Acts 6:8-10; 7:54-59
Chapter 6
Stephen Arrested
Stephen, full of grace and power, performed great wonders and miraculous signs among the people.Some people then came forward, belonging to the so-called Synagogue of Freedmen from Cyrene, Alexandria, Cilicia, and Asia.
They argued with Stephen, but they couldn’t match the wisdom and the Spirit with which he spoke.
Since they couldn’t face the truth, they paid some men to say, ‘We heard him speak against Moses and against God.’
So they stirred up the people, the elders, and the teachers of the law; they confronted him, arrested him, and brought him before the Council.
Then they brought forward false witnesses who testified:
“This man never stops speaking against our Holy Place and the law.
We even heard him say that Jesus, the Nazorean, will destroy our Holy Place and change the customs which Moses handed down to us.”
And everyone sitting in the Council looked at him, and his face seemed to them like the face of an angel.
Commentaries
Stephen Arrested.
Luke’s depiction of this young Christian, the first martyr of the Church, is compelling: he is filled with the Spirit, passionate and brave, very active in sharing the Gospel, sharp in his accusations, and remarkable in his miracles. He genuinely acts as a prophet. When his opponents, the Jewish authorities, cannot succeed through reasoning and debate, they try to discredit him before the people with smear tactics. They accuse him of blasphemy for speaking against the Law and the temple, which symbolize Jewish identity. For Stephen, the Law and the temple have not been abolished but fulfilled through Jesus, whose coming completes them.