Look out therefore, brethren, from among yourselves seven men, well reported of, full of [the] [Holy] Spirit and wisdom, whom we will establish over this business
Acts 6 opens with a complaint: Greek-speaking believers said the daily food hand-out was skipping their widows. The apostles handed that job to seven men chosen by the church — and the bar they set for those men was high.
The apostles saw more in the grumbling than a quarrel over food. They moved before it grew.
It was only a "murmuring" that arose, but the apostles did not wait for it to become a loud outcry. They saw Satan's aim in it: to turn them from preaching the Word to social service. So they took steps to end any possible objection. They told the church to pick seven men for the work, men who were to be "of good repute, full of the Spirit and of wisdom." These men were to handle it with a wisdom and honesty beyond all reproach.
Two things happen here. The disciples look out the men, and the apostles appoint them.
The money came from the disciples as a whole. So the apostles call on them to look out from among themselves brothers they could gladly trust. Yet it was the apostles, acting for the Lord in due order, who established them over the business… Loving wisdom turns ungrateful complaints into good. Where the Lord gives, He chooses, as for all ministry in the word; where the assembly gives, they choose, as in this case.
The same writer sets this beside two other patterns. The seven are not gifted preachers, and they are not elders.
The three principles are quite distinct. (1) The Lord chooses and sends those whom He gives as gifts to the church. (2) The apostle, or an apostolic man with an express commission, chooses or establishes elders. (3) The assembly chooses the administrators of its funds, and the apostles set them solemnly over this business.
The first test is what other people say about a man. One writer includes the people outside the faith.
Some would say that we are not to listen to the testimony of the world. God's Word says otherwise. The elder "must be well thought of by outsiders," and so it is here too. The world is a very good judge of an honest or a dishonest Christian. It usually gives a very fair and sound judgment on such a point. I have no objection to the judgment of the world in a matter like that.
Acts 6 set the pattern for a deacon's work.
From Acts 6 we learn that his special work is "serving tables." As the passage shows, this means meeting the bodily and daily needs of the assembly. The work of the overseer is different: it is concerned mainly with meeting spiritual needs. Even so, the deacon still needs spiritual qualifications.
So is some church work merely practical, and not spiritual?
There is no such thing as "everyday affairs" in the Church of Christ. All things are sacred. What an object lesson! A man must be filled with the Spirit to rightly minister to the needs of the saints. Let us remember this.
Notice who the church picked in the end.
Every man chosen came from the murmurers. Grace is the great cure for murmuring. It was the Greek-speaking Jews who murmured. And though they are not called deacons, the seven who did the work of deacons were all Greek-speaking. Not even four Greek-speaking and three Hebrews, but all Greek-speaking. What a lesson in the power of grace when it is active!
Two of the seven went on to do far more than hand out funds.
But deacons, like the seven, were not tied only to the service they were appointed to do. Those who have served well as deacons gain for themselves a good standing and great boldness in the faith that is in Christ Jesus. We see this in Stephen and Philip, who were two of the seven. God greatly honoured the one as a teacher of the truth. He used the other widely to spread the gospel where it had never yet reached.
- Complaint — the apostles met the murmuring over neglected widows at once. They saw a move to pull them away from the Word.
- Delegation — the apostles would not leave preaching the Word for social service. They handed the food and money to seven other men.
- Qualification — three tests: reputation others can verify, fullness of the Spirit, and wisdom. Practical work still demands a spiritual man.
- Choice — those who gave the money chose the men; the apostles appointed them. Gift and spiritual ministry come from the Lord, not from a vote.
- Outcome — grace picked all seven from the very group that complained. Two of them, Stephen and Philip, served well and gained a good standing and boldness.
but *we* will give ourselves up to prayer and the ministry of the word.
A complaint in Jerusalem about the daily serving of food could have pulled the twelve apostles into full-time administration. Their answer draws a line, and it raises the question every servant of God faces: what is my real work, and in what order do I keep it?
The apostles weighed what staying in that work would finally cost. One writer shows how loving wisdom turned an ungrateful complaint to good, and draws a principle out of who does the choosing.
It was not right or fitting that they should give up the word of God to serve tables. Yet that is where staying in that work would have led them. So loving wisdom turns ungrateful complaints to good. And in this an important principle is made plain. Where the Lord gives, He chooses, as He does for all ministry in the word. Where the assembly gives, the assembly chooses, as here.
One writer sees a real effort to pull the apostles off course. In their answer he finds the church's true weapons.
They were well covered in that spiritual armour, which let them turn aside the effort of the "world rulers of this darkness" to divert them from their true service into "serving tables." So they turned to their proper business and said, "But we will devote ourselves to prayer and to the ministry of the word." The ministry of the Word, or as 1 Corinthians 1:18-21 puts it, "the preaching" — "the preaching of the cross" — is one great spiritual weapon. Prayer is another.
The apostles speak with emphasis: this is their work. One writer weighs the order too — prayer comes ahead of the ministry of the word because it keeps that ministry out of man's hands.
