And he kneeled down, and cried with a loud voice, Lord, lay not this sin to their charge. And when he had said this, he fell asleep.
And he kneeled down, and cried with a loud voice - with something of the gathered energy of his dying Lord (see the note at John 19:30),
Lord - that is, beyond all doubt, 'Lord JESUS,' whom, as Lord, he had just before invoked.
Lay not this sin to their charge. Comparing this with the prayer of his dying Lord who can fail to see how very richly this martyr of Jesus had drunk into his Master's spirit, and that in its loftiest, divinest form?
And when he has said this, he fell asleep. This is never said of the death of Christ-partly, no doubt, because the New Testament writers would not, by using such a term, even seem to teach that the death of Christ was not a real death; but partly, too, to indicate the bitter ingredients in the death of the Head, as contrasted with the stingless placidity of that of His members. (See the note at 1 Thessalonians 4:14.)
Remarks:
(1) How different was Stephen's reading of the Old Testament from that of the learned ecclesiastics before whom he pleaded! They read them merely as the story of their own separation from among the nations of the earth to be the Lord's special people, and of the establishment and preservation of those special laws and institutions, which constituted a wall of separation between them and all other nations and which were their boasts. Stephen read them as the Record of God's high designs of grace and glory, which were eventually to reach the whole human family through the seed of Abraham, as the divinely-appointed channel, as a light shining in a dark place, until the day should dawn and the Sun of Righteousness should arise with healing in His wings. They read in their Scriptures only God's favour for themselves as His chosen people; he read in them only Israel's incurable misapprehension from age to age of God's purposes and plans of mercy, and their obstinate resistance of them. And are there no parallels to this in later ages? Or, rather, does not all Church History proclaim that there are two ways of reading the lively oracles and the providence of God-the carnal and the spiritual; that the great mass of professing Christians-including worldly ecclesiastics of every name-belong to the former class, while a far less proportion of both belong to the latter; and that these two classes differ in nothing essential from the assembled judges who sat to try Stephen, and the friendless prisoner at their bar, whose address was too high for their grovelling apprehensions to reach, and yet too stinging for their self-complacency to pardon?
(2) What a study for those who feel in themselves a vocation to serve the Lord in some special sphere is the history of Moses! Who can wonder at his mistaking the pulsations of this feeling, when roused by the ill treatment of a countryman at the hand of an Egyptian, for a call to begin the work of deliverance then and there? The event taught him, to his cost, that he had anticipated his time by forty years. And, what is remarkable, when his time at length came, the difficulty then was to persuade him to stir at all, or that it would be of any avail to do so. How differently did He act of whom Moses wrote! (See the notes at Luke 3:41-50 , Remark 6, at the close of that section.)
(3) When men 'do not like to retain God in their knowledge, God gives them over to a reprobate mind,' and they sink from higher to lower, from more refined to greaser forms of religious and moral degeneracy. Stephen traces this in his address, from the rejection of Moses in Egypt to the golden calf in the wilderness, and from that to the abominations and cruelties of Moloch-worship in Palestine; and Paul traces it in the pagan world, in the dark picture of their idolatries and abominations which he draws in the opening chapter of his Epistle to the Romans; nor are illustrations of this principle wanting in Christendom. (See the notes at Romans 1:18-32, Remarks 3, 5, 6, at the close of that section.)
(4) In the earliest stages of the struggle between the Gospel and its Jewish enemies, since the apostles could not be spared, we have seen them shielded-partly by the heroic courage imparted to them, and partly by miraculous interpositions in their behalf-from the violence which was ready to crush them. But, that men might see from the first how believers could die for the name of the Lord Jesus, the most distinguished disciple who was not in the number of the twelve was divinely surrendered to the popular fury. And the death of this first martyr of Jesus has forever consecrated martyrdom in times of persecution. And what bright encouragement to the persecuted and martyred servants of Jesus lies in the glorious manifestation of Himself which He vouchsafed to Stephen just before the fury of his enemies burst forth upon him! Nor is it at all certain that it went beyond what has been experienced, times without number by those that have since suffered for His name, if any reliance is to be placed upon human testimony-testimony borne in circumstances the least open to the charge either of imposition or enthusiasm.
(5) What a sublime contrast is presented by that bruised and mangled body, from whose pale lips. there issued in the agonies of death the placid petition, "Lord Jesus, receive my spirit," and the soul which at such a moment sent it up! No dying shriek for mercy is this-such as is extorted at times from the worst of men in their dying moments. It is the unruffled language of one who, just before, had given bread for stones-breathing out a prayer for the forgiveness of his murderers; it is the gentle utterance of one expecting next moment to drop into the arms of his present Lord.
(6) As invoking the name of Jesus seems to have been a characteristic and familiar mark of the early Christians, so to do this just as the spirit is passing out of time into eternity, and in these solemn circumstances to commit to Jesus that most precious of all deposits-one's own spirit-asking Him to receive it on its flight from the body, is such an act of supreme worship as no devout dying believer can be conceived to have offered to one whom he believed to be no more than a creature, or to be other than "God over all blessed forever;" and if the great apostle did not habitually do this very thing which Stephen did with his last breath, what meaning can be put upon the words already quoted, penned by him when about to seal his testimony with his blood, "I know Whom I have believed, and am persuaded that he is able to keep that which I have committed unto Him against that day"? (2 Timothy 1:12.)
(7) What a Religion is that which teaches men to pray for their murderers, in the very spirit as well as the words of Him who was the First to exemplify His own precept, "Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you" (Matthew 5:44); and what a harvest of such has the Church of Christ produced-from the days of Stephen down to the martyrs of Madagascar in our own day-showing that Jesus lives in His people still, returning in His suffering servants blessing for cursing!
Acts 8:1-40 ; Acts 9:1-43 ; Acts 10:1-48 ; Acts 11:1-30 ; Acts 12:1-25 - "YE SHALL BE WITNESSES ... IN ALL JUDEA, AND IN SAMARIA" (Acts 1:8 )