to which could not but regulate analogically the practice of the Church, was gradually developed the diaconate, which subsequently underwent further elaboration." This statement is somewhat obscure, and thoroughly after the manner of a German critic; let us develop it a little, and see what the process was whereby the distributers of alms to the widows of the earliest Church organisation became the officials of whom St. Laurence of Rome in the third, and St. Athanasius of Alexandria in the fourth century were such eminent examples.

I. The institutions of the synagogue must necessarily have exercised a great influence over the minds of the Apostles and of their first converts. One fact alone vividly illustrates this idea. Christians soon began to call their places of assembly by the name of churches or the Lords houses, but the old habit was at first too strong, and so the churches or congregations of the earliest Christians were called synagogues. This is evident even from the text of the Revised Version of the New Testament, for if we turn to the second chapter of the Epistle of James we read there, "If there come into your synagogue a man with a gold ring,"-showing that in St. Jamess day a Christian Church was called a synagogue. This custom received some few years ago a remarkable confirmation from the records of travel and discovery. The Marcionites were a curious Christian sect or heresy which sprang up in the second century. They were intensely opposed to Judaism, and yet so strong was this tradition that even they seemed to have retained, down to the fourth century, the name of synagogue as the title of their churches, for some celebrated French explorers have discovered in Syria an inscription, still in existence, carved over the door of a Marcionite church, dated A.D. 318, and that inscription runs thus: "The Synagogue of the Marcionites."

Now seeing that the force of tradition was so great as to compel even an anti-Jewish sect to call their meeting-houses by a Jewish name, we may be sure that the tradition of the institutions, forms, and arrangements of the synagogue must have been infinitely more potent with the earliest Christian believers, constraining them to adopt similar institutions in their own assemblies. Human nature is always the same, and the example of our own colonists sheds light upon the course of Church development in Palestine. When the Pilgrim Fathers went to America, they reproduced the English constitution and the English laws in that country with so much precision and accuracy that the expositions of law produced by American lawyers are studied with great respect in England. The American colonists reproduced the institutions and laws with which they were familiar, modifying them merely to suit their own peculiar circumstances; and so has it been all the world over wherever the Anglo-Saxon race has settled-they have done exactly the same thing. They have established states and governments modelled after the type of England, and not of France or Russia. So was it with the early Christians. Human nature compelled them to fall back upon their first experience, and to develop under a Christian shape the institutions of the synagogue under which they had been trained. And now, when we read the Acts, we see that here lies the most natural explanation of the course of history, and specially of this sixth chapter. In the synagogue, as Dr. John Lightfoot expounds it in his "Horae Hebraicae," {Mat_4:23} the government was in the hands of the ruler and the council of elders or presbyters, while under them there were three almoners or deacons, who served in the same capacity as the Seven in superintending the charitable work of the congregation. The great work for which the Seven were appointed was distribution, and we shall see that this was ever maintained, and is still maintained, as the leading idea of the diaconate, though other and more directly spiritual work was at once added to their functions by St. Stephen and St. Philip. Now, just as our colonists brought English institutions and ideas with them wherever they settled, so was it with the missionaries who went forth from the Mother Church of Jerusalem. They carried the ideas and institutions with them which had been there sanctioned by the Apostles, and thus we find deacons mentioned in conjunction with bishops at Philippi, deacons joined with bishops in St. Pauls Epistle to Timothy, and the existence of the institution at Corinth, and its special work as a charitable organisation, implied in the description given of Phoebe to the Roman Christians in the sixteenth chapter of the Epistle to the Romans. St. Pauls directions to Timothy in the third chapter of his first Epistle deal both with deacons and deaconesses, and in each case lay down qualifications specially suited for distributers of charitable relief, whose duty called upon them to visit from house to house, but say nothing about any higher work. They are indeed "to hold the mystery of the faith in a pure conscience; " they must be sound in the faith like the Seven themselves; but the special qualifications demanded by St. Paul are those needed in almoners: "The deacons must be grave, not double-tongued, not given to much wine, not greedy of filthy lucre."

So far as to the testimony of Scripture. When we pass beyond the bounds of the canonical books, and come to the apostolic fathers, the evidence is equally clear. They testify to the universality of the institution, and bear witness to its work of distribution. Clement of Rome was a contemporary of the Apostles. He wrote an Epistle to the Corinthians, which is the earliest witness to the existence of St. Pauls Epistles to the same Church. In Clements epistle we find express mention of deacons, of their apostolic appointment, and of the universal diffusion of the office. In the forty-third chapter of his epistle Clement writes to the Corinthians concerning the Apostles:-"Thus preaching through countries and cities they appointed bishops and deacons for those who should afterwards believe," clearly implying that deacons then existed at Rome, though we have no express notice of them in the epistle written by St. Paul to the Roman Church.

There is a rule, however, very needful for historical investigations. Silence is no conclusive argument against an alleged fact, unless there be silence where, if the alleged fact had existed, it must have been mentioned. Josephus, for instance, is silent about Christ and Christianity. Yet he wrote when its existence was a matter of common notoriety. But there was no necessity for him to notice it. It was an awkward fact too, and so he is silent. St. Paul does not mention deacons as existing at Rome, though he does mention them at Philippi. But Clements words expressly assert that universally, in all cities and countries, this order was established wherever the Apostles taught; and so we find it even from Pagan records. Plinys letter to Trajan, written about A.D. 110, some fifteen or twenty years later than Clement, testifies that the order of deacons existed in far distant Bithynia, among the Christians of the Dispersion to whom St. Peter directed his Epistle. Plinys words are, "I therefore thought it the more necessary, in order to ascertain what truth there was in this account, to examine two slave-girls who were called deaconesses (ministrae), and even to use torture." (See the article Trajanus in the "Dict. Christ. Biog.," 4:1040.) It is exactly the same with St. Ignatius in the second chapter of his Epistle to the Trallians, which dates about the same period. The spiritual side of the office had now come more prominently into notice, as the occasion of their first appointment had fallen into disuse; but still Ignatius recognises the origin of the diaconate when he writes that "the deacons are not deacons of meats and drinks, but servants of the Church of God" (Lightfoot, "Apost. Fathers," vol 2. sec. 1. p. 156). While again Polycarp, in his Epistle to the Philippians, ch. 5., recognises the same qualities as necessary to deacons which St. Paul requires and enumerates in his Epistle to Timothy. Justin Martyr, a little later, twenty years or so, tells us that the deacons distributed the elements consecrated in the Holy Communion to the believers that were absent (Justin, "First Apol.," ch. 67.). This is most important testimony, connecting the order of deacons as then flourishing at Rome and their work with the Seven constituted by the Apostle. The daily distribution of the Apostles time was closely connected with the celebration of the Eucharist, which indeed in its meal or food, common to all the faithful, and its charitable collections and oblations, of which Justin Martyr speaks, retained still some trace of the daily distribution which prevailed in the early church, and occasioned the choice of the Seven. The deacons in Justin Martyrs day distributed the spiritual food to the faithful, just as in earlier times they distributed all the sustenance which the faithful required, whether in their spiritual or their temporal aspect. It is evident from this recital of the places where the deacons are incidentally referred to, that their origin was never forgotten, and that distribution of charitable relief and help was always retained as the essence, the central idea and notion, of the office of deacon, though at the same time other and larger functions were by degrees entrusted to them, as the Church grew and increased, and ecclesiastical life and wants became more involved and complex. History bears out this view. Irenaeus was the disciple of Polycarp, and must have known many apostolic men, men who had companied with the Apostles and knew the whole detail of primitive Church government; and Irenaeus, speaking of Nicolas the proselyte of Antioch, describes him as "one of the seven who were first ordained to the diaconate by the Apostles." Now Irenaeus is one of our great witnesses for the authenticity of the Four Gospels; surely then he must be an equally good witness to the origin of the order of deacons and the existence of the Acts of the Apostles which is implied in this reference. It is scarcely necessary to go farther in Church history, but the lower one goes the more clearly we shall see that the original notion of the diaconate is never forgotten. In the third century we find that there were still only seven deacons in Rome, though there were forty-six presbyters, a number which was retained down to the twelfth century in the seven cardinal deacons of that Church. The touching story of the martyrdom of St. Laurence, Archdeacon of Rome in the middle of the third century, shows that he was roasted over a slow fire in order to extort the vast sums he was supposed to have in charge for the purpose of relieving the sick and the poor connected with the Roman Church; proving that the original conception of the office as an executive and charitable organisation was then vigorously retained; just as it is still set forth in the ordinal of the Church of England, where, after reciting how the deacons office is to help the priest in several subordinate positions, it goes on to say, "Furthermore, it is his office, where provision is so made, to search for the sick, poor, and impotent people of the parish, to intimate their estates, names, and places where they dwell, unto the curate, that by his exhortation they may be relieved by the alms of the parishioners."

The only objection of any value which has been raised to this line of argument is based on a mere assumption. It has been said that the Seven were appointed for a special emergency, and to serve a temporary purpose connected with the community of goods which existed in the early Church of Jerusalem, and therefore when this arrangement ceased the office itself ceased also. But this argument is based on the assumption that the Christian idea of a community of goods wholly passed away, so that services of an order like the Seven were no longer required. This is a pure assumption. The community of goods as practised at Jerusalem was found by experience to be a mistake. The shape of the idea was changed, but the idea itself survived. The old form of community of goods passed away. The Christians retained their rights of private property, but were taught to regard this private property as in a sense common, and liable for all the wants and needs of their poor and suffering brethren. A charitable order, or at least an order charged with the care of the poor, and their relief, must inevitably have sprung up among the Jewish Christians. The relief of the poor was a necessary part of the duty of a synagogue. The Jewish domestic law enforced a poor-rate, and collected it through the organisation of each synagogue, by means of three deacons attached to each. Selden, in his great work on "The Laws of the Hebrews," bk. 2. chap. 6. ("Works," 1:632), tells us that if "any Jew did not pay his fair contribution he was punished with stripes." As soon as the Jewish Christians began to organise themselves, the idea of almoners, with their daily and weekly distributions, after the synagogue model, was necessarily developed. We have an unexceptionable piece of evidence upon this point. The satirist Lucian lived at the close of the second century. He was a bitter scoffer, who jeered at every form of religion, and at Christianity above all. He wrote an account of a certain Syrian named Peregrinus Proteus, who was an impostor trading upon the religious principles of various philosophical sects, and specially on those of the Christians. Lucian tells us that the Christians were the easiest persons to be deceived, because of their opinions. Lucians words are interesting as showing what a second-century pagan, a clever literary man too, thought of Christianity, viewing it from the outside. For this reason we shall quote a little more than the words which immediately bear upon the subject. "It is incredible with what alacrity these people (the Christians) support and defend the public cause. They spare nothing, in fact, to promote it. These poor men have persuaded themselves that they shall be immortal, and live for ever. They despise death therefore, and offer up their lives a voluntary sacrifice, being taught by their lawgiver that they are all brethren, and that, quitting our Grecian gods, they must worship their own sophist, who was crucified, and live in obedience to His laws. In compliance with them, they look with contempt upon all worldly treasures, and hold everything in common-a maxim which they have adopted without any reason or foundation. If any cunning impostor, therefore, who knows how to manage matters, come amongst them, he soon grows rich by imposing on the credulity of those weak and foolish men." We can see here that the great outer world of paganism considered a community of goods as still prevailing among the Christians. Their boundless liberality, their intense devotion to the cause of their suffering brethren, proved this, and therefore, because a practical community of goods existed amongst them, an order of men was required to superintend the distribution of their liberality in the second century just as tru1y as the work of the Seven was needed in the Church of Jerusalem.

