An Appeal for Spiritual
Christianity
Acts
22:20 (Acts 6 & 7)
It
would be difficult to find a Christian who did not hold
Stephen in very high esteem. The reading of the account
of his martyrdom, as that of a young man of great gifts
and unimpeachable character, stirs every kind of emotion
into intense reaction. Sorrow, grief, admiration, anger,
contempt, hatred, are all mingled in the tears which are
very near when we hear his last words and see his last
look. Our heads go down when we seem to see in the
darkness of the night the torches of the "devout
men" and hear their hushed tread as they go out to
recover and bury that mangled body - "And devout men
buried Stephen, and made great lamentation over
him". A young, brilliant, brave, and beautiful life
has been taken away by brutal, vicious, bestial fury. The
cause we shall examine, but view the event.
True,
Stephen had flung some serious charges at the Jewish
rulers present. He had supported those charges by long
Jewish history and Scripture, but prejudice will never
listen to the best documented argument. So, at a given
point, they stopped their ears, gnashed at him with their
teeth, and rushed upon him, dragging him outside the
city. The place for stoning was a ramp higher than a man.
The first witness against Stephen threw him from the ramp
in such a way that he fell on his back. Then a large
stone was thrown with great force on his heart. The blow
did not kill him, so, according to the Law (Deut. 17:7)
it was the people's turn. The men took off their white
mantles and laid them at the feet of Saul, who was
present in an official capacity to support the
proceedings. The stones rained upon Stephen who, at a
point, raised himself to his knees and prayed for their
forgiveness, and, as the horrible work reached its
climax, he just said, "Lord Jesus, receive my
spirit." The deed was done. The mangled body lay
motionless.
But,
from that point, we have to begin our enquiry. What did
it all amount to? What was
THE SIGNIFICANCE OF STEPHEN?
Was
Stephen just the first martyr for the faith, to be
followed by many more,
and so to be JUST ONE of the
Noble Army of the Martyrs? Or was there something special
and different about Stephen? We answer
that in an affirmation, and then proceed to uncover that
particular significance.
Stephen
was making spiritual history. What Stephen was fighting
for to the very death was something in Christianity that
even the chief Apostles - Peter, James, John, and the
rest - had not yet seen and come to. It was something
different, even in Christianity.
That
is the affirmation; now for the explanation. The
explanation will be found, firstly in his own discourse,
and then in what eventuated from his death.
1. STEPHEN'S DISCOURSE
In
his discourse to the Jewish rulers and his other
accusers, Stephen ranged the history of Israel with a
single definite thought and object before him. He started
with their racial or national father, Abraham, and went
on through Isaac; Jacob; Joseph; Moses; the people - in
Egypt; the Exodus; the Wilderness; Joshua; David;
Solomon; the Prophets.
In
what he had to say about all these, one feature and
factor runs through all and was governing everything.
That factor is that God is ever moving on, and that
nothing but disaster can come to those who do not go on
with Him. This going on of God, Stephen pointed out, was
not just in the progress of history, even the history of
a chosen people, it was more essentially a spiritual
going on. To Abraham the command was "Get out";
and then, WHEN he was
out, a life of pilgrimage to the end; no settling down or
taking root. Stephen is quite detailed on this.
When,
through Jacob, the national family and potentially the
twelve tribes were secured and the possibility of a stop,
an arrest, and death by famine was threatening, the
continuance and going on was secured by Divine
sovereignty as told in the fascinating story of the life
of Joseph. From Joseph Stephen went on to Moses - his
birth, preservation, education, escape, commission, and
the Exodus. God was going on.
At
this point some of the strongest and most terrible things
are said by Stephen. He is dealing with Israel in the
wilderness and he exposes the hidden causes of retarded
progress.
Remember
that progress is Stephen's subject: God was ever moving
on and man ever contrary. Stephen indicates that the
retarded progress and the extension of a few days into
forty years was due to one thing; it was that, while they
were out of Egypt, Egypt was not out of them. Not only
were they ever literally looking back to Egypt and
inclining to return there but the spirit and principle of
idolatry was still strongly in their hearts. This came
out in the demand for the golden calf; but Stephen -
quoting Amos - said something even more terrible, namely,
that, in some mystic way, the very Tabernacle and Temple
were, in their souls, associated with Moloch and Rephan -
gods of the stellar bodies; and their sacrifices had the
same subtle link. While ostensibly Jehovah was the object
of worship, actually He was mixed up, in their worship,
with other gods. If this is what Stephen meant and what
Amos was actually dealing with when this thing in the
heart had come out to find exposure in the latter days of
the Monarchy, it fully justifies his charge of 'resisting
the Holy Ghost'.
