Acts 7:57-60 - Stoned!

7:57,58

They yelled and covered their ears. They did not want to hear what Stephen was saying and so tried to shut him out. We see the same tactic applied again and again over history, and in our own day. Rather than debate the issues, the state will try to shut the gospel up. It has never worked, and it will not work. So they dragged him out of the city and began to stone him. Stoning someone was a very cruel and crude way of killing someone. They tried to shut Jesus up by killing Him, they tried to shut Stephen up by killing him, and have applied the same tactic to many throughout the ages. There are two, indeed three, vital lessons to take from this. The first is that terrible things may happen to God’s people. The second is that these attempts will not work. The gospel was most certainly not stopped. Thirdly, the evil of man ends up being part of God’s plan. It is no less evil for this, but evil does not triumph. So we need to make sure we are on the right side. And Saul was there looking after the coats. There are various speculations as to what effect this had on Paul, but as we are told nothing about this we should regard all ideas as speculations and nothing more. What we do know is that it had no effect on Paul’s immediate future. As we shall see later, Paul, or Saul, went on to engage enthusiastically in the persecution of Christians.

7:59,60

Stephen prayed for Jesus to receive his spirit, and for Him to forgive the people. There are obvious parallels with the death of Jesus. In Luke 23:46 Jesus said “Father, into your hands I commit my spirit”. Note that Stephen is giving Jesus the same place and honour as the Father. This would also be galling to those stoning Stephen. In Luke 23:34 Jesus said “Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing”. However, we should note that some early manuscripts do not have this statement, and it may have been added later. You can read a detailed account of the argument for it being a later insertion by Alan Kurschner if you are interested.