II. We thus can see that the office of deacon, as now constituted, had its origin in apostolic times, and is built upon a scriptural foundation; but here we are bound to point out a great difference between the ancient and the modern office. An office or organisation may spring up in one age, and after existing for several centuries may develop into a shape utterly unlike its original. Yet it may be very hard to point out any special time when a vital change was made. All we can say is that the first occupants of the office would never recognise their modern successors. Take the papacy as an instance. There has been at Rome a regular historical succession of bishops since the first century. The succession is known and undoubted. Yet could one of the bishops of Rome of the first three centuries, -above all, could a first-century bishop of Rome like St. Clement-by any possibility recognise himself or his office in the present Pope Leo XIII? Yet one would find it difficult to fix the exact moment when any vital change was made, or any unwonted claims put forward on behalf of the Roman See. So was it in the case of deacons and their office. Their modern successors may trace themselves back to the seven elected in the primitive Church at Jerusalem, and yet the office is now a very different one in practice from what it was then. Perhaps the greatest difference, and the only one we can notice, is this. The diaconate is now merely the primary and lowest rank of the Christian ministry; a kind of apprenticeship, in fact, wherein the youthful minister serves for a year, and is then promoted as a matter of course; whereas in Jerusalem or Rome of old it was a lifelong office, in the exercise of which maturity of judgment, of piety, and of character were required for the due discharge of its manifold duties. It is now a temporary office, it was of old a permanent one. And the apostolical custom was much the best. It avoided many difficulties and solved many a problem. At present the office of the diaconate is practically in abeyance, and yet the functions which the ancient deacons discharged are not in abeyance, but are placed upon the shoulders of the other orders in the Church, already overwhelmed with manifold responsibilities, and neglecting, while serving tables, the higher aspects of their work. The Christian ministry in its purely spiritual, and specially in its prophetical or preaching aspect, is sorely suffering because an apostolic office is practically set aside. In the ancient Church it was never so. The deacons were chosen to a life-office. It was then but very seldom that a man chosen to the diaconate abandoned it for a higher function. It did not indeed demand the wholesale devotion of time and attention which the higher offices of the ministry did. Men even till a late period, both in East and West, combined secular pursuits with it. Thus let us take one celebrated instance. The ancient Church of England and Ireland alike was Celtic in origin and constitution. It was intensely conservative, therefore, of ancient customs and usages derived from the times of persecution, when Christianity was first taught among the Gauls and Celts of the extreme West. The well-known story of the introduction of Christianity into England under St. Augustine and the opposition he met with prove this. As it was in other matters, so was it with the ancient Celtic deacons; the old customs remained; they held office for life, and joined with it at the same time other and ordinary occupations. St. Patrick, for instance, the apostle of Ireland, tells us that his father Calpurnius was a deacon, and yet he was a farmer and a decurion, or alderman, as we should say, of a Roman town near Dumbarton on the river Clyde. This happened about the year 400 of the Christian era.

Here indeed, as in so many other cases, the Church of Christ needs to go back to scriptural example and to apostolic rule. We require for the work of the Church deacons like the primitive men who devoted their whole lives to this one object; made it the subject of their thoughts, their cares, their studies, how they might instruct the ignorant, relieve the poor and widows, comfort the prisoners, sustain the martyrs in their last supreme hour; and who, thus using well the office of a deacon, found in it a sufficient scope for their efforts and a sufficient reward for their exertions, because they thereby purchased for themselves a good degree and great boldness in the faith of Jesus Christ. The Church now requires the help of living agencies in vast numbers, and they are not forthcoming. Let her avail herself of apostolic resources, and fall back upon primitive precedents. The real diaconate should be revived. Godly and spiritual men should be called upon to do their duty. Deacons should be ordained without being called to give up their ordinary employments. Work which now unduly accumulates upon overburdened shoulders should be assigned to others suitably to their talents, and thus a twofold blessing would be secured. Christian life would flourish more abundantly, and many a rent and schism, the simple result of energies repressed and unemployed, would be destroyed in their very commencement.

We have devoted much of our space to this subject, because it is one of great interest, as touching the origin and authority of the Christian ministry, and also because it has been a subject much debated; but we must hurry on to other points connected with the first appointment of the diaconate. The people selected the person to be ordained to this work. It is probable that they made their choice out of the different classes composing the Christian community. The mode of election of the Seven, and the qualifications laid down by the Apostles, were derived from the synagogue. Thus we read in Kittos "Cyclopaedia," art. "Synagogue:"-"The greatest care was taken by the rulers of the synagogue and of the congregation that those elected almoners should be men of modesty, wisdom, justice, and have the confidence of the people. They had to be elected by the harmonious voice of the people." Seven deacons altogether were chosen. Three were probably Hebrew Christians, three Grecian Christians or Hellenists, and one a representative of the proselytes, Nicolas of Antioch. This would have been but natural. The Apostles wanted to get rid of murmurs, jealousies, and divisions in the Church, and in no way could this have been more effectually done than by the principle of representation. Had the Seven been all selected from one class alone, divisions and jealousies would have prevailed as of old. The Apostles themselves had proved this. They were all Hebrew Christians. Their position and authority might have secured them from blame. Yet murmurings had arisen against them as distributers, and so they devised another plan, which, to have been successful, as it doubtless was, must have proceeded on a different principle. Then when the seven wise and prudent men were chosen from the various classes, the Apostles asserted their supreme position: "When the Apostles had prayed, they laid their hands on them." And as the result peace descended like a shower upon the Church, and spiritual prosperity followed upon internal peace and union.

III. "They laid their hands on them." This statement sets forth the external expression and the visible channel of the ordination to their office which the Apostles conferred. This action of the imposition of hands was of frequent use among the ancient Jews. The Apostles, as well acquainted with Old Testament history, must have remembered that it was employed in the case of designation of Joshua as the leader of Israel in the place of Num_27:18-23; {compare Deu_34:9} that it was used even in the synagogue in the appointment of Jewish rabbis, and had been sanctioned by the practice of Jesus Christ. The Apostles naturally therefore, used this symbol upon the solemn appointment of the first deacons, and the same ceremonial was repeated upon similar occasions. Paul and Barnabas were set apart at Antioch for their missionary work by the imposition of hands. St. Paul uses the strongest language about the ceremony. He does not hesitate to attribute to it a certain sacramental force and efficacy, bidding Timothy "stir up the gift of God which is in thee through the laying on of my hands"; {2Ti_1:6} while again, when we come down a few years later, we find the "laying on of hands" reckoned as one of the fundamental elements of religion, in the sixth chapter of the Epistle to the Hebrews. But it was not merely in the solemn appointment of officials in the Church that this ceremony found place. It was employed by the Apostles as the rite which filled up and perfected the baptism which had been administered by others. Philip baptised the Samaritans. Peter and John laid their hands tin them and they received the Holy Ghost. The ceremony of imposition of hands was so essential and distinguishing a point that Simon Magus selects it as the one he desires above all others effectually to purchase, so that the outward symbol might be followed by the inward grace. "Give me also this power, that on whomsoever I lay my hands, he may receive the Holy Ghost," was the prayer of the arch-heretic to St. Peter; while again in the nineteenth chapter we find St. Paul using the same visible ceremony in the case of St. Johns disciples, who were first baptised with Christian baptism, and then endued by St. Paul with the gift of the Spirit. Imposition of hands in the case of ordination is a natural symbol, indicative of the transmission of function and authority. It fitly indicates and notifies to the whole Church the persons who have been ordained, and therefore has ever been regarded as a necessary part of ordination. St. Jerome, who was a very keen critic as well as a close student of the Divine oracles, fixes upon this public and solemn designation as a sufficient explanation and justification of the imposition of hands in ordinations, test any one should be ordained without his knowledge by a silent and solitary prayer. Hence every branch of the Church of Christ has rigorously insisted upon imposition of hands after the apostolic example, in the case of ordinations to official positions, with one or two apparent and very doubtful exceptions, which merely prove the binding character of the rule.

