Leadership

The Family Likeness

by Terry Barlow
03/28/15
For Sale
Author requests article critique

  Message Writer
  Hire Writer

Tweet

   The disciple Stephen in the New Testament, one of the preaching deacons of the book of Acts, blazes across the sky of our imagination like a shooting star never to be forgotten. We are told in the 6th chapter of Acts verse 8 that he was “full of grace and power…performing great wonders and signs among the people” (like Someone else we know) and at the close of the same chapter that his face shone before the Sanhedrin “like the face of an angel.” I reason that he had to have been eating “angel food” for his face to have resembled the face of an angel. He also spoke like an angel demonstrating an uncommon grasp of the scriptures and the history of the Jewish people, without being intimidated in front of a body of people who were the supposed experts in those areas. Before he ever came to his last moment on earth he was already displaying a striking resemblance not only to angels but to his master and older brother in the family of God, Jesus Christ. His words to the Sanhedrin “cut to the quick.” It was as though he was attempting a spiritual surgery within them, the circumcision of the heart, with the razor sharp scalpel of the living Word of God; but the angry members of the Sanhedrin (at least the overwhelming majority of them) were resistant and resentful, fighting him every inch of the way, nullifying thereby whatever good he might have done.

  As they began to stone Stephen he cried out, “Lord Jesus, receive my spirit!” Jesus himself had cried out at his own crucifixion, “Father, into your hands I commit (entrust) my spirit!” According to Luke those were the last words he spoke, quoting David in the 31st Psalm. What an honor to David as poet and psalmist that the King of all Kings and Lord of all lords would quote his psalm as his last words on the cross!  Both Jesus and Stephen near death declared their trust in God in the face of what seemed on the surface to be His utter abandonment of them. 

  But this isn’t all that Stephen said in his last moments. Also reminiscent of Jesus’s dying words “Father forgive them for they know not what they do” are Stephens very last words, “Lord, do not charge them with this sin!” He didn’t merely speak these words, he exclaimed them as Jesus must have his own words in order for him to have made himself heard by witnesses. They sincerely and earnestly wanted to spare their assailants any consequences of their grievous sin. Stephen was not merely imitating his master and savior outwardly. That in itself would be commendable enough. But what’s even more, Stephen had become like Jesus in his response from within to outward stimuli, no matter how harsh that stimuli might have been.

  Stephen was manifesting a family likeness to his Lord Jesus Christ, with whose Spirit we were told he was filled (Acts 7, v.55). We too as believers and followers of Christ are likely manifesting a family resemblance to Him in ways we probably don’t even realize. We don’t have to be stoned or crucified to display this likeness. (Though some are and it’s still happening today with shocking regularity!) Because we are indwelt and even filled with the Holy Spirit of God, we possess a new heredity and nature, which reveals itself surprisingly sometimes in how we react or don’t react to everyday life as it “comes at us.” Glory be to God in the highest!