He that is greatest among you, let him be as the younger. — The latter word naturally carried with it, as in the old monastic rule, juniores ad labores, the idea of service. In Acts 5:6, “the young men” appear as a distinct body in the society of disciples, with functions like those of the later deacons or sextons; and the same sense is, perhaps, traceable in 1 Timothy 5:1; Titus 2:6; 1 Peter 5:5.
He that is chief. — Here again the Greek word came to have a half-technical sense as equivalent, or nearly so, to bishop or presbyter. So in Hebrews 13:7; Hebrews 13:17; Hebrews 13:24, where it is rendered “they that have the rule over you.”
He that doth serve. — The verb is the same as that from which the word “deacon” is derived, and, with Matthew 23:11; Mark 10:43, probably suggested the ecclesiastical use of the word. It is noticeable that the first recorded example of that use is in the salutation to “the bishops and deacons” of Philippi (Philippians 1:1), the Church which more than any other was under St. Luke’s influence. The “seven” of Acts 6:3; Acts 6:5, of whom we commonly speak as the first deacons, are never so named in the New Testament.