IV. The list of names again is full of profit and of warning. How completely different from human histories, for instance, is this Divine record of the first doings of the Church! How thoroughly shaped after the Divine model is this catalogue of the earliest officials chosen by the Apostles! Men have speculated whether they were Hebrews or Grecians, whether they belonged to the seventy sent forth by Christ or to the hundred and twenty who first gathered into the upper room at Jerusalem. All such speculations are curious and interesting, but they have nothing to do with mans salvation; therefore they are sternly put on one side and out of sight. How we should long to know the subsequent history of these men, and to trace their careers! yet Holy Writ tells us but very little about them, nothing certain, in fact, save what we learn about St. Stephen and St. Philip. God bestowed Holy Scripture upon men, not to satisfy or minister to their curiosity, but to nourish their souls and edify their spirits. And surely no lesson is more needed than the one implied in the silences of this passage; there is in truth none more necessary for our publicity-seeking and popularity-hunting age than this, that Gods holiest servants have laboured in obscurity, have done their best work in secret, and have looked to God alone and to His judgment for their reward. I have said indeed that concerning the list of names recorded as those of the first deacons, we know nothing but of St. Stephen and St. Philip, whose careers will again come under our notice in later chapters. There is, however, a current tradition that Nicolas, the proselyte of Antioch, did distinguish himself, but in an unhappy direction. It is asserted by Irenaeus in his work "Against Heresies" (Book 1. chap. 26), that Nicolas was the founder of the sect of Nicolaitans denounced in the Revelation of St. John. {Rev_2:6; Rev_2:16} Critics are, however, much divided upon this point. Some clear Nicolas of this charge, while others uphold it. It is indeed impossible to determine this matter. But supposing that Nicolas of Antioch was the author of this heresy, which was of an antinomian character, like so many of the earliest heresies that distracted the primitive Church, this circumstance would teach us an instructive lesson. Just as there was a Judas Iscariot among the Apostles, and a Demas among St. Pauls most intimate disciples, so was there a Nicolas among the first deacons. No place is so holy, no office so sacred, no privileges so great, but that the tempter can make his way there. He can lurk unseen and unsuspected amid the pillars of the temple, and he can find us out, as he did the Son of God Himself, amid the wilds of the desert. Official position and exalted privileges confer no immunity from temptation. Nay, rather, they bring with them additional temptations over and above those which assail the ordinary Christian, and should therefore lead every one called to any similar work to diligent watchfulness, to earnest prayer, lest while teaching others they themselves fall into condemnation. There is, however, another lesson which a different version of the history of Nicolas would teach. Clement of Alexandria, in his celebrated work called the "Stromata" (Book 2. chap. 20, and Book 3. chap. 4), tells us that Nicolas was a most strictly virtuous man. He was extreme even in his asceticism, and, like many ascetics, used language that might be easily abused to the purposes of wickedness. He was wont to say that the "flesh must be abused," meaning that it must be chastised and restrained. One-sided and extreme teaching is easily perverted by the wicked nature of man, and men of impure lives, listening to the language of Nicolas, interpreted his words as an excuse for abusing the flesh by plunging into the depths of immorality and crime. Men placed in official positions and called to the exercise of the clerical office should weigh their words. Extreme statements are bad unless duly and strictly guarded. The intention of the speaker may be good, and a mans own life thoroughly consistent, but unbalanced teaching will fall upon ground where the life and intention of the teacher will have no power or influence, and bring forth evil fruit, as in the case of the Nicolaitans.

V. The central figure of this whole section of our narrative is St. Stephen. He is introduced into the narrative with the same startling suddenness which we may note in the case of Barnabas and of Elijah. He runs a rapid course, flings all, Apostles and every one else, into the shade for a time, and then disappears, exemplifying those fruitful sayings of inspiration, so true in our every-day experience of Gods dealings, "The first shall be last, and the last first." "Paul may plant, Apollos may water, but it is God alone that giveth the increase." Stephen, full of grace and power, did great signs and wonders among the people. These two words, grace and power, are closely connected. Their union in this passage is significant. It was not the intellect, or the eloquence, or the activity of St. Stephen which made him powerful among the people and crowned his labours with such success. It was his abundant grace. Eloquence and learning, active days and laborious nights, are good and necessary things. God uses them and demands them from His people. He chooses to use human agencies, and therefore demands that the human agents shall give Him of their best, and not offer to Him the blind and lame of their flock. But these things will be utterly useless and ineffective apart from Christ and the power of His grace. The Church of Christ is a supernatural society, and the work of Christ is a supernatural work, and in that work the grace of Christ is absolutely necessary to make any human gift or exertion effectual in carrying out His purposes of love and mercy. This is an age of organisations and committees and boards; and some good men are so wrapped up in them that they have no time to think of anything else. To this busy age these words, "Stephen, full of grace and power," convey a useful warning, teaching that the best organisations and schemes will be useless to produce Stephens power unless Stephens grace be found there as well. This passage is a prophecy and picture of the future in another aspect. The fulness of grace in Stephen wrought powerfully amongst the people. It was the savour of life unto life in some. But in others it was a savour of death unto death, and provoked them to evil deeds, for they suborned men "which said, We have heard him speak blasphemous words against Moses, and against God."

We get in these words, in this false accusation, even through its falsehood, a glimpse into the character of St. Stephens preaching. A false accusation need not be necessarily altogether false. Perhaps rather we should say that, in order to be effective for mischief, a twisted, distorted charge, with some basis of truth, some semblance of justification about it, is the best for the accusers purpose, and the most difficult for the defendant to answer. St. Stephen was ripening for heaven more rapidly than the Apostles themselves. He was learning more rapidly than St. Peter himself the true spiritual meaning of the Christian scheme. He had taught in no ambiguous language the universal character of the Gospel and the catholic mission of the Church. He had expanded and applied the magnificent declarations of the Master Himself, "The hour cometh, when neither in this mountain, nor in Jerusalem, shall ye worship the Father"; "The hour cometh, and now is, when the true worshippers shall worship the Father in spirit and in truth." And then the narrow-minded Grecian Jews, anxious to vindicate their orthodoxy, which was doubted by their Hebrew brethren, distorted Stephens wider and grander conceptions into a charge of blasphemy against the holy man. What a picture of the future of Christs best and truest witnesses, especially when insisting on some nobler and wider or forgotten aspect of truth. Their teaching has been ever suspected, distorted, accused as blasphemous; and so it must ever be. And yet Gods servants, when they find themselves thus misrepresented, can realise to themselves that they are but following the course which the saints of every age have run, that they are being made like unto the image of Stephen the first martyr, and of Jesus Christ Himself, the King of Saints, who suffered under a similar accusation. The mere popularity-hunter will, of course, carefully eschew such charges and suspicions. His object is human praise and reward, and he shapes his teaching so as to carefully avoid giving offence. But then the mere popularity-hunter seeks his reward here below, and very often gets it. Stephen, however, and every true teacher looks not for reward in this world. Stephen taught truth as God revealed it to his soul. He suffered the consequence, and then received his crown from that Almighty Judge before whose awful tribunal he ever consciously stood. Misrepresentation must ever be expected by Gods true servants. It must be discounted, borne with patiently, taken as a trial of faith and patience, and then, in Gods own time, it will turn out to our greater blessing. One consideration alone ought to prove sufficient to console us under such circumstances. If our teaching was not proving injurious to his cause, the Evil One would not trouble himself about it. Let us only take good heed lest our own self-love and vanity should lead us to annoy ourselves too much about the slander or the evil report, remembering that misrepresentation and slander is ever the portion of Gods servants. Jesus Christ and Stephen were thus treated. St. Pauls teaching was accused of tending to licentiousness; the earliest Christians were accused of vilest practices; St. Athanasius in his struggles for truth was accused of rebellion and murder; the Reformers were accused of lawlessness; John Wesley of Romanism and disloyalty; William Wilberforce of being an enemy to British trade; John Howard of being an encourager of crime and immorality. Let us be content then if our lot be with the saints, and our portion be that of the servants of the Most High.

Again, we learn from this place how religious zeal can overthrow religion and work out the purposes of evil. Religious zeal, mere party spirit taking the place of real religion, led the Hellenists to suborn men and falsely accuse St. Stephen. They made an idol of the system of Judaism, and forgot its spirit. They worshipped their idol so much that they were ready to break the commandments of God for its sake. The dangers of party spirit in matters of religion, and the evil deeds which have been done in apparent zeal for God and real zeal for the devil, these are still the lessons, true for the future ages of the Church, which we read in this passage. And how true to life has even our own age found this prophetic picture. Men cannot indeed now suborn men and bring fatal charges against them in matters of religion, and yet they can fall into exactly the same crime. Party religion and party zeal lead men into precisely the same courses as they did in the days of St. Stephen. Partisanship causes them to violate all the laws of honour, of honesty, of Christian charity, imagining that they are thereby advancing the cause of Christ, forgetting that they are acting on the rule which the Scriptures repudiate, - they are doing evil that good may come, - and striving to further Christs kingdom by a violation of Hisfundamental precepts. Oh for more of the spirit of true charity, which will lead men to support their own views in a spirit of Christian love! Oh for more of that true grasp of Christianity which will teach that a breach of Christian charity is far worse than any amount of speculative error! The error, as we think it, may be in reality Gods own truth; but the violation of Gods law implied in such conduct as Stephens adversaries displayed, and as party zeal now often prompts, can never be otherwise than contrary to the mind and law of Jesus Christ.

William Robertson Nicoll, ed., The Expositor's Bible (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1887–1910) — public domain. 65 of 66 books (1 Corinthians is not separately keyed, as that volume carries no machine-parseable verse references); section-level commentary keyed to the opening verse. Introductory and overview sections not keyed to a specific passage are excluded.

Act 6:5. Παντὸς, the whole) Beautiful harmony, accompanied with obedience.—Στέφανον, Stephen) From the Greek names, in addition to other reasons (for instance, lest the Hebrews should have an advantage over the Hellenists in the distribution of food), it is inferred that these seven were in part Hebrews, in part Hellenists Many Jews had Greek names.—πλήρη, full) He was eminent in fulness of the Holy Ghost: the others are not excluded; Act 6:3.—πίστεως, of faith) Not merely faithfulness (in temporal matters), but spiritual faith.—Παρμενᾶν, Parmenas) Parmenio. So it is written in the Chronicon Alexandrinum.—προσήλυτον, a proselyte) The proselytes might betake themselves for assistance to him who was himself a proselyte. Proselytes, when well tried, may be even employed in offices.

Bengel's Gnomon of the New Testament — English translation (T&T Clark, Edinburgh, 1860) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

Act_6:5. Παντὸς τοῦ πλήθους] pulcher consensus cum obsequio, Bengel. The aristocracy of the church was a μετ ̓ εὐδοξίας πλήθους ἀριστοκρατία, Plat. Menex. p. 238 D.

πίστεως] is not, with Wetstein, Kuinoel, and others, to be interpreted honesty, trustworthiness; for this qualification was obvious of itself, and is here no peculiar characteristic. But the prominent Christian element in the nature of Stephen was his being distinguished by fulness of faith (comp. Act_11:24), on which account the church united in selecting him first.

Φίλιππον] At a later period he taught in Samaria, and baptized the chamberlain (Act_8:5 ff.). Concerning his after life and labours (see, however, Act_21:8) there are only contradictory legends.

