Charles Ellicott Commentary Acts 6:7

"And the word of God increased; and the number of the disciples multiplied in Jerusalem exceedingly; and a great company of the priests were obedient to the faith." — Acts 6:7 (ASV)

The word of God increased.—The tense indicates gradual and continuous growth. The fact stated implies more than the increase of numbers specified in the next clause. The “word of God” here is the whole doctrine of Christ as preached by the Apostles and, we must now add, by the Seven who are commonly known as Deacons. As the sequel shows, there was at this stage what we have learned to call an expansion and development of doctrine.

A great company of the priests were obedient to the faith.—This fact is significant in every way. No priest is named as a follower of our Lord. None, up to this time, had been converted by the Apostles. This new fact may fairly be connected with the new teaching of Stephen.

And the main feature of that teaching was, as we shall see, an anticipation of what was afterwards proclaimed more clearly by St. Paul and (if we assign the Epistle to the Hebrews to its probable author) by Apollos: that the time for sacrifices had passed away, and that the Law, as a whole, and the ritual of the Temple in particular, were decaying and waxing old, and ready to vanish away (Hebrews 8:13).

We might have thought this teaching likely to repel the priests and rouse them to a fanatic frenzy. We find, however, that it attracted them as nothing else had previously.

For them, the daily round of a ritual of slaughtered victims and clouds of incense, the cutting-up of the carcasses, and the carrying of the offal, may well have become unspeakably wearisome. They felt how profitless it was to their own spiritual life, and how little power there was in the blood of bulls and goats to take away sin (Hebrews 10:4).

Their profession of the new faith did not necessarily involve the immediate abandonment of their official function; however, they were drifting towards it as a not far-off result, and were prepared to meet it without misgiving, perhaps with thankfulness, when it became inevitable.