Acts 6:11 Then they secretly instigated men who said, “We have heard him speak blasphemous words against Moses and God.” 12 And they stirred up the people and the elders and the scribes, and they came upon him and seized him and brought him before the council, 13 and they set up false witnesses who said, “This man never ceases to speak words against this holy place and the law, 14 for we have heard him say that this Jesus of Nazareth will destroy this place and will change the customs that Moses delivered to us.” 15 And gazing at him, all who sat in the council saw that his face was like the face of an angel.
LEARNING FROM OTHERS — Ben Witherington
— Luke is patterning the death of Stephen after the trial and execution of Jesus…[it] only appear[s] in Luke/Acts] This is an important observation since in the Gospels the Jewish people reject Jesus as the Messiah, in Acts they are rejecting the promised Holy Spirit, the foundation for the Messianic Kingdom. Both rejections are punctuated by an execution of an innocent man…A Jew saying the High Priest and Temple was corrupt was not particularly revolutionary–but to say the work of your teacher replaced the work of the Temple would have been radical.
— Angels in the Bible were more likely to send their witnesses to their knees in terror—virtually every person in Scripture who sees an angel immediately has to be told not to be afraid…Despite Stephen’s good reputation, wisdom, and submission to God, he will be killed: the first Christian martyr.a
— When Luke depicted Stephen as having the face of an angel, he was setting the stage for Stephen’s martyrdom.b
LEARNING FROM JESUS —Matthew 5:17-20
“Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them. For truly, I say to you, until heaven and earth pass away, not an iota, not a dot, will pass from the Law until all is accomplished. Therefore whoever relaxes one of the least of these commandments and teaches others to do the same will be called least in the kingdom of heaven, but whoever does them and teaches them will be called great in the kingdom of heaven. For I tell you, unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.
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