But
Stephen goes on far beyond the wilderness with the same
people. He touches lightly on Joshua, but implies the
same spirit. We know that Joshua in type postulated God's
movement, ever on, ever up: the going on to exploit the
inheritance ever more fully. But, again, that
incorrigible disposition to settle down too soon and not
go on to fullness marked and marred the history of the
conquest.
On
Stephen goes to David and to Solomon. David's desire to
build a house for God on earth received a very reserved
and non-committal response from Him, and was met with the
answer that God would build a house of a different order,
for
"The
Most High dwelleth not in houses made with hands...
The heaven is my throne,
And the earth the footstool of my feet:
What manner of house will ye build me? saith the Lord:
Or what is the place of my rest?
Did not my hand make all these things?". (Acts
7:48,49).
What
Stephen saw, and what is stated, intimated, and implicit
in the New Testament (a monumental document on the matter
is 'the Letter to the Hebrews'), was that Solomon was -
at most - but a figure of a greater 'Son', and his
temple, with all its glory, wealth, and beauty, was only a
pointer ONWARD to "A
house not made with hands"; what Peter - after a
difficult and painful transition - called, God's SPIRITUAL
house.
Stephen
concludes with a comprehensive gathering of all this
history into "the Prophets", and virtually says
that the spirit of prophecy was related to this
ever-future, onward, and ultimate SPIRITUAL
goal of God.
What
again, then, does all this amount to? On the one side, it
is a mighty exposure and denunciation of the incorrigible
habit and disposition of GOD'S PEOPLE to
bring what is essentially heavenly down to earth and
fasten it there; to make of the spiritual something
temporal; to make of the eternal something which will not
- and cannot - abide; to make form, means, orders, and
technique all-important. In a word, to have things fixed
and boxed, so that the Holy Spirit is thwarted and
frustrated in His ever-onward and ever-sovereign movement
and innovation, if He so choose. The most dominant note,
the most imperative cry of the New Testament is "Let
us go on". But the context of this cry is -
"outside the camp". The writer of those words
in the Letter to the Hebrews, who has so much in common
with Stephen, makes it abundantly clear that
"outside the camp" means outside of all that
which in its Judaistic nature systematizes and
crystallizes CHRISTIANITY into
a set and settled form: into something earth-bound and
final.
On
the other side, all this is a revelation of how fierce
and terrible will be the opposition of such systems to a
purely and definitely SPIRITUAL
testimony. Unless there is a conforming, there will at
least be ostracism, and at most martyrdom.
2. THE EFFECT OF STEPHEN'S
TESTIMONY
Now
we have to go back to Jerusalem and look into the real
meaning and effect of Stephen's testimony, and consider
its particular meaning for Christianity.
Stephen
had - at the cost of his life - dared to touch the
Temple, and the Temple as the heart and sum of the Jewish
system and hierarchy. The effect of his pronouncement was
to repudiate that whole system and its earthly centre. He
had seen that it had been but a pointer to the heavenly
and spiritual which was reached and realised in the entry
of Jesus Christ into this world. He had
been spiritually immanent in all the aspects of that
system and that history, dominating all its features and
represented in all its constituents. They had never been
the REALITY, the ESSENTIAL,
but only ways and means by which the real
was signified; they were signs not realities. That which
they had signified had now come in fullness and finality,
therefore, EARTHLY, material,
and localised Temples, Priests, Sacrifices, Vestments,
Forms, Names and Titles, Cults, Orders, Times and
Seasons, and everything else that made up such a system
had, at least, served its purpose, and, at worst, become
an empty shell, and a hindrance to the spiritual.
Stephen,
in statement and implication, said this, and said it in
no uncertain terms and manner. There was no equivocation
in his declaration, and he made
it quite clear that to have been blind to the spiritual
significations of their history, and to continue in that
blindness now that the One signified had come was nothing
less than 'resisting the Holy Spirit'.
Very
well, then, that is so far as Jewry was concerned; but
there was a twilight transition period in Jerusalem.
While the Apostles and disciples had seen that Jesus
fulfilled so much of the Scriptures (as see Luke 24),
they certainly had but a very limited apprehension of His
full significance as to the old system. They were still
'going up to the Temple', and that, AT THE
HOUR OF THE SACRIFICE.
Their
last recorded question to the Lord before His ascension
shows that they were still clinging to the Jewish hope of
a temporal Messianic kingdom on the earth, in spite of
His parable of the lord returning after A
LONG TIME, and all His teaching on the Holy
Spirit, etc.
Is
that why, when those who stood on Stephen's ground were,
after his death, "all scattered abroad", the
Apostles were excepted. They had not wholly
repudiated Judaism, circumcision, the Temple, the
sacrifices, etc., as Stephen had.
Why
did Saul of Tarsus immediately seek out, in Jerusalem
(Acts 9:13) and unto 'distant cities' (Acts 26:11), those
who had identified themselves with Stephen's position,
and leave the Apostles alone?
