Expositor's Bible Commentary Commentary Acts 6:5

"And the saying pleased the whole multitude: and they chose Stephen, a man full of faith and of the Holy Spirit, and Philip, and Prochorus, and Nicanor, and Timon, and Parmenas, and Nicolaus a proselyte of Antioch;" — Acts 6:5 (ASV)

The apostles made a proposal, but the church, the community of God’s Spirit, made the decision. The apostles therefore laid their hands on the Seven and appointed them to be responsible for the daily distribution of food. The laying on of hands recalls Moses’ commissioning of Joshua in Nu 27:18–23, where through this act some of Moses’ authority was conferred on Joshua. That is evidently what the laying on of hands was meant to symbolize here, with the apostles delegating their authority to the seven selected by the church (cf. also 8:17; 9:17; 13:3; 19:6).

All seven men have Greek names; one of them is singled out as having been a Gentile convert to Judaism (i.e., a “proselyte”). But it is impossible to be sure simply from the names whether all seven were Hellenists, for at that time many Palestinian Jews also had Greek names. Nevertheless, the fact that Luke gives only Greek names suggests that all seven were in fact from the Hellenistic group within the church. Furthermore, Luke does not directly call these seven by the ecclesiastical title “deacon” (diakonos; GK 1356), even though he uses the cognate noun diakonia (“distribution”; GK 1355) in v.1 and the verb diakoneo (“wait on”; GK 1354) in v.2 for what they were to do. Yet the ministry to which the seven were appointed was functionally equivalent to what Paul covered in the title “deacon” (cf. 1 Timothy 3:8–13); in the NT ministry was a function long before it became an office.

Acts 6:1–6 is particularly instructive as something of a pattern for church life today. In the first place, the early church took seriously the combination of spiritual and material concerns in carrying out its God-given ministry. In doing so, it stressed prayer and the proclamation of the Word, but never to the exclusion of helping the poor and correcting injustices. And even when the church found it necessary to divide internal responsibilities and assign different functions, the early believers saw these as varying aspects of one total ministry.

Second, the early church seems to have been prepared to adjust its procedures, alter its organizational structure, and develop new posts of responsibility in response to existing needs and for the sake of the ongoing proