First, the persecution of
the early church was integral to the community’s identification with her
Lord. Stephen’s martyrdom is of
particular interest in this connection, but there are a number of antecedents
in the church’s experience well before this.
Luke is intentional in his efforts to cause his reader to draw the
connection between Christ and his people, the church.
For instance, all things
seem to be going quite well for the fledgling church, until Peter and John’s
first arrest and hearing before the Sanhedrin (Acts 4:1—22). The council’s primary question for the
apostles was hardly original: “By what power or by what name did you do this?”
(v 7). These professional persecutors
had challenged Jesus with the same question just weeks earlier (Lk 20:2). In Jn 15:20, Jesus said to the apostles that
if he, the Master, would be persecuted, they, the servants, should expect no
less—persecution would come.
As an emphatic
case-in-point, illustrating the solidarity between Jesus and his church’s
experience, take the martyrdom of Stephen.
Stephen’s case before the council is in part the fulfillment of Jesus’
words in Lk 21:15, “I will give you…wisdom, which none of your adversaries will
be able to withstand or contradict.”
Then in what lead to Stephen’s trial, his dispute with the synagogue of
the Freedmen (Acts 6:8—9), we read that, regarding Stephen’s apologetic, “they
could not withstand the wisdom and the Spirit with which he was speaking” (v
10). In Jesus’ trial, there were many
“false witnesses: (Matt 26:59—60), so also in Stephen’s (Acts 6:13). The climax of both Jesus’ and Stephen’s defense
has them pronouncing Jesus as Messiah through an admixture of the Danielic ‘Son
of Man’ and Ps 110:1 (see Lk 22:69 and Acts 7:56 respectively). In his dying breath, Jesus prays for the
Father to receive his spirit (Lk 23:46).
Stephen, in his dying breath, prays, “Lord Jesus, receive my spirit”
(Act 7:59). Finally, both pray for their
enemies/murderers (Lk 23:34; Acts 7:60).
Therefore, Christian
persecution is explicable only in terms of Christ’s persecution. Luke struggles to make this point clear. Nothing makes this clearer than Jesus’ first
confrontation with Saul the persecutor in Acts 9. “Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me?...I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting” (vv 4, 5). However, it was the “disciples of the Lord”
that Paul was persecuting (v 1). This
demonstrates the covenantal identification between the Lord Jesus and his
church, which gives all Christian persecution its ultimate significance.
Secondly, this persecution served in a
disciplinary capacity. As we read the
narrative of Acts, we are anticipating the radical movement and expansion set
forth in the commissioning statement of Jesus in 1:8, “Jerusalemà ends of the earth.” As it is, however, all the way to chapter 7
it appears that the disciples are quite at ease in Zion. It is not until 7:58 that anyone ventures
beyond the walls of Jerusalem, and in this case it is Stephen being “cast out
of the city” to be stoned! This remark,
I believe, serves as a prolepsis, a brief remark that looks forward to further
development; and in this case, the development of the programmatic statement of
1:8. Consider how chapter 8 begins: “And
there arose on that day a great persecution against the church in Jerusalem…” (v 1a).
And what was the result of this great persecution against the Jerusalem church? It was the outworking of Jesus commission to
the church in Jerusalem. “And they were
all scattered throughout the regions of Judea
and Samaria…Now all those that were scattered went about preaching the
word” (vv 1b, 4).
Persecution was,
therefore, a means of the Lord for accomplishing his church’s mission to the
world. In part, the book of Acts is an
explanation and defense of the separation of the church from Judaism, and that
the church, not Judaism, is the rightful heir to the OT religion. This should not surprise us, since in Lk 21:13,
Jesus tells the apostles that just such persecution “will be your opportunity
to bear witness” (cf. Acts 1:8). Additionally, it is Paul’s persecution at the
hands of the Jews that drives the story of Acts, finally to Rome, “the end of
the earth.”
