1. He already had a good reputation before he was chosen to assist the apostles. He was “of good repute, full of the Spirit and of wisdom.” (Acts 6:3)

2. Saul may have attended or visited a synagogue where Stephen attended. Among the synagogues that disputed with Stephen was the synagogue of the Cilicians. Saul was from Tarsus of Cilicia.

3. Stephen did a lot of teaching. “He won’t… shut… up!”

“This man never ceases to speak words against this holy place and the law, 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.”

Acts 6:13–14

4. Stephen, a Hellenistic Jew, was considered an outsider to the Hebrew community. This made his teaching that the Law and temple were fulfilled in Jesus (presumably what he taught given the allegations against him) especially scandalous.

5. Stephen responds to the accusations in a high-stakes juridical setting. But what initially looks like his defense is turned around: Stephen goes on the offensive. He puts his audience on trial.

6. In his speech Stephen gives an overview of Jewish history, but he doesn’t highlight established Jews settled in the Promised Land. Instead, he highlights mistreated and oppressed strangers rescued by God.

7. Stephen mentions the *portable* tabernacle and the *inadequacy* of Solomon’s temple to contain God.

8. Stephen also mentions agents of rescue sent by God but rejected by Israel.

9. Having primed his audience, Stephen climaxes with his own accusation against the council: They follow in this ancestral tradition of murdering God’s agents of rescue. “As your fathers did, so do you.” (7:51)

10. Paul was almost certainly present for this speech. He guarded the coats of those who, immediately after, stoned Stephen. But Paul’s life ended up being a continuation of Stephen’s ministry. Echoes of the theology of Stephen’s speech are later found in Paul’s own teaching. And Paul’s own salvation is an answer to Stephen’s prayer, “Lord, do not hold this sin against them.” (7:60)

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“Various elements in Stephen’s teaching arguably laid a foundation for Saul’s later theological views as a Christian. Stephen’s dramatic declaration of his preference for the diaspora Jews over the people of the land may well have prepared the way for Saul’s vision of ministry to the Gentiles. Stephen’s view of Moses as a type of the One who was to come perhaps laid the groundwork for Paul’s view of the law of Moses as fulfilled in the person, death and resurrection of Christ Jesus (Rom 10:4). Stephen’s rejection of the centrality of the temple may have diminished the significance of the holy place in the mind of Paul, who would see the new covenant people as the “temple of the living God” (1 Cor 3:16-17; 2 Cor 6:16). Henceforth Saul’s view of these various elements — the land of Israel, the Gentiles, the law and the temple — would each undergo radical change.

“Much of Saul’s dramatic reinterpretation of these elements is attributable to Stephen’s words heard in the Hellenistic synagogues, although Saul radically disagreed with them at the time. However, it was Saul’s acknowledgment of Jesus as *the Christ* on the road to Damascus that transformed his comprehension of Stephen’s words and inspired a radical new worldview.”

Paul Barnett, Jesus and the Rise of Early Christianity, 226

The apostle Paul paces back and forth, closes his pitiful eyes, smiles, looks up, sees his audience, and then gushes his heart out to a scribe:

“[Paul] wears his heart on his sleeve. This spontaneity was no doubt facilitated by Paul’s practice of dictating his letters instead of writing them out himself. As he dictates, he sees in his mind’s eye those whom he is addressing and speaks as he would if he were face to face with them.” (“Paul Apostle of the Heart Set Free”, F. F. Bruce, 16)

I think that we men especially (at least me) have a tendency to say something important and sincere but then quickly clothe it with a humorous joke or roast or light-hearted misdirection.

This too often detracts from the boldness, directness, and felt sincerity of what we genuinely think. It lessens the force of our compliments, criticisms, and encouragements. It makes our relationships thinner than they have to be.

There is no Love, the mother cried
As she rocked her baby side to side
With lullaby sweet
And melodies soft

There is no Right, the justice penned
As he meted sentence strong
For lawless wrongs
Called sin

There is no Meaning, the author wrote
With words to demonstrate his point
Trusting readers
To understand

There is no God, the hiker said
As he watched the sky wash over red
With hues and radiant beams
Of beauty

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I started this poem in 2018 thinking about my dear atheist friend Braden.

Braden was convinced that there was no objective right, wrong, beauty, meaning, true rationality, or God.

And yet he was always so kind and courteous, admiring goodness around him, and reflecting on things far beyond him.

If you want to be clean from all the disappointment and foolishness and alarmism and resentment in Trump-news, then take a bath in the word of God.

If you don’t have Jesus, then Trump is your highest political leader.