True, the Apostles were having a hard time with the
rulers, but not on Stephen's ground. James seems to have
been able to hold things together with a group on a
partial Judaistic ground, a compromise; and Peter and
John were, for some time, with him, as 'Acts' shows. In
Jerusalem the Christian Church was largely Judaistic,
within the covert of the Temple and the ordinances. But,
the Holy Spirit was moving on, and a point is reached
where it is A QUESTION FOR CHRISTIANITY
whether it was going on or going to stand still, which
would mean going back.
The
fact is that Stephen had caused a division - the first
division - in Christianity, a division which has
characterized Christianity right down the centuries into
our own time.
The
Holy Spirit was moving sovereignly toward a position of
utter spirituality and heavenliness; the very essentials
of Christ now being in Heaven and the Holy Spirit being
here as the characteristic of this dispensation. Peter,
himself, was caught up in that sovereign movement in the
episode of the house of Cornelius. He prevaricated under
the influence of James and "certain" others;
but his letters show that he made the transition. This
was also abundantly true of John.
But
the great event in the sovereign movement of the Holy
Spirit was the 'apprehending' of the super-Stephen, Saul
of Tarsus. It was he who, in the seeing of Christ in a
blaze of illumination, saw all the implications of
Stephen's testimony. Henceforth the battle between both
the immovable Judaisers and the twilight Christians on
the one hand, and an utterly spiritual Church and
Christianity, on the other, would focus upon him, until
that full revelation had been embodied in his letters and
he also fell fighting. Paul's spiritual position, as
opposed to a temporal or a semi-mundane system was called
"a heresy" (Acts 24:24, margin), and was
referred to as a "sect which is everywhere spoken
against" (Acts 28:22).
If
we are prepared to call Paul's position a
"heresy" or a "sect", let us remember
that it was that for which Stephen died, and let us see
clearly what he and his great successor really stood for,
and for which he died. It is something very searching. It
reached the first Apostles. It sifted the Church at its
beginning. It lies at the root of very much Christian
history. It explains many spiritual tragedies. It
accounts for much loss of power. It is the meaning of
much talk about 'schism', 'sectarianism' and
'divisiveness'.
It
would be a vain hope to expect that all Christians - even
evangelical Christians - would see the distinction that
is presented, or that, if they did see it, would pay the
price of accepting it. But there is no doubt or question
that the most vital consequences for Christianity are
bound up with this issue.
Shall
we continue in or revert to what is VIRTUALLY
a semi-Judaistic Christianity: an earth-tied,
man-managed, system? Shall we fall into that
pseudo-spiritual mistake which leads only to limitation -
at least; the mistake of collecting from the New
Testament, either in actualities or by deductions,
certain forms and procedures, 'methods', and
technicalities, and shaping them into a 'New Testament'
formula, 'blueprint', and 'pattern'? Shall
we attempt that vain thing of making a fixed mould from
'New Testament methods' and pour everything into it?
Shall we constitute OUR churches
on the basis of popular votes, majorities against
minorities, natural selection, etc., etc.
Or
shall we see what Stephen and Paul saw, that the only
Prototype of the Church and the churches is Christ
Himself; that the revelation of Jesus Christ by the Holy
Spirit is the only true way of building: that the
anointing of the Holy Spirit and the qualification by
spiritual gift is the Divine way of 'office', function,
and responsibility: that this is the true ORGANISM
springing and forming out of spiritual LIFE: that
it is conception and not imitation, birth and not
manufacture: that prayer and definite guidance coming out
of it and not the 'Board Room' or its equivalent is the
Holy Spirit's 'method'?
Stephen
was the only one in the New Testament who used Christ's
chosen title for Himself - "the Son of man",
and in that designation all the universality and
super-national, super-denominational, and super-racial
features are embodied.
What
we have written CAN be a key
to the Bible, especially the New Testament, and while we
believe profoundly that it represents the mind of the
Spirit, we can only trust that there will be found a
sufficient spiritual concern to lead to a re-reading of
Scripture with Stephen's testimony in mind.
No
one, we trust, will think that there is any intention of FORCING
division in mind or act. As we said in our heading, this
is an appeal for spiritual Christianity. Christianity has
had, and still has, its battles with heathenism and
paganism, and this has meant many martyrs. But this does
it no spiritual harm. Where real harm is done and loss is
suffered, is in the battle within itself against
retrogression, downward spiritual gravitation,
traditionalism, legalism, and natural-mindedness. It is
the battle against superficiality; which often
masquerades as 'simplicity', a fear of depth.
Yes,
this battle is a costly one, and has not infrequently
brought the heavy stones against those who have stood for
the essential spiritual character of this dispensation.
From
"A Witness and A Testimony" magazine Jan-Feb
1963 Volume 41-1