Νικόλαον] neither the founder of the Nicolaitans (as, after Iren. Haer. ii. 27, Epiph. Haer. 25, Calvin, Grotius, and Lightfoot assumed), nor the person from whom the Nicolaitans had borrowed their name in accordance with his alleged immoral principles (Constitt. ap. vi. 8. 3; Clem. Al. Strom. ii. p. 177, iii. p. 187; Thiersch wishes historically to combine the two traditions; see his Kirche im apost. Zeitalt. p. 251 f.; comp. generally, Lange, apost. Zeitalt. II. p. 526 ff., and Herzog in his Encykl. X. p. 338 f.), but otherwise historically quite unknown. Νικολαιταί, Rev_2:6, is an invented Greek name, equivalent to κρατοῦντες τὴν διδαχὴν Βαλαάμ (Act_6:14), according to the derivation of בָּלַע עָם, perdidit populum. See Ewald and Düsterdieck, l.c. Of the others mentioned nothing further is known.

προσήλυτον Ἀντιοχ.] From this it may be inferred, with Heinsius, Gieseler, de Wette, Ewald, and others, that only Nicolas had been a proselyte, and all the rest were not; for otherwise we could not discern why Luke should have added such a special remark of so characteristic a kind only in the case of Nicolas. But that there was also a proselyte among those chosen, is an evidence of the wisdom of the choice.

Ἀντιοχέα] but who dwelt in Jerusalem.

The fact that Stephen is named at the head of the Seven finds its explanation in his distinguished qualities and historical significance. Comp. Peter at the head of the apostles. Chrysostom well remarks on Act_6:8 : καὶ ἐν τοῖς ἑπτὰ ἦν τις πρόκριτος καὶ τὰ πρωτεῖα εἶχεν· εἰ γὰρ καὶ ἡ χειροτονία κοινή, ἀλλʼ ὃμως οὗτος ἐπεσπάσατο χάριν πλείονα. Nor is it less historically appropriate that the only proselyte among the Seven is, in keeping with the Jewish character of the church, named last.

Meyer — Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the New Testament — English translation by Peter Christie, edited by Frederick Crombie (T&T Clark, 1880) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

Act 6:5 . ἤρεσεν ἐνώπιον : phrase not usual in classical Greek; but ἐνώ . in this sense, so κατενώπιον ἔναντι κατέναντι , derived from the LXX ( ἐναντίον frequent in LXX, is also classical); cf., e.g. , Deu 1:23 A, 2Sa 3:36 , 1Ki 3:10 ; 1Ki 3:20 (1Ki 3:21 ), Jer 18:4 , Jdg 7:16 ; Jdg 13:20 , 1Ma 6:60 ; 1Ma 8:21 ( ἐναντίον , ), where the whole phrase occurs. Blass, Grammatik , p. 125, and see on Act 4:10 . πλήθους , cf. Deissmann, Neue Bibelstudien , p. 60, and above on p. 73. ἐξελέξαντο , see above, cf. Act 15:22 ; Act 15:25 , always in the middle in N.T. (Luk 9:35 doubtful), so in LXX. Blass, Grammatik , p. 181, nearly always = בָּחַר . On the importance of the step thus taken as marking a distinct stage in the organisation of the Church, and in the distribution of work amongst the members of what was now a true body politic, see Ramsay, St. Paul , p. 372; Hort., Ecclesia , p. 52, and on its further importance in the emancipation of the Church, see Lightfoot’s “Paul and the Three”. The choice of the names has often been held to indicate the liberal spirit in which the complaint of the Hellenists was met, since the Seven bear purely Greek names, and we infer that the bearers were Hellenists, “elegerunt ergo Graecos non Hebræos, ut magis satisfacerent murmuri Graecorum” Cornelius à Lapide. But the inference is not altogether certain, however probable (see Wendt, Felten), for Greek names, e.g. , Philip, Didymus, Andrew, were also found amongst the Palestinian Jews. Bengel holds that part were Hebrew, part Hellenist, whilst Gieseler hazarded the opinion that three were Hebrews, three Hellenists, and one a proselyte. But we cannot conclude from the fact that they were probably Hellenists, that the Seven were only charged with the care of distribution amongst the Hellenist section of the Church, as there is nothing in the narrative to warrant this. We cannot say that we know anything of the Seven except Stephen and Philip Stephen the preacher and martyr of liberty, Philip the practical worker (Lightfoot, “Paul and the Three”). Baronius hazarded the fanciful conjecture that Stephen as well as Saul was a pupil of Gamaliel. Both Stephen and Philip were said to have been amongst the Seventy, Epiphanius, Haer. , xx., 4 (but see Hooker, v., lxxviii., 5). If so, it is possible that they may have been sent to labour in Samaria as our Lord had laboured there, Luk 9:52 ; Luk 17:11 ; and possibly the after work of Philip in that region, and possibly some of the remarks in St. Stephen’s speech, may be connected with a mission which had been committed to Hellenistic Jews. See further on his name and work, Dean Plumptre, in loco , and also below, notes on chap. 7. He may well be called not only the proto-martyr, but also the first great Christian Ecclesiastic (B.D. “Stephen”). The description given of Stephen (as of Barnabas, so closely similar, Act 11:24 , cf. Num 27:18 of Joshua) shows that the essential qualifications for office were moral and spiritual; see also below on φίλιππον . πλήρη : in some MSS. the word appears as indeclinable, W.H [196] margin, so in Act 6:3 , Act 19:28 , Mar 8:19 , 2Jn 1:8 . Blass, Grammatik , p. 81. St. Luke uses the adjective twice in his Gospel, and eight times in the Acts; on his fondness for such words, see p. 73. πίστεως : not in the lower sense of honesty or truthfulness, but in the higher sense of religious faith, cf. Act 11:24 , “non modo fidelitate sed fide spirituali,” Bengel. φίλιππον , cf. Act 8:5 , Act 21:8 : we may probably trace his work also along the coasts of Palestine and Phœnicia, cf. Act 8:40 , Act 15:3 , Act 21:3 ; Act 21:7 (Plumptre’s notes on these passages), and no doubt St. Luke would have learnt from him, when he met him at Cæsarea, Act 21:8 , much that relates to the early history of the Church, Introd. , 17. It would appear both in his case and in that of St. Stephen that the duties of the Seven could not have been confined to service of the tables. In the deacons M. Renan saw a proclamation of the truth that social questions should be the first to occupy the attention of man, and the deacons were, for him, the best preachers of Christianity; but we must not forget that they did not preach merely by their method and works of charity, but by a proclamation of a Saviour and by the power of the Holy Ghost. In the reference to Philip in Act 21:8 as simply “one of the Seven” we may fairly see one of the many proofs of the unity of the authorship of Acts , see Salmon, Introd. , chapter 18, and Lightfoot, “Acts,” B.D. 2 , and see further, Salmon in the same chapter, on the proof which is afforded in the account of Philip of the antiquity of the Acts ; see below also on Act 21:8 . Πρόχορον : tradition says that he was consecrated by St. Peter Bishop of Nicomedia, and a fabulous biography of John the Evangelist had his name attached to it, as a companion of the Apostle in Asia, and his biographer but we cannot attach any credence to any such professed information; see Blass, in loco , Hilgenfeld, Zeitschrift für wissenschaft. Theol. , 1895, p. 426; B.D. 1 iii. sub v . Of Simon, Parmenas, Nicanor, it cannot be said that anything is known, as is frankly admitted by the Romanist commentator Felten. Νικόλαον προσήλυτον Ἀ .: that the name proselyte is given to him has been held by many to mark him out as the only proselyte among the Seven; otherwise it is difficult to see why he alone is so designated (so Ramsay, St. Paul , p. 375, Lightfoot, Hort, Weiss, Felten, and amongst earlier writers, De Wette and Ewald). No doubt he was a proselyte of the higher and more complete type (a “proselyte of the gate,” the lower type as distinct from a “proselyte of righteousness” is always in Acts φοβούμενος or σεβόμενος τὸν θεόν ), but Ramsay sees in his election to office another distinct step in advance: “the Church is wider than the pure Jewish race, and the non-Jewish element is raised to official rank,” although, as Ramsay himself points out, there was nothing in this step out of harmony with the principle of the extreme Judaistic party ( St. Paul , p. 375, cf. 157). The case of Cornelius was of a different kind, see below on chap. 10. But the notice is all the more interesting because it contains the first mention of the Church afterwards so important, the Mother Church of the Gentiles, Antioch in Syria, and this may point to the reason of the description of Nicolaus as a proselyte of Antioch. It was a notice of special interest to St. Luke if his own home was at Antioch, but we cannot say positively that the notice means that Nicolaus was the only proselyte among the Seven. That the Jews were numerous at Antioch and had made many proselytes we learn from Jos., B. J. , vii., 3, 3: of the supposed connection between this Nicolaus and the sect of the Nicolaitans, Rev 2:6 ; Rev 2:14 , we may hesitate to say with Blass that it is worthy of no more credit than the notice which attaches to Prochorus, although we may also well hesitate to accept it, but it has been advocated by Lightfoot, Galatians , p. 297, and recently by Zöckler, Apostelgeschichte , p. 199. Zöckler goes so far as to see in the list of the Seven a copy of the list of the Apostles, inasmuch as the most distinguished is placed first, the traitor last. But Nicolaus would be fitly placed last if he were the only proselyte. The Patristic evidence in support of the connection in question is by no means conclusive, see Ritschl, Altkatholische Kirche , p. 135 and note (second edition), Felten, Apostelgeschichte , p. 140, and Wendt, in loco , Hilgenfeld, Zeitschrift für wissenschaft. Theol. , p. 425 (1895). Holtzmann on Rev 2:6 holds that the Nicolaitans, who are not to be connected with Nicolaus the deacon, may = symbolically, the Bileamites, Act 6:14 ; so Grimm, sub. v . Νικολαΐτης , if we take the latter as coinciding with the Hebrew בִּלְעָם = destruction of the people .

[196] Westcott and Hort’s The New Testament in Greek: Critical Text and Notes.

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Stephen, &c.--As this and the following names are all Greek, it is likely they were all of the "Grecian" class, which would effectually restore mutual confidence.

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Verse 5. Stephen, a man full of faith and of the Holy Ghost] A person every way properly fitted for his work; and thus qualified to be the first martyr of the Christian Church.

