A Year in Luke/ActsSample

Stephen’s speech enrages the Council, their whole lives are consumed with ensuring the law is kept! Yet, touching on last week’s devotions, they were more focused on keeping traditions rather than the spirit of the law. This is why Stephen claims, “you are forever opposing the Holy Spirit!” (v51).

Tom Wright notes, “The law and the Temple were good, God-given gifts, signposts to his eventual intention to fill all creation with his glory. But the hard-hearted people to whom law and Temple had been given didn’t obey the law, and didn’t understand what the Temple was and wasn’t. They did not realize that the Temple was all along a forward-looking signpost, and that, when the reality itself dawned, the signpost would have completed its God-given task.” (pp 43-44, The Challenge of Acts)

Through Jesus, human beings are being built in a Temple-people where God’s Spirit dwells. It is the next step on the journey of God, filling all of creation. Stephen stands as an image bearer of this reality.