Then
they cast him out of the city and stoned him. And the witnesses laid down their
garments at the feet of a young man named Saul.
And as they were stoning Stephen, he called out, “Lord Jesus, receive my
spirit.” And falling to his knees he
cried out with a loud voice, “Lord, do not hold this sin against them.” And
when he had said this, he fell asleep.
Acts 7:58-60
At the end of Acts 7 we learn that Stephen was put
to death for his stance for Christ. And
as they were stoning him, we are told that he prayed for them. He says, “Lord, do not hold this sin against
them.” In this passage, Luke makes a
great contrast between this Christ-hating mob and this man of God.
We see here in this passage that though this mob
hated Stephen, Stephen loved and forgave them.
Christ did something very similar at His crucifixion. We are told as he was being crucified, Christ
prayed for His persecutors and said, “Father, forgive them, for they know not
what they do.”
Stephen prays the same thing. While they are killing him, he prays that God
would show great grace and mercy to them.
In Acts 6, we learned that Stephen was a man “full of grace.” And he shows that here. As he
is being stoned he prays, “Father, please forgive them…show them mercy…show
them your grace.” Only a spirit-filled Christ-like
man of God can love like that.
There was a reformer by the name of George Wishart who
was to be put to death in the 1500s for his faith and history tells us that
before his death he went over to his executioner and kissed him on the cheek
and said, “Lo, here is a token that I forgive thee.”
Jesus did the same thing and so did Stephen. What a testimony! There was all this hate toward Stephen and
there is nothing in Stephen’s heart but love.
And though we don’t know what happened to most of the executioners after
killing Stephen, we do know the fate of one.
In verse 58, we are told that the executioners laid down their garments
at the feet of Saul. This is Saul of
Tarsus, latter to be known as Paul the Apostle.
He was there at Stephen’s martyrdom looking on in approval and may have
even been one of the ones leading this mob who put Stephen to death.
And in this book Luke tells us of the fate of
Saul. We learn Acts 9 that God answered
Stephen’s prayer. Stephen prayed at the
end of Acts 7 that God would show great mercy and grace to His persecutors and
we learn in Acts 9 that God shows mercy and grace to Saul. Augustine, when commenting on this verse, said, “The church owes Paul to the
prayer of Stephen.”
