'And they stoned Stephen, calling upon God, and saying, Lord Jesus,
receive my spirit. 60. 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.'--ACTS vii. 59, 60.
This is the only narrative in the New Testament of a Christian
martyrdom or death. As a rule, Scripture is supremely indifferent to
what becomes of the people with whom it is for a time concerned. As
long as the man is the organ of the divine Spirit he is somewhat; as
soon as that ceases to speak through him he drops into insignificance.
So this same Acts of the Apostles--if I may so say--kills off James the
brother of John in a parenthesis; and his is the only other martyrdom
that it concerns itself even so much as to mention.
Why, then, this exceptional detail about the martyrdom of Stephen? For
two reasons: because it is the first of a series, and the Acts of the
Apostles always dilates upon the first of each set of things which it
describes, and condenses about the others. But more especially, I
think, because if we come to look at the story, it is not so much an
account of Stephen's death as of Christ's power in Stephen's death. And
the theme of this book is not the acts of the Apostles, but the acts of
the risen Lord, in and for His Church.
There is no doubt but that this narrative is modelled upon the story of
our Lord's Crucifixion, and the two incidents, in their similarities
and in their differences, throw a flood of light upon one another.
I shall therefore look at our subject now with constant reference to
that other greater death upon which it is based. It is to be observed
that the two sayings on the lips of the proto-martyr Stephen are
recorded for us in their original form on the lips of Christ, in
_Luke's_ Gospel, which makes a still further link of connection between
the two narratives.
So, then, my purpose now is merely to take this incident as it lies
before us, to trace in it the analogies and the differences between the
death of the Master and the death of the servant, and to draw from it
some thoughts as to what it is possible for a Christian's death to
become, when Christ's presence is felt in it.
I. Consider, in general terms, this death as the last act of imitation
to Christ.
The resemblance between our Lord's last moments and Stephen's has been
thought to have been the work of the narrator, and, consequently, to
cast some suspicion upon the veracity of the narrative. I accept the
correspondence, I believe it was intentional, but I shift the intention
from the writer to the actor, and I ask why it should not have been
that the dying martyr should consciously, and of set purpose, have made
his death conformable to his Master's death? Why should not the dying
martyr have sought to put himself (as the legend tells one of the other
Apostles in outward form sought to do) in Christ's attitude, and to die
as He died?
Remember, that in all probability Stephen died on Calvary. It was the
ordinary place of execution, and, as many of you may know, recent
investigations have led many to conclude that a little rounded knoll
outside the city wall--not a 'green hill,' but still 'outside a city
wall,' and which still bears a lingering tradition of connection with
Him--was probably the site of that stupendous event. It was the place
of stoning, or of public execution, and there in all probability, on
the very ground where Christ's Cross was fixed, His first martyr saw
'the heavens opened and Christ standing on the right hand of God.' If
these were the associations of the place, what more natural, and even
if they were not, what more natural, than that the martyr's death
should be shaped after his Lord's?
Is it not one of the great blessings, in some sense the greatest of the
blessings, which we owe to the Gospel, that in that awful solitude
where no other example is of any use to us, His pattern may still gleam
before us? Is it not something to feel that as life reaches its
highest, most poignant and exquisite delight and beauty in the measure
in which it is made an imitation of Jesus, so for each of us death may
lose its most poignant and exquisite sting and sorrow, and become
something almost sweet, if it be shaped after the pattern and by the
power of His? We travel over a lonely waste at last. All clasped hands
are unclasped; and we set out on the solitary, though it be 'the
common, road into the great darkness.' But, blessed be His Name! 'the
Breaker is gone up before us,' and across the waste there are
footprints that we
'Seeing, may take heart again.'
The very climax and apex of the Christian imitation of Christ may be
that we shall bear the image of His death, and be like Him then.
Is it not a strange thing that generations of martyrs have gone to the
stake with their hearts calm and their spirits made constant by the
remembrance of that Calvary where Jesus died with more of trembling
reluctance, shrinking, and apparent bewildered unmanning than many of
the weakest of His followers? Is it not a strange thing that the death
which has thus been the source of composure, and strength, and heroism
to thousands, and has lost none of its power of being so to-day, was
the death of a Man who shrank from the bitter cup, and that cried in
that mysterious darkness, 'My God! Why hast Thou forsaken Me?'
Dear brethren, unless with one explanation of the reason for His
shrinking and agony, Christ's death is less heroic than that of some
other martyrs, who yet drew all their courage from Him.