Nicolas, a proselyte of Antioch] A heathen Greek, who had not only believed in the God of Israel, but had also received circumcision, and consequently was a proselyte of the covenant; for, had he been only a proselyte of the gate, the Jews could not have associated with him. On the word proselyte, see the note on Ex 12:43. As this is the only proselyte mentioned here, we may presume that all the rest were native Jews. From this Nicolas, it is supposed that the sect called Nicolaitans, mentioned Re 2:6, Re 2:15, derived their origin. Dr. Lightfoot doubts this, and rather inclines to derive the name "from ניכולא nicola, let us eat together; those brutes encouraging each other to eat meats offered to idols, like those in Isa 22:13, who said, Let us eat flesh and drink wine, &c." Both Irenaeus and Epiphanius derive this sect from Nicolas the deacon. Clemens Alexandrinus gives this Nicolas a good character, even while he allows that the sect who taught the community of wives pretended to derive their origin from him. See Clarke on Re 2:6.

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5. Stephen, full of faith. Luke doth not, therefore, separate faith from the Spirit, as if it also were not a gift of the Spirit; but by Spirit he meaneth other gifts wherewith Stephen was endued, as zeal, wisdom, uprightness, brotherly love, diligence, integrity of a good conscience; secondly, he expresseth the principal kind. Therefore, he signifieth that Stephen did excel first in faith, and, secondly, in other virtues; so that it was evident that he had abundance of the grace of the Spirit. He doth not so greatly commend the rest, because undoubtedly they were inferior to him. Moreover, the ancient writers do, with great consent, affirm that this Nicholas, which was one of the seven, is the same of whom John maketh mention in the Revelation, (Revelation 2:15,) to wit, that he was an author of a filthy and wicked sect; forasmuch as he would have women to be common. For which cause we must not be negligent in choosing ministers of the Church. For if the hypocrisy of men do deceive even those which are most vigilant and careful to fake heed, what shall befall the careless and negligent? Notwithstanding, if when we have used such circumspection as is meet, it so fall out that we be deceived, let us not be troubled out of measure; forasmuch as Luke saith that even the apostles were subject to this inconvenience. Some will ask this question, then, what good shall exhortation do? to what use serveth prayer, seeing that the success itself showeth that the election was not wholly governed by the Spirit of God? I answer, that this is a great matter that the Spirit directed their judgments in choosing six men; in that he suffereth the Church to go astray in the seventh, it ought to seem no absurd thing. For it is requisite that we be thus humbled divers ways, partly that the wicked and ungodly may exercise us; partly that, being taught by their example, we may learn to examine ourselves thoroughly, lest there be in us any hidden and privy starting-corners of guile; partly that we may be more circumspect to discern, and that we may, as it were, keep watch continually, lest we be deceived by crafty and unfaithful men. Also it may be that the ministry of Nicholas was for a time profitable, and that he fell afterward into that monstrous error. And if so be it he fell in such sort from such an honorable degree, the higher that every one of us shall be extolled, let him submit himself unto God with modesty and fear.

John Calvin's Commentaries (1540-1563) — public domain. Text from the Calvin Translation Society English edition (1840s-50s) via the Christian Classics Ethereal Library (ccel.org). Calvin's coverage is partial (roughly two-thirds of the Bible); uncommented books and verses are honest gaps, never fabricated. The 19th-century editor's footnotes and remarks are omitted so the notes are faithfully Calvin's own voice.

(5) And they chose Stephen.—The seven who were chosen all bear Greek names, and it is a natural, though not a necessary, inference, that they were all of the Hellenistic section of the Church, either because that section had a majority, or because the Hebrews generously voted for giving them special representatives of their own. The order of names may represent the actual order of election, Stephen obtaining the largest number of votes, and so on. The position occupied by the new teacher is so prominent that we should welcome anything that threw light on his previous training. Unhappily we cannot advance beyond the region of uncertain tradition, or, at best, of probable inference. The coincidences, however, which suggest that inference are not without interest. (1) The name of Stephanus was not a common one, and appears in few inscriptions. Like so many of the names in Romans 16, however, it is found in those of the Columbarium, or burial-place, of the household of the Empress Livia. The man bearing it is described as a goldsmith (Aurifaber), and as immunis—i.e., exempted from the religious obligations of his trade-guild. He is a freed-man or libertinus. Circumstances, such as the bequest by Herod the Great of his gold plate to Livia (Jos. Ant. xvi. 5, § 1; xvii. 8, § 1), indicate an intimate connection between him and the Imperial Court, and make it probable that the goldsmith Stephanus was a Jew. The business was one in which then, as in later ages, Jews conspicuously excelled, and the exemption just mentioned may well have been, as it were, of the nature of a “conscience-clause” in his favour. The name is found also on a tablet in the museum of the Collegio Romano. (2) It is obvious that the “strangers of Rome”—the Jews from the capital of the empire—were likely to be among the most prominent of the Hellenistæ at Jerusalem. It was antecedently probable that the name of one of that body should stand first on the list. (3) When Stephen becomes conspicuous as a teacher, the synagogue which is the most prominent scene of his activity is that of the Libertines, who can be none other than the freed-men or emancipated Jews from Rome. (See Note on Act_6:9.) (4) Jews from Rome were, we have seen, present on the Day of Pentecost, and some conspicuous converts from among them had been made before Stephen appears on the scene. (See Note on Act_4:37.) (5) The very appointment of the Seven has, as we have seen, its origin in the customs of the trade-guilds of Rome, such as that to which the goldsmith Stephanus had belonged. Taking all these facts together, there seems sufficient ground to believe that in the proto-martyr of the Church, whose teaching and whose prayers exercised so marvellous an influence in the history of the Church of Christ, we have one of the earliest representatives of Roman Christianity. A tradition accepted by Epiphanius in the fourth century leads to another conclusion. Stephen and Philip were both, it was said, of the number of the Seventy who were sent shortly after the last Feast of Tabernacles in our Lord’s ministry into every city and village where He Himself would come. That mission, as has been said in the Note on Luk_10:1, was in its very form, symbolic of the admission of the Gentile nations to the kingdom of God; and it would seem from Luk_9:52; Luk_17:11, as if, at that time, Samaria had been the chief scene of our Lord’s ministry, and therefore of that of the Seventy. In a mission of such a nature, it was not unlikely that Hellenistic Jews should be more or less prominent, and the assumption of some previous connection with Samaria gives an adequate explanation both of Philip’s choice of that region as the scene of his work as an Evangelist (Act_8:5) and of the general tendency of St. Stephen’s speech; perhaps also of one of the real or apparent inaccuracies which criticism has noted as a proof of ignorance either in the speaker or the writer. (See Note on Act_7:16.) Admitting the comparative lateness of the tradition mentioned by Epiphanius, it was still antecedently probable that men, who had been brought into prominence by their Lord’s special choice, would not be passed over in such an election as that now before us; and if, as suggested in the Note on Luk_10:1, the Seventy were the representatives of the Prophets of the New Testament, then it was natural that men should turn to them when they wanted to find men “full of the Holy Ghost and of wisdom.”

Philip.—The coincidence of name with that of the Apostle and with two of Herod’s sons indicates that the name was as common as that of Stephen was rare. Of his previous history we know nothing, except the tradition that he also had belonged to the Seventy. His long-continued residence at Cæsarea just suggests the probability of an earlier connection with that city. The fact that he had four grown-up daughters when St. Paul came to Cæsarea makes it probable that he was married at the time of his appointment.

Prochorus, and Nicanor, and Timon, and Parmenas.—Of these four nothing is known, nor are there any materials even for probable conjecture. The name of Nicanor was memorable as that of the great enemy of Judah, who died in battle fighting against Judas Maccabæus. It appears, later on, as borne by a Jewish friend of Titus and Josephus (Wars, v. 6, § 2). That of Timon had been made conspicuous by the philosopher of Phlius and the misanthrope of Athens.

Nicolas a proselyte of Antioch.—Next to the first two names on the list, the last is that to which greatest interest attaches. (1) It is the first appearance in the history of the Christian Church of the city which was afterwards to be the mother-church of the Gentiles. (On Antioch and its position, see Note on Act_11:19.) Here it will be enough to note that there was a large Jewish population there, and that Herod had gained the favour of the city by building a splendid colonnade along the whole length of its chief street. (2) The name had been made memorable by Nicolaus of Damascus, who wrote a long and elaborate history of his own times, and pleaded for the Jews before Augustus and Agrippa (Jos. Ant. xii. 3, § 2; xvi. 2, § 3; 9, § 4). He appeared at Rome again as counsel for Archelaus, and was for many years the confidential friend and adviser of Herod the Great (Jos. Ant. xvii. 9, § 6; 11, § 3). Finding, as we do, an adopted son of Herod’s at Antioch (Act_13:1), and a proselyte of that city bearing the name of his chosen companion, there seems some ground for assuming a link connecting the three together. (3) In any case Nicolas is memorable as the first person not of the race of Abraham named as admitted to full membership in the Church. He may have sacrificed to Apollo, or taken part in the licentious festivals of the grove of Daphne. The word “proselyte” is taken in its full sense, as including the acceptance of circumcision and the ceremonial law. He was, in technical language, a proselyte of Righteousness, not of the Gate. Had it been otherwise, his conversion would have anticipated the lesson taught afterwards by that of Cornelius. (4) The name of Nicolas has been identified by an early tradition as the founder of the sect of the Nicolaitanes condemned in Rev_2:6. He, it was said, taught men “to misuse the flesh” (Clem. Alex. Strom, iii. 4, p. 187; Euseb. Hist. iii. 29). Some contended that he meant by this that it was to be subdued by a rigorous asceticism: others, that he held it to be a proof of spiritual progress to yield to sensuous impulses, and yet remain pure. The traditions are not of much value, and another interpretation of the name of the sect is now very generally adopted (see Rev_2:6); but the fall of one of the Seven into the error of overstrained rigour, or a reaction from it, is not in itself inconceivable. In the New Testament we never come across his name again.

