To Know and Follow After God

Read: Acts 7: 1-22

Yesterday you’ve read that the great Stephen had been arrested on trumped-up charges of blasphemy. Thus, he was brought before the Sanhedrin. The charges were simple: “This fellow never stops speaking against this holy place [the Temple] and against the Law. For we have heard him say that this Jesus of Nazareth will destroy this place and change the customs Moses handed down to us.” (Acts 6:13-14)

What follows begins St. Stephen’s eloquent defense of his faith. But before we get impressed with the depth of his knowledge, we need to keep in mind that all Jewish students back then had to memorize the Old Testament. So Stephen knew the story of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, as well as how Moses came to be. What was unique and divinely inspired about his testimony is that he understood the role each “hero of the faith” played in the grand narrative of God’s story. Indeed, God’s story is not a huge rulebook about right living, but about a great God and His not-so-great people who live out their faith for His glory (i.e. worships Him).

I just heard that the Bears beat the Packers not along ago, a very good news indeed (apologies to our northern neighbors). Let me ask you, assuming you got both, which is important in playing football: talent or passion? For me, I’d say passion. Sure, a team with talented players is good and all, but imagine playing football with technical perfection except without the passion. I’ll guarantee you that it won’t be as fun as watching a passionate team play football. Good football, as it is with many things, is not the same as passionate football.

And it is the same with Christianity. The members of the Sanhedrin were technically perfect in their adherence to God’s law. Flawless. But they forgot that their faith is not supposed to be about the Law but about God. Thus, in our passage we see Stephen begin with the Old Testament saints before Moses. Abraham, who did not have the Law, obeyed God and it was credited to him as righteousness. If you read verses 1-22, you realized that there was no mention of the Ten Commandments, or any of the 700+ laws in the first five books of the Old Testament.

Are we to say, then, that Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Joseph, etc. were not righteous because they didn’t follow the Law? Of course not, because they followed God, and that’s what counts! God is all that mattered to these great heroes of the faith. And so it must be for us.

Last week I wrote about Marcionism, a heresy. Next week (spoiler alert!) I will write about another heresy, the prosperity gospel. But the other side of the spectrum is fundamentalism, where being a Christian means following a set of rules. No alcohol, no dancing, no this, no that, no nothing. Ladies must wear skirts going below their knees. Dating is only reserved for 20-some-year-olds. How long the list goes depends on your denomination.

Being a witness for Christ is to be Christian. The adjective “Christian” first came to be in Antioch, the meaning being “little Christ”. Indeed, we’re called to be little Christs. When people see us, they shouldn’t just go, “Oh, he doesn’t swear.” or “Oh, she doesn’t do drugs”, but they should go, “These people are Christians.” It is for this reason that St. Paul, who was present when Stephen was stoned, would write later on that all the rule-following and technical qualifications he had were worthless compared to knowing Christ. May we, like Paul and Stephen, find that nothing in this world, even our lives, are worth knowing Christ Jesus as our Lord.