How come there to be in Him, at one moment, calmness unmoved, and
heroic self-oblivion, and at the next, agony, and all but despair? I
know only one explanation, 'The Lord hath laid on Him the iniquity of
us all.' And when He died, shrinking and trembling, and feeling
bewildered and forsaken, it was your sins and mine that weighed Him
down. The servant whose death was conformed to his Master's had none of
these experiences because he was only a martyr.
The Lord had them, because He was the Sacrifice for the whole world.
II. We have here, next, a Christian's death as being the voluntary
entrusting of the spirit to Christ.
'They stoned Stephen.' Now, our ordinary English idea of the manner of
the Jewish punishment of stoning, is a very inadequate and mistaken
one. It did not consist merely in a miscellaneous rabble throwing
stones at the criminal, but there was a solemn and appointed method of
execution which is preserved for us in detail in the Rabbinical books.
And from it we gather that the _modus operandi_ was this. The
blasphemer was taken to a certain precipitous rock, the height of which
was prescribed as being equal to that of two men. The witnesses by
whose testimony he had been condemned had to cast him over, and if he
survived the fall it was their task to roll upon him a great stone, of
which the weight is prescribed in the Talmud as being as much as two
men could lift. If he lived after that, then others took part in the
punishment.
Now, at some point in that ghastly tragedy, probably, we may suppose as
they were hurling him over the rock, the martyr lifts his voice in this
prayer of our text.
As they were stoning him he 'called upon'--not _God_, as our Authorised
Version has supplied the wanting word, but, as is obvious from the
context and from the remembrance of the vision, and from the language
of the following supplication, 'called upon _Jesus_, saying, Lord
Jesus! receive my spirit.'
I do not dwell at any length upon the fact that here we have a distinct
instance of prayer to Jesus Christ, a distinct recognition, in the
early days of His Church, of the highest conceptions of His person and
nature, so as that a dying man turns to Him, and commits his soul into
His hands. Passing this by, I ask you to think of the resemblance, and
the difference, between this intrusting of the spirit by Stephen to his
Lord, and the committing of His spirit to the Father by His dying Son.
Christ on the Cross speaks to God; Stephen, on Calvary, speaks, as I
suppose, to Jesus Christ. Christ, on the Cross, says, 'I commit.'
Stephen says, 'Receive,' or rather, 'Take.' The one phrase carries in
it something of the notion that our Lord died not because He must, but
because He would; that He was active in His death; that He chose to
summon death to do its work upon Him; that He 'yielded up His spirit,'
as one of the Evangelists has it, pregnantly and significantly. But
Stephen says, 'Take!' as knowing that it must be his Lord's power that
should draw his spirit out of the coil of horror around him. So the one
dying word has strangely compacted in it authority and submission; and
the other dying word is the word of a simple waiting servant. The
Christ says, 'I commit.' 'I have power to lay down My life, and I have
power to take it again.' Stephen says, 'Take my spirit,' as longing to
be away from the weariness and the sorrow and the pain and all the hell
of hatred that was seething and boiling round about him, but yet
knowing that he had to wait the Master's will.
So from the language I gather large truths, truths which unquestionably
were not present to the mind of the dying man, but are all the more
conspicuous because they were unconsciously expressed by him, as to the
resemblance and the difference between the death of the martyr, done to
death by cruel hands, and the death of the atoning Sacrifice who gave
Himself up to die for our sins.
Here we have, in this dying cry, the recognition of Christ as the Lord
of life and death. Here we have the voluntary and submissive surrender
of the spirit to Him. So, in a very real sense, the martyr's death
becomes a sacrifice, and he too dies not merely because he must, but he
accepts the necessity, and finds blessedness in it. We need not be
passive in death; we need not, when it comes to our turn to die, cling
desperately to the last vanishing skirts of life. We may yield up our
being, and pour it out as a libation; as the Apostle has it, 'If I be
offered as a drink-offering upon the sacrifice of your faith, I joy and
rejoice.' Oh! brethren, to die _like_ Christ, to die yielding oneself
to Him!
And then in these words there is further contained the thought coming
gleaming out like a flash of light into some murky landscape--of
passing into perennial union with Him. 'Take my spirit,' says the dying
man; 'that is all I want. I see Thee standing at the right hand. For
what hast Thou started to Thy feet, from the eternal repose of Thy
session at the right hand of God the Father Almighty? To help and
succour me. And dost Thou succour me when Thou dost let these cruel
hands cast me from the rock and bruise me with heavy stones? Yes, Thou
dost. For the highest form of Thy help is to take my spirit, and to let
me be with Thee.'