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5. And the saying pleased the whole multitude] There was clearly no thought of neglecting any, and when the oversight was known and a remedy proposed all were rejoiced thereat.

and they chose Stephen, &c.] If we may conclude about the men who were chosen from the names they bear, every one of the seven was of the Grecians. The names are all Greek, and such a choice marks the desire of all the Church to put an end to every cause of complaint, and as it were to say, We know that as we should not wilfully overlook a Greek who was in need, so no Greek Christian would of purpose neglect a Hebrew widow, and to shew our trust we choose Greeks to have the whole oversight of this duty.

Of the men who were chosen, except Stephen, we hear in future only of Philip (Act_8:5) as a preacher in Samaria, and he is supposed to be and probably is the same person as “Philip the evangelist” mentioned Act_21:8.

There is a tradition that Nicolas was the originator of that error of the Nicolaitanes against which St John speaks in such condemnatory terms in the Apocalypse (Rev_2:6; Rev_2:15). But even in the early ages of the Church there was much uncertainty about this matter, and there is no trustworthy evidence for connecting this Nicolas with the licentious body whom St John condemns. (See Burton’s Eccl. Hist. p. 364.)

Nicolas a proselyte of Antioch] Some have thought that, from this description of Nicolas, he was the only proselyte among the seven, but the distinction of such a special addition may have been given to him because he came from Antioch, while the other six were of Jerusalem.

The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges (gen. ed. J. J. S. Perowne; Cambridge University Press, 1878–1918) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

And the saying pleased the whole multitude,.... The speech the apostles made took with them; all things they proposed were universally approved of; the whole body of the church came into it at once unanimously; they all judged it highly reasonable, that the apostles should be eased of the burden in taking care of the poor, and that it should be transferred to some other persons, and they fixed on the following:

and they chose Stephen, a man full of faith, and of the Holy Ghost; he was a man eminent for his faith in Christ, and his faithfulness to him, and in everything he was concerned, and for his courage and boldness in the cause of Christ and for other gifts and graces of the Spirit, with which he was filled; he was, it is very likely, the most eminent person of all the seven, and is therefore named first; he is afterwards taken notice of, and was the first that suffered martyrdom for Christ, with which he was crowned, answerable to his name, which signifies a crown:

and Philip; who was also an evangelist, and had four daughters that prophesied; and perhaps is the same that went down to Samaria, and preached Christ there with great success, and after that baptized the Ethiopian eunuch;

and Prochorus; of this and the rest, no other mention is made in the sacred writings. He is said by some to be a nephew of Stephen's, and first bishop of Nicomedia; but these are things not certain; and as for the life of the Apostle John, said to be written by him, it is a spurious and fabulous piece.

And Nicanor; of this man we have no other certain account; for that he suffered martyrdom with "Stephen" is not to be depended on. It is a Grecian name; there is one of this name who was a general in Demetrius's army, who was sent by him against the Jews,

"Then the king sent Nicanor, one of his honourable princes, a man that bare deadly hate unto Israel, with commandment to destroy the people.'' (1Mac 7:26)

and there was a gate of the temple, which was called the gate, of Nicanor:

and Timon; he is said to be afterwards bishop of Bersea; though others make him bishop, of Bostra; but with what truth cannot be asserted:

and Parmenus; of him no other account is given, than in the Roman martyrology, which is not to be depended upon, that he suffered martyrdom under Trajan:

and Nicolas, a proselyte of Antioch; who was first a Greek or Gentile, and then became a Jew, a proselyte of righteousness, and then a Christian, and now made a deacon. Some think, that from this man sprung the sect of the Nicolaitanes, spoken of in the Revelations; though others think, that that wicked set of men only covered themselves with his name, or that they abused some words of his, and perverted the right meaning of them; though was it certain he did turn out a wicked man, it is not to be wondered at, that since there was a devil among the twelve apostles, there should be a hypocrite and a vicious man among the first seven deacons. It is observable, that the names of all these deacons are Greek names; from whence, it seems, that they were of the Grecian or Hellenistic Jews; so that the church thought fit to chose men out of that part of them which made the complaint, in order to make them easy; which is an instance of prudence and condescension, and shows of what excellent spirits they were of.

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5 And the saying pleased the whole multitude: and they chose Stephen, a man full of faith and of the Holy Ghost, and Philip, and Prochorus, and Nicanor, and Timon, and Parmenas, and Nicolas a proselyte of Antioch:

Ver. 5. Prochorus, Nicanor, and Timon] Hi tres celebrantur seduli in lectitandis sacris. (Malcolm.) These three (as David’s first three worthies) are famous for their unweariableness in God’s work.

John Trapp, A Commentary or Exposition upon All the Books of the Old and New Testament (1647–1656) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

And the saying - “The word” - the counsel, or command,

And they chose Stephen ... - A man who soon showed Acts 7 that he was in every way qualified for his office, and also suited to defend the cause of the Lord Jesus. This man had the distinguished honor of being the first Christian martyr.

And Nicolas - From this man some of the fathers (Iren., lib. 1:27; Epiphanius, 1; Haeres., 5) says that the sect of the “Nicolaitanes,” mentioned with so much disapprobation Rev 2:6, Rev 2:15, took their rise. But the evidence of this is not clear.

A proselyte - A “proselyte” is one who is converted from one religion to another. See the notes on Mat 23:15. The word does not mean here that he was a convert to “Christianity” - which was true - but that he had been converted at Antioch from paganism to the Jewish religion. As this is the only proselyte mentioned among the seven deacons, it is evident that the others were native-born Jews, though a part of them might have been born out of Palestine, and have been of the denomination of “Grecians,” or “Hellenists.”

Of Antioch - This city, often mentioned in the New Testament (Act 11:19-20, Act 11:26; Act 15:22, Act 15:35; Gal 2:11, etc.), was situated in Syria, on the river Orontes, and was formerly called “Riblath.” It is not mentioned in the Old Testament, but is frequently mentioned in the Apocrypha. It was built by Seleucus Nicanor, b.c. 301, and was named “Antioch,” in honor of his father Antiochus. It became the seat of empire of the Syrian kings of the Macedonian race, and afterward of the Roman governors of the eastern provinces. In this place the disciples of Christ were first called “Christians,” Act 11:26. Josephus says it was the third city in size of the Roman provinces, being inferior only to Seleucia and Alexandria. It was long, indeed, the most powerful city of the East. The city was almost square, had many gates, was adorned with fine fountains, and possessed great fertility of soil and commercial opulence. It was subject to earthquakes, and was often almost destroyed by them. In 588 a.d. above 60,000 persons perished in it in this manner. In 970 a.d. an army of 100,000 Saracens besieged it, and took it. In 1268 a.d. it was taken possession of by the Sultan of Egypt, who demolished it, and placed it under the dominion of the Turks. It is now called “Antakia,” and until the year 1822 it occupied a remote corner of the ancient enclosure of its walls, its splendid buildings being reduced to hovels, and its population living in Turkish debasement. It contains now about 10,000 inhabitants (Robinson’s Calmet). This city should be distinguished from Antioch in Pisidia, also mentioned in the New Testament, Act 13:14.

Albert Barnes' Notes on the Bible (1834–1885) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.

By the names of these seven, it would appear, that they were all Greeks. The reason of this, most probably, is to silence more effectually all future murmurs, by giving to the aggrieved party protectors of their own nation. (Tirinus) --- The history of Stephen occurs hereafter. Philip, in the 8th chapter, is call an evangelist, that is, a preacher of the gospel. By Eusebius, Tertullian, and others, he is called an apostle, that is, an apostolic man. See Lives of the Saints, and Roman Martyrology, June 6. --- St. Jerome says, his [Philip’s] tomb, and that of his four daughters, the prophetesses, were to be seen at Cæsarea, in Palestine. (Ep. ad Eustoch.) --- Of the rest, except Nicolas, nothing certain is known: their acts have perished. Nicolas, as appears from the text, was a proselyte, first to Judaism, then to Christianity. St. Epiphanius, and many others, accuse him of being, by his incontinency, the author, or at least the occasion of the impure sects of Nicoalites and Gnostics. Clement of Alexandria, and St. Augustine, acquit him of this, and attribute the above heresies to an abuse of some expressions, which he uttered in his simplicity, and which were susceptible of a good and bad sense. See Baronius and Tillemont.

George Leo Haydock (1774–1849), Haydock's Catholic Family Bible and Commentary, 1859 edition — public domain. Excludes Psalms (Douay-Rheims chapter numbering differs from Protestant) and Deuterocanonical books (Catholic canon only).

All these being Greek names, it is likely they were all Hellenists, and descended from Hebrew parents, but born in foreign countries; or amongst the Jews they might have other names, which St. Luke, writing this history, translated into Greek.

A proselyte of Antioch: see Act 2:10.

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5. Pleased… whole multitude—The organic consent of the entire body of both sexes, apparently, without which the measure would not have been adopted.

Full… faith… Holy Ghost—Luke pauses after Stephen’s name to add a precious eulogy, premonitory of his future history. It is remarkable that of the names the entire seven are Greek, a uniformity which could not exist without a cause. Hebrews had often indeed Greek names. Of the twelve apostles, as their names appear in the Acts, four are Greek. From the uniformity here it is perhaps too much to infer with some that the whole seven were foreign Greekish Jews added to Hebrew deacons already existing, for, as we have already intimated, the present office was entirely new. We may infer that possibly the Church, magnanimously to the weaker party, chose Greekish Jews alone. Or perhaps three were Hebrews with Greek names, three were foreign Jews, and one proselyte through Judaism from the Gentiles.

Nicolas a proselyte of Antioch—First a Gentile, then a Jew, then a Christian. He was led by Moses from Paganism to Christ. Of the seven, two alone, Stephen and Philip, have any history in the New Testament; while a third, this Nicolas, possesses a singular note in ecclesiastical literature. He was said by Irenaeus to have been the founder of the vile sect of Nicolaitans condemned in Rev_2:14. And this statement is confirmed by the recently discovered work of Hippolytus, an authority considered by Pressense decisive upon this point. It is indeed certain that that infamous sect claimed him as their founder. Yet the statement of Clement of Alexandria, an early and discriminating authority, seems well to account for the assumption of his name by the sect and yet exculpate him from guilt. It was a favourite maxim of Nicolas that “it is right to abuse (παραχρησθαι) the flesh.” This maxim was doubtless identical with the maxim that “all evil lies in matter,” or flesh. (See note on Act_8:8.) Both these maxims could alike be interpreted to mean either that the flesh should be mortified ascetically, or indulged licentiously. It is very possible that Nicolas meant it in an ascetic sense, while a licentious sect used it as a license for infamy and claimed the credit of his name. Just so Epicurus taught in a good sense the maxim that virtue and pleasure coincide, meaning that true pleasure could be attained only by virtue. But the Epicureans made it to mean that the pursuit of pleasure is all the virtue there is.