"But we," say the apostles with emphasis, "will devote ourselves to prayer and to the ministry of the word." This deserves much weight. For that service of the word, prayer should take first place. So it was with the apostles, but not with the Corinthian believers... Prayer is dependence going out and expressing itself. It is needed all the more so that the ministry of the word does not rest on the will or resources of man. Instead it comes in weakness, in fear and in much trembling, yet with a demonstration of the Spirit and of power, so that the faith of the saints stands not in men's wisdom but in God's power.
That order is not the only one. Another writer sets two orders side by side: which comes first depends on who you are.
For those who are taught, the Word comes first (see 1 Tim. 4:5), because we only pray rightly when the Word has taught us. For those who minister, prayer comes first, because without prayer they will not speak the Word rightly.
The apostles' choice also puts a question to us. One writer asks where our own failure lies.
We see that they recognise the word of God as their true sphere of service. They want to give themselves to it completely, and they join prayer with it, which they put first, as the necessary condition. Without that link of conscious dependence, what gift — even the greatest — could be of any use?... Is it not here, in fact, that we fail so much, and the ministry of the word fails in the same measure?
Another writer says the same about the work of evangelism.
I feel deeply how little prayerful spirit we bring to the work of evangelism... it seems to me that we fall far short when it comes to earnest, persevering, believing prayer. This is the true secret of power.
The chapter then records what came of that decision, poor as the root of it was.
The field was about to be enlarged. Only a poor root, man's complaints, led to this fresh line of action, yet God was moving over it all. He could use these seven, and would give some of them a good standing, as we find soon in Stephen and later in Philip. He marked it in another way too, which showed His approval: "The word of God increased," in spite of the murmuring, "and the number of the disciples multiplied in Jerusalem greatly."
- Guard — the apostles would not let a good work crowd out their own. Staying at the tables would have meant leaving the word of God.
- Give — what they guarded, they gave themselves to fully. Prayer and the word were their true sphere of service, not a side interest.
- Ground — they put prayer first because it expresses dependence. Then the ministry rests on God's power, not on man's resources.
- Gauge — the order flips for the hearer. Those being taught need the word first; those who minister need prayer first.
- Growth — keeping this order bore fruit. The word of God increased and the disciples multiplied greatly, though the whole thing started with a complaint.
And the saying pleased the whole multitude and they chose Stephen, a man full of faith and [the] Holy Spirit, and Philip, and Prochorus, and Nicanor, and Timon, and Parmenas, and Nicolas, a proselyte of Antioch,
The first quarrel inside the young church ended with seven men chosen to hand out food each day. Their names tell one story, and their choice raises a question: who picks a servant, and who appoints him?
The murmuring in verse 1 came from the Greek-speaking Jews against the native Hebrews. Now look at whose names fill verse 5.
The grace shown by the apostles met a remarkable answer in the crowd. All the names are Greek, which points to a Greek-speaking background. It seems they chose every one of the seven from the Greek-speaking believers — the very group that had complained against the Hebrews. Was not this grace enough to make the suspicious ashamed? No one arranged a balance of parties or a fair share of places, the way business habits or a courtroom would suggest.
We would probably arrange it differently: "A modern day church meeting would have proposed to elect a committee composed of equal numbers of the two parties. But not so here" (Arno Clemens Gaebelein).
The apostles had asked for three things in verse 3. The exact wording matters.
The disciples accepted the advice, and quickly found seven men with those qualifications and elected them unanimously. Being "of good repute" was one qualification for the service: the testimony and judgment of other people counted. "Full of the Holy Spirit" was another qualification: full, not filled — which marks the person's general way of life. Full "of wisdom" — this was the third suggested qualification. Of two of the seven — Stephen and Philip — the writer of Acts will have more to tell us. The others who here come on the scene do not appear on the face of the narrative again.
Stephen alone gets a description in this list: full of faith and of the Holy Spirit. That pairing has an order to it.
Christian qualities mark him in a striking way. Scripture calls him a man "full of faith and of the Holy Spirit", "full of grace and power", and marked by "wisdom" (Acts 6:5, 8, 10). These are the outstanding marks of a Christian. Faith must come first. But once we have believed the gospel of our salvation, God seals us with the Holy Spirit. Having the Spirit, we are told to "be filled with the Spirit". If we are filled with the Spirit, grace will mark us — grace that meets every evil in the spirit of Christ. So will power to rise above every circumstance, and wisdom to meet all opposition.
The believers themselves picked the seven. Commentators draw a line between that and how preachers and teachers come to their work.
The Christian crowd gave the money, so the apostles left them free to choose the men who would hand it out. This was as wise as it was gracious. The apostles kept away from anything that looked like favouritism, and stuck to their own work with prayer, which is the condition of power... Where the saints gave, they chose by their best judgment the right men to use what they gave... But they never interfered with the ministers of the word. The Lord gave those, not the church.
Choosing was not the whole of it. The seven were set before the apostles, "and if all chose, none but the apostles appointed them over the business, secular as it was" (William Kelly).
The seven chosen here were then brought to the apostles, and the hands laid on them in verse 6 go back to an Old Testament custom.