Jesus rules with perfect wisdom and purity and righteousness and compassion and holiness. Anything good from Trump comes from Jesus. And anything bad from Trump will be judged by Jesus. Trump will be gone someday and you’ll still have Jesus to reckon with.

Heaven and Earth will pass away, but the words of Jesus will never pass away.

Countercult parachurch ministry serves the body of Christ when it emphasizes the importance of belonging to, quietly serving at, being invested in, and incubating under a healthy local church with multiple qualified elders and Biblically faithful preaching and discipleship.

We show the broader unity of the real Christian big-C Church by being committed to such local churches as our primary spiritual community.

And we honor Christ in not letting false religion dominate exit-narratives, preaching, apologetics, and gospel conversation. Rather, we let Christ dominate, be Lord of, and reign over all such activity.

“We demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God, and we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ.” (2 Corinthians 10:5)

In thousands of years false temples will be in ragged ruins, toppled, forgotten, much like ancient ruins of Greece. But the words of Christ will stand.

Michael Gungor and Derek Webb and Jennifer Knapp and Jars of Clay — these fallen musicians were squatters and thieves.

They were borrowing God’s glory. They were producing beautiful things that did not come from themselves.

They never owned it. It flows from God.

They benefitted from what they now rebel against.

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Why I sometimes still listen to them: What they once enjoyed has been taken away from them and given to me.

By analogy, they forfeited the kingdom-copyright to their own works.

Being an adopted child of the Most High is infinitely more dignifying and significant than being a “literal” spirit child of a regional cosmic patriarch and one of his wives.

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Luke Wayne replies,

“The children I adopted are literally my children. I am not a figurative or symbolic dad. I am literally their dad. Adoption makes one a literal child.

“What would NOT make me a literal child of God would be to say that I am an eternal, uncreated intelligence which was used as raw material by a pair of highly developed humans to assemble a spirit body and then later allowed me to acquire a physical body that was birthed by a completely different set of human parents who were not yet as advanced as the first. I don’t quite know what THAT would make me, but ‘literal child of God’ is certainly not it.” (Luke Wayne, May 22, 2018)

 

“The universe we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is, at bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil, no good, nothing but blind, pitiless indifference.” (Richard Dawkins, The Blind Watchmaker)

vs.

“The only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved… the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn like fabulous yellow roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars and in the middle you see the blue centerlight pop and everybody goes “Awww!”” (Jack Kerouac, On the Road)

“By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.”

John 13:35

Key to understanding this verse is to see the themes of John 13:31-17:26 (The Farewell Discourse):

Receiving God inevitably involves joining the disciples in receiving the entire community of God. One ends up loving whoever God dwells in, whoever he works in, whoever he speaks through, and whoever he sends.

Rejecting God inevitably involves joining the world in rejecting the entire community of God. One ends up hating whoever God dwells in, whoever he works in, whoever he speaks through, and whoever he sends.

The Father sends his Son. The Son gives the Spirit who proceeds from the Father. And the disciples are indwelled by the Father and the Son through the Spirit. The disciples are even in the Father and the Son. And the disciples, in concert with the Father, Son, and Spirit, speak words given to them, by the authority of the one who sent them, and seek to glorify the one who sent them.

Those who hate the Son or his disciples are judged: they are eventually exposed as hating, in concert with the world, the entire mutually-indwelling community of the Father, and the Son, and the Spirit, and the disciples.

Those who love the Son are given a glory, a mission, a home, an indwelling, an enduring peace, a Comforter, a new commandment, and words to speak, in concert with the entire mutually-indwelling community of the Father, and the Son, and the Spirit, and other disciples.

Therefore to be of the disciples, to abide in the true vine, to abide in the words of the Son, to have the Spirit dwelling within you, to have the Father “pruning” you, and making his home in you, and to love other disciples who are undergoing the same renovation and enjoying the mutually-indwelling community, is to provide a witness to the world that forces others to wholly accept or wholly reject both the Father and the Son.

To receive the Son as the one sent by the Father, and as the one dwelling in his sent people.

Or to reject and, eventually, to discover oneself as hating and opposing all of them.

The disciples who love one another are chosen out of the world and hated by the world.

But the disciples love the one who lives in other disciples.

They make their home with those who have their home prepared by Christ.

They make their home with those the Father has made his home with.

They dwell with those whom the Father and the Son dwell in.

They love those whom the Father loves, and the Father loves those who love his Son.

“By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.” (John 13:35)

Please read John 13:31-17:26 and test these things.

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The indwelling has a direction: it begins with the Father and the Son who was loved by the Father before the foundation of the world. We receive, they give. We give only what we have received. We are only given glory or a mission or an indwelling or a message so that we may glorify the one who sent us.