Daniel D. Whedon (gen. ed.), Commentary on the Old and New Testaments (1874–1909) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

Holy Spirit for Holy Ghost, A.V. The mention of Stephen, and the narrative which follows leading up from Stephen"s martyrdom to St. Paul, (Act_7:60) show to what the writer is tending. He selects the incidents in the history of the Church at Jerusalem which connect themselves most directly with that after history which was the object he had in view. It has been thought by some that the Greek character of all seven names is an indication that they were Hellenists. Such a conclusion, however, is not warranted, as many Jews who were not Hellenists had Greek or Latin names, e.g. Paul, Sylvanus, Aquila, Priscilla, Marcus, Justus, Petrus, Didymus, etc. At the same time, it is likely that some of them were. One, Nicolas, was a proselyte. The object, doubtless, was to ensure perfect fairness of distribution of the Church charities. Stephen and Philip (Act_8:5, etc.; Act_21:8) are the only two of whom we know anything beyond their names.

Vers. 5-8. Stephen, the proto-martyr.

Very little is known of his history. And, except for the sake of introducing Saul of Tarsus, and indicating the influence that Stephen"s teachings and martyrdom exerted upon him, it is difficult for us to trace why the brief record of his work and death are preserved for us by St. Luke. We judge that he was a Hellenist, by his name; but it is not known from what country he came. He is represented by Epiphanius as one of the seventy disciples chosen by Christ. Others think that he was one of St. Peter"s converts on the day of Pentecost. Dr. Dykes fixes on the point most demanding our attention when he says, "The elevation of Stephen to official rank had this for one of its results, that the spiritual and intellectual gifts with which God had endowed this man found at once a wider and more public sphere. Stephen was more than an almoner. He was a deep student of the Old Testament, a theologian of unusual insight, a powerful reasoner and an advanced Christian. In him, too, we find that promise fulfilled which had hitherto been fulfilled to Peter, the promise of such wisdom in speech as no adversary could gainsay. His manner of speech, however, was unlike that of Peter. Peter was a witness, and preached by witness-bearing. Stephen was a student, and preached by exposition and controversy." We dwell on the mission of Stephen as suggested by the terms of the above passages.

I HE WAS A MAN OF FAITH. It is twice noticed that he was "full of faith an expression which may be taken to mean:

1. That he was unusually open and receptive to the Christian truth and grace; for some manuscripts read, "full of grace.

2. Or that he was unusually zealous and active in proclaiming Christ. Faith is sometimes the equivalent of piety, sometimes of activity. The man of faith is, from one point of view, the man of piety; from another point of view he is the man of activity, who readily overcomes hindrances, and, relying on Divine help, goes on in his work, con secreting himself wholly to it. Faith is too often thought of as a cherished sentiment; it is for Christians the inspiration of practical life and duty. They should be earnest in service, and find the earnestness maintained by their trust. Faith evidently kept very near to Stephen the vision of the exalted and living Christ.

II STEPHEN AS A MAN OF POWER. This was shown in

(1) the influence of his personal character;

(2) in his indomitable energy and perseverance;

(3) in his stores of scriptural knowledge;

(4) in his intellectual gifts;

(5) in his unanswerable arguments;

(6) in his ability to add miraculous attestations. Men could not resist the "wisdom and the Spirit by which he spake.

III STEPHEN IS A MAN MOVED BY THE HOLY GHOST. Not simply endowed with intellectual gifts, but under special constrainings of the Holy Ghost; called to a special work, and suitably enriched and inspired for that work. Where there is a full consecration of heart, and an entire openness of life, there the Holy Spirit will come, making the man his agent, and assuring to his labors full success.

IV STEPHEN AS A MAN BEFORE HIS TIME. Only gradually did the true relations between Judaism and Christianity dawn upon the apostles.

But Stephen saw them, and boldly announced them, putting them on men"s thoughts, if he might not win for them a present acceptance. Perhaps, as a Hellenist, he had not so great prejudices to overcome as had the Palestinian Jews. Stephen paid the penalty which usually comes to those whose thoughts and teachings are in advance of their age. His enemies were quite right. From their point of view he was a most dangerous man no one of the Christian band was so dangerous. But he was one of the noblest of men. He is a sublime example. His brief life is an abiding witness. Being dead, he speaks with a martyr"s voice, bidding us do noble things for Christ, and trust him to give us strength for the doing. R.T.

The Pulpit Commentary (1880–1919), ed. H.D.M. Spence-Jones & Joseph S. Exell — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

And they chose - It seems seven Hellenists, as their names show. And Nicholas a proselyte - To whom the proselytes would the more readily apply.

John Wesley, Explanatory Notes Upon the Whole Bible (1754–1765) — public domain. Text via the GEBible commentary corpus.

chose

It is beautiful to see that these were all Hellenists, as the Grecian names show.

The Scofield Reference Bible (1917 edition), notes by C. I. Scofield — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

The election:

v. 5. And the saying pleased the whole multitude; and they chose Stephen, a man full of faith and of the Holy Ghost, and Philip, and Prochorus, and Nicanor, and Timon, and Parmenas, and Nicolas, a proselyte of Antioch,

v. 6. whom they set before the apostles; and when they had prayed, they laid their hands on them.

v. 7. And the Word of God increased; and the number of the disciples multiplied in Jerusalem greatly; and a great company of the priests were obedient to the faith.

v. 8. And Stephen, Full of faith and power, did great wonders and miracles among the people.

In laying their proposition before the congregation, the apostles, although the inspired teachers of the Church, made no arbitrary demands; there is no evidence of hierarchical aspirations. The congregation was to decide as to its course in this matter. But the wisdom of the solution was so obvious that the congregation did not hesitate to act upon it: The word was pleasant before them all. And so they proceeded to elect, choose, seven men that had the attributes named by the apostles: Stephen, of whom it is emphatically stated that he was full of faith, not faithfulness, but belief in the Savior, from which all virtues flow; Philip, Prochorus, Nicanor, Timon, Parmenas, and Nicolas, the last named being a Jewish proselyte hailing from Antioch. It is notable that all the names are Greek names, and although the argument is not conclusive, it is very probable that the generosity of the congregation prompted them to select only Grecian Jews and Greeks for the office. Selfishness and jealousy were to be absolutely unknown in their midst. It is altogether in accordance with the Word and will of God if Christian congregations elect all their own officers and have charge of all their own affairs. And wherever there is danger of disruption, it is far better to yield in indifferent matters and to let charity alone rule. The newly elected deacons were then set before the apostles, who prayed over them with laying on of hands. This was a fine, significant ceremony, by which they were inducted into office, and is properly in use in the Christian Church to this day, but not by divine command.

By the appointment of these seven officers to have charge of the daily ministrations, the apostles gained much time for their important duties, for preaching and teaching and praying, with the result that their work was far more effective than before. The Word of God grew in power, in influence; the number of disciples in Jerusalem was greatly increased; and even a large number of priests were obedient to the faith, accepted the teaching of the faith in Jesus as their Savior. These priests, as the chief servants of the old forms, must have belonged to the most violent opponents of the Church, and their conversion signified a great victory of Christ in the midst of His enemies. It is especially notable that the wonderful change is ascribed to the Word of God, which effectually works wherever it is proclaimed. One of the most zealous exponents of the Word at this time was Stephen, one of the seven deacons that had been elected by the congregation. It is emphasized once more that he was full of faith and power. His faith in Jesus the Redeemer was soundly established. And out of this grew favor with God and man, virtue and power. "Power here means activity or act; as though he would say: He had such a great faith, therefore he also did much and was mighty in deed. For where there is the right faith, there the deed will also follow; and the greater the faith, the more active it is in doing. " But it was a special manifestation of the Spirit’s power which enabled Stephen to perform miracles and great signs among the people. God does His work in His own way, after His own methods, and He had need of Stephen at this time.

Paul E. Kretzmann, Popular Commentary of the Bible (1921–1924) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

Observe here, That to remove the forementioned murmuring at the inequality of the poor’s relief, seven deacons were chosen to assist the apostles, and to dispose of that treasure (which had been laid down at the apostles’ feet) with more indifferency to all fit objects of charity without exception.

Here note, 1. The qualification of the persons chosen; Men full of the Holy Ghost: That is, persons that were extraordinarily assisted by the Spirit to perform the duties required of them; for the office of a deacon was besides the taking care of the poor, to preach the gospel, and to baptize, as it appears Phillip did; had it been only to take care of the poor, they needed not to be so inquisitive to find out men full of the Holy Ghost for that service.

Here observe, That the scripture mentions a threefold fullness of the Holy Ghost, according to a threefold capacity of the receivers.

There is plenitudo sufficientia, the fulness of a vessel; this every believer hath; there is plenitudo abundantia, the fulness of a stream; this the apostles had, when extraordinarily inspired, and filled with the Spirit at the first plantation of the gospel; and there is plenitudo superabundantia, the fullness of a fountain; and this Christ had, It pleased the Father that in him should all fulness dwell Col 1:19.

Note, 2. The manner how these deacons enter into their office; it is by prayer and imposition of hands, They prayed and laid their hands on them Act 6:6.

This rite of laying on of hands was used anciently upon a threefold occasion in the Jewish church: namely,

in their sacrifices. Exo 29:15.

In their blessing, Gen 48:14.

And in their designation unto a charge or office, Num 27:18.

Thus Moses laid his hands on Joshua; and from hence it was derived and brought into the gospel church, when ministers were ordained by the apostles in the primitive times, they laid their hands upon them, 1Ti 5:22.

Note, 3. The mighty success of the gospel, notwithstanding all the violent opposition that was made against it; The word of God, that is, the doctrine of the gospel, increased, the number of believers multiplied: yea, some of the priest themselves, though formerly bitter enemies to Christ, now embraced the faith, and were joined to the church; great is truth, especially the spirit of truth, and will prevail. Naked truth is too hard for armed error. Truth has the strength of God in it, and therefore human power can never prevail against divine truth. So mighty grew the word of God and prevailed.