Notice too that once "the seven" had been chosen, they came before the apostles, who prayed and laid their hands on them as a sign of fellowship with their appointment. Laying on of hands was an old sign of blessing (Gen. 48:14), above all of official recognition (Num. 27:23), or of handing someone over to God's grace (Acts 13:3, Acts 14:26).
Serving tables sounds like a minor errand. Two of these seven show what it led to.
The service of a deacon might seem a very small matter, but nothing in God's service is really small... You can see this in the later history of two men named in Acts 6:5. Stephen went on to become the first Christian martyr. Philip became a much used preacher of the gospel — the only man in Scripture called an evangelist (see Acts 21:8). Every true servant of God has begun with small and humble things, so none of us should look down on them or avoid them, though that is our natural tendency.
- Grace, not balance. All seven names are Greek. The men came from the very group that had complained — not a balanced committee, but generosity that shamed suspicion.
- Full, not filled. Good repute, the Holy Spirit and wisdom describe a settled way of life, not a burst of feeling.
- Faith first. In Stephen, faith comes first. The Spirit follows, and His marks are grace, power and wisdom.
- Chosen below, appointed above. Those who gave the money chose men they trusted. The apostles prayed, laid hands on them and appointed them. But no one chose the ministers of the word — the Lord gives those.
- Small work, large outcome. Stephen went from serving tables to dying as the first martyr, and Philip became an evangelist. Every true servant starts small.
whom they set before the apostles; and, having prayed, they laid their hands on them.
The believers had chosen seven men to look after the widows who were missing out on the daily distribution. Now they bring those seven to the twelve apostles. What follows takes half a verse: prayer, then hands. Christendom has copied the act ever since, and has often misused it.
The believers made the choice, but the appointing belonged to someone else.
Ministry in the Word needed no apostolic authorisation. Ministers of the Word are gifts from the ascended Christ to men (Ephesians 4:11-12), and God Himself sets them in the assembly (1 Corinthians 12:28)... Filling an office such as elder or deacon was another matter: it needed apostolic authority, direct or indirect. So the apostles told the assembly to select the men "whom we may appoint over this business." We should mark the we here. It spoke of an authority which none of the company except the apostles could exercise... Here we have the first ordination in the Christian Church — an ordination, we repeat, not to preach, but to carry out the office of serving tables.
Those who gave the money could name the men who would hand it out. Elders were a different case.
The whole body of believers chose the seven at Jerusalem, who served as deacons, and then the apostles appointed them. This election by the church does not apply to elders. Every scripture that deals with the appointment of elders makes that plain: it lay with the apostles alone, or with deputies they had openly authorised... Where Christians gave of their money, they were free to choose men they trusted to hand it out.
Acts does not explain the gesture, so commentators look at where the Bible first uses it.
In the opening chapters of Leviticus we read how the man bringing an offering was to lay his hand on the head of it. Of the peace offering we read: "He shall lay his hand on the head of his offering." This meant that the Israelite identified himself with the offering. And that is what the apostles meant by laying on their hands. They identified themselves and the assembly with them in the work for which they had been chosen. It was a very simple and appropriate act to show their fellowship with them.
Notice the order: the apostles pray first, and only then do they lay hands on the seven.
The laying on of hands showed identification with their service. No one should do this lightly or in a hurry (1 Timothy 5:22). Even the apostles saw that they needed God's guidance in prayer before they committed to it. In the same way, in Acts 13 they prayed and fasted first. Only then did they lay hands on Saul and Barnabas, who had just been called to do the Lord's work.
Two of the seven — Stephen and Philip — later preached with power and worked miracles. Did the hands laid on them here qualify them for that?
If someone says he was officially set apart, the answer is that it was to serve tables, not to preach the word of God. The whole point of the office was that the twelve, freed from care about this business, could give themselves to prayer and the ministry of the word. Philip preached with power, Stephen argued with irresistible wisdom, and both worked miracles. None of that came from an appointment which covered the daily distribution and nothing else.
Scripture says plainly that hands were laid on these men. It never says the same about elders. Kelly thinks hands were probably laid on elders too, yet he takes the silence of the record as deliberate.
Probably a similar laying on of hands took place when elders were appointed... But Scripture says nothing about it. That silence seems meant to guard believers from the deadly routine of superstitious form that has spread over Christendom, dishonouring the Lord and harming rule... How weak is the foundation of church pride! How perfect is the word of God, both in what it says and in what it leaves unsaid!
Later generations attached claims to the act that Acts 6 never made.
Christendom has copied this apostolic action and badly misused it, claiming that it hands a man a status and passes on spiritual blessing. Treated instead as a simple recognition and mark of fellowship in service, it would be a scriptural act.
- Chosen — the believers who gave the money named the men they trusted. The choice came from the whole company, not from the leaders.
- Presented — the believers set the seven before the apostles, because only the apostles held the authority to appoint.
- Prayed — the apostles asked God first. Even they would not lay hands on a man in a hurry.
- Identified — the hands said "we are with you in this," like the worshipper's hand on his offering. They did not say "we now give you power."
- Limited — the appointment covered the daily distribution and nothing more. Stephen's wisdom and Philip's preaching came from somewhere else.