Christ delivers His servant from death when He leads the servant into
and through death. Brothers, can you look forward thus, and trust
yourselves, living or dying, to that Master who is near us amidst the
coil of human troubles and sorrows, and sweetly draws our spirits, as a
mother her child to her bosom, into His own arms when He sends us
death? Is that what it will be to you?
III. Then, still further, there are other words here which remind us of
the final triumph of an all-forbearing charity.
Stephen had been cast from the rock, had been struck with the heavy
stone. Bruised and wounded by it, he strangely survives, strangely
somehow or other struggles to his knees even though desperately
wounded, and, gathering all his powers together at the impulse of an
undying love, prays his last words and cries, 'Lord Jesus! Lay not this
sin to their charge!'
It is an echo, as I have been saying, of other words, 'Father, forgive
them, for they know not what they do.' An echo, and yet an independent
tone! The one cries 'Father!' the other invokes the 'Lord.' The one
says, 'They know not what they do'; the other never thinks of reading
men's motives, of apportioning their criminality, of discovering the
secrets of their hearts. It was fitting that the Christ, before whom
all these blind instruments of a mighty design stood patent and naked
to their deepest depths, should say, 'They know not what they do.' It
would have been unfitting that the servant, who knew no more of his
fellows' heart than could be guessed from their actions, should have
offered such a plea in his prayer for their forgiveness.
In the very humiliation of the Cross, Christ speaks as knowing the
hidden depths of men's souls, and therefore fitted to be their Judge,
and now His servant's prayer is addressed to Him as actually being so.
Somehow or other, within a very few years of the time when our Lord
dies, the Church has come to the distinctest recognition of _His_
Divinity to whom the martyr prays; to the distinctest recognition of
_Him_ as the Lord of life and death whom the martyr asks to take his
spirit, and to the clearest perception of the fact that He is the Judge
of the whole earth by whose acquittal men shall be acquitted, and by
whose condemnation they shall be condemned.
Stephen knew that Christ was the Judge. He knew that in two minutes he
would be standing at Christ's judgment bar. His prayer was not, 'Lay
not my sins to my charge,' but 'Lay not this sin to their charge.' Why
did he not ask forgiveness for himself? Why was he not thinking about
the judgment that he was going to meet so soon? He had done all that
long ago. He had no fear about that judgment for himself, and so when
the last hour struck, he was at leisure of heart and mind to pray for
his persecutors, and to think of his Judge without a tremor. Are you?
If you were as near the edge as Stephen was, would it be wise for you
to be interceding for other people's forgiveness? The answer to that
question is the answer to this other one,--have you sought your pardon
already, and got it at the hands of Jesus Christ?
IV. One word is all that I need say about the last point of analogy and
contrast here--the serene passage into rest: 'When he had said this he
fell asleep.'
The New Testament scarcely ever speaks of a Christian's death as death
but as sleep, and with other similar phrases. But that expression,
familiar and all but universal as it is in the Epistles, in reference
to the death of believers, is never in a single instance employed in
reference to the death of Jesus Christ. He did die that you and I may
live. His death was death indeed--He endured not merely the physical
fact, but that which is its sting, the consciousness of sin. And He
died that the sting might be blunted, and all its poison exhausted upon
Him. So the ugly thing is sleeked and smoothed; and the foul form
changes into the sweet semblance of a sleep-bringing angel. Death is
gone. The physical fact remains, but all the misery of it, the
essential bitterness and the poison of it is all sucked out of it, and
it is turned into 'he fell asleep,' as a tired child on its mother's
lap, as a weary man after long toil.
'Thou thy worldly task hast done,
Home art gone, and ta'en thy wages.'
Death is but sleep now, because Christ has died, and that sleep is
restful, conscious, perfect life.
Look at these two pictures, the agony of the one, the calm triumph of
the other, and see that the martyr's falling asleep was possible
because the Christ had died before. And do you commit the keeping of
your souls to Him now, by true faith; and then, living you may have Him
with you, and, dying, a vision of His presence bending down to succour
and to save, and when you are dead, a life of rest conjoined with
intensest activity. To sleep in Jesus is to awake in His likeness, and
to be satisfied.