William Burkitt's Expository Notes on the New Testament (1700–1703) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

5, 6. The proposition of the apostles so wisely provided for an obvious want, that there could be no hesitation about prompt compliance with it, (5) " And the saying pleased the whole multitude; and they chose Stephen, a man full of faith and of the Holy Spirit, and Philip, and Prochorus, and Nicanor, and Timon, and Parmenas, and Nicolas, a proselyte of Antioch, (6) whom they placed before the apostles. And having prayed, they laid their hands on them. " It is a remarkable proof of the generosity of the Church at large, that all these are Greek names, indicating that they were selected from the very party whence the murmuring had proceeded. It was as if the Hebrews had said to the Hellenists, We have no selfish ends to accomplish, not any jealousy toward you who complain, therefore we give the whole business into your hands, and will fearlessly trust our poor widows to your care. So generous a trust could not be betrayed, except by the basest of men.

All that is now known of five of these men is the fact of their appointment to this office. Their names are not again mentioned in the New Testament. It need not be presumed, from this, that they were subsequently inactive or unfaithful, but simply that Luke selected, for his brief narrative, a chain of events in which others were the actors.

Of Nicolas, it is said that he was "a proselyte of Antioch," which means that he was a Gentile who had been proselyted to Judaism before he was converted to Christ. Thus we see that, even at this early period, the apostles had no objection to the reception of Gentiles, provided they had been circumcised.

Stephen is specially described as "a man full of faith and of the Holy Spirit," not because the others were destitute of these excellencies; for one of the qualifications necessary to a selection was that they should be men "full of the Holy Spirit." But if the seven were distinguished above others in this respect, Stephen may have been distinguished in the same way among the seven.

The object of the imposition of hands, on this occasion, has been a subject of some dispute; some contending that it was merely to impart miraculous gifts to the seven, and others, that it was the ceremony of their induction into office. Miraculous gifts were often conferred by the apostles in this way, and there is much probability, to say the least, that they were now conferred upon the seven; but the context forbids us to suppose that this was the only object of the ceremony. The apostles had commanded the disciples to do one thing, and they themselves proposed to do another. The multitude were to " look out " the men, "whom," say the apostles, "we may appoint over this business." The part performed by the apostles was their appointment to office. But all the apostles did was to pray and lay on their hands; hence, this was the ceremony of their appointment. It stands upon record as a precedent, and should be complied with in similar cases. The fact that men can not now confer a miraculous gift by laying on hands, does not relieve them from the obligation to impose hands as a ceremony of appointment to office.

The question as to who should perform this ceremony should give no trouble. The parties who directed in the organization of the Church were the official on this occasion, and so, according to the precedent, should it always be. Whoever plants a Church, or sets one in order, should lay hands on its officers. When there are peculiar circumstances not anticipated by the precedent, they should be provided for according to the wisdom of those concerned, being careful not to violate the precedent. The example of the apostles is binding in this, as in all cases not peculiar to the apostolic office, or to the condition of the early Churches.

J. W. McGarvey (with Philip Y. Pendleton), Commentaries on the New Testament (The Fourfold Gospel, 1914; Acts; and the epistles) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.

5. They chose Stephen. He is specially described on account of the glory of martyrdom that so soon followed. Philip. Distinguished as “Philip the evangelist.” He gave the gospel to Samaria, converted the eunuch, and afterwards lived and labored at Cæsarea (Acts 21:8). The others are not again mentioned. Nicolas a proselyte of Antioch. A Gentile (Greek) of the great city of Antioch, who had been converted to Judaism and been circumcised. This is the meaning of “proselyte” in the New Testament.

B. W. Johnson's The People's New Testament with Notes (1889–1891) — public domain. Electronic text from the Christian Classics Ethereal Library (CCEL) ThML edition.

Their speech pleased the whole multitude

"All the disciples liked their suggestion"

Stephen ... and Nicolaus

These are Greek names, and suggest that all of the men elected were from the Grecian Jewish group of believers. (See: Assumed Knowledge and Implicit Information)

proselyte

a Gentile who converted to the Jewish religion

placed their hands upon them

This represented giving a blessing and imparting responsibility and authority for the work to the seven. (See: Symbolic Action)

translationWords

Stephen

faith

Holy Spirit

Philip, the evangelist

Antioch

believe

pray

unfoldingWord translationNotes — © Distant Shores Media and the Door43 World Missions Community, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Source: git.door43.org/Door43/en_tn.

5. καὶ ἤρεσεν κ.τ.λ., and the saying pleased the whole multitude. The construction ἤρεσεν ἐνώπιον is not classical but is common in the LXX. Cf. Deu 1:23; 2Sa 3:36; 1Ki 3:10. In 1Ma 8:21 we have the very expression καὶ ἤρεσεν ὁ λόγος ἐνώπιον αὐτῶν. There was clearly no thought of neglecting any, and when the oversight was known and a remedy proposed all were rejoiced thereat.

καὶ ἐξελέξαντο κ.τ.λ., and they chose out Stephen, &c. If we may judge of the men’s nationality from the names they bear, every one of the seven was of the Grecians. The names are all Greek, and such a choice marks the desire of all the Church to put an end to every cause of complaint, and as it were to say, We know that as we should not wilfully overlook a Greek who was in need, so no Greek Christian would of purpose neglect a Hebrew widow, and to shew our trust we choose Greeks to have the whole oversight of this duty.

Of the men who were chosen, except Stephen, we hear in future only of Philip (Act 8:5) as a preacher in Samaria, and he is supposed to be, and probably is, the same person as ‘Philip the evangelist’ mentioned Act 21:8.

There is a tradition that Nicolas was the originator of that error of the Nicolaitans against which St John speaks in such condemnatory terms in the Apocalypse (Rev 2:6; Rev 2:15). Irenæus and Tertullian both make this statement, and if there was a Judas among the Apostles, one of the seven may have been an apostate. But even in the early ages of the Church there was much uncertainty about this matter, and there is no very trustworthy evidence for connecting this Nicolas with the licentious body whom St John condemns.

Νικόλαον προσήλυτον Ἀντιοχέα. Some have thought that, from this description of Nicolas, he was the only proselyte among the seven, but the distinction of such a special addition may have been given to him because he came from Antioch, while the other six were of Jerusalem.

Cambridge Greek Testament for Schools and Colleges (Cambridge University Press, 1896; 21 vols, various authors incl. Carr, Maclear, Plummer, Farrar, Lumby, Moule, M. R. James, Simcox) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

5.] πίστεως,—not in the lower sense (Kuin.) of ‘truthfulness,’—but in the higher of faith, the root of all Christian virtues: see ch. 11:24 (De W.).

Of these seven, Stephen and Philip (ch. 8:5, 26, 40; 21:8) only are elsewhere mentioned. On the idea of Nicolas having founded the heretical sect of the Nicolaitanes, Rev 2:6, Rev 2:15 (Lightf. and Grot. from adv. Hær. i. 26, p. 105, and Hær. 25, p. 76), see note ad loc. From his being called προσήλυτον Ἀντιοχέα, some have argued (Heins.) that he only was a proselyte, and none of the rest: some (Salmasius), that all were proselytes,—but the rest, of Jerusalem. But neither inference seems justified: rather I should say that the addition simply imports that he became better known than the rest, from the very circumstance perhaps of Antioch having been afterwards so important a spot in the Christian history (ch. 11:19, note). These names are all Greek: but we cannot thence infer that the seven were all Hellenists: the Apostles Philip and Andrew bore Greek names, but were certainly not Hellenists. There does appear however, in the case of these two Apostles, to have been a connexion with Greeks of some sort, see Joh 12:20-22. Possibly, though Ἑβραῖοι, they may not have been ἑξ Ἑβραίων (see above on ver. 1), but sprung from inter-marriage with Hellenists. And so these seven may have been partly Ἑβραῖοι, though their names seem to indicate, and their office would appear to require, that they were connected with Hellenists, and not likely to overlook or disparage them. The title of ‘deacons’ is no where applied to these seven in Scripture, nor does the word occur in the Acts at all. In 1Ti 3:8 ff. there is no absolute identification of the duties of deacons with those allotted to the seven, but at the same time nothing to imply that they were different. And ἀνέγκλητοι, ib. ver. 10, at all events is parallel with our μαρτυρουμένους, ver. 3. The universal consent of all Christian writers in regarding this as the institution of the office of deacons should not be overlooked: but at the same time we must be careful not to imagine that we have here the institution of the ecclesiastical order so named. The distinctness of the two is stated by Chrysostom, Hom. xiv. p. 115, ὁποῖον δὲ ἆρα ἀξίωμα εἶχον οὗτοι, καὶ ποίαν ἐδέξαντο χειροτονίαν, ἀναγκαῖον μαθεῖν. ἆρα τὴν τῶν διακόνων; καὶ μὴν τοῦτο ἐν ταῖς ἐκκλησίαις οὐκ ἔστιν· ἀλλὰ τῶν πρεσβυτέρων ἐστὶν ἡ οἰκονομία. ὅθεν οὔτε διακόνων, οὔτε πρεσβυτέρων οἶμαι τὸ ὄνομα εἶναι δῆλον καὶ φανερόν. ἀλλὰ τέως εἰς τοῦτο ἐχειροτονήθησαν. So also Œcumenius in loc.: τοὺς ἐκλεγέντας εἰς διακόνους ἐχειροτόνησαν, οὐ κατὰ τὸν νῦν ἐν ταῖς ἐκκλησίαις βαθμόν, ἀλλὰ τοῦ διανέμειν μετὰ ἀκριβείας καὶ ὀρφανοῖς καὶ χήραις τὰ πρὸς διατροφήν. See Suicer sub voce.

But that the subsequent office of deacon was founded upon this appointment is very probable. The only one of these seven who appears in the subsequent history (ch. 21:8), is called Φίλιππος ὁ εὐαγγελιστής, probably from the success granted him as recorded in ch. 8:12. In these early days titles sprung out of realities, and were not yet mere hierarchical classifications.

Henry Alford, The Greek Testament (1849–1861) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

Stephen, etc. The names are all Greek. There is no reason to infer from this that they were all Hellenists. It was customary among the Jews to have two names, the one Hebrew and the other Greek. They were probably partly Hebrews and partly Hellenists.

Marvin R. Vincent, Word Studies in the New Testament (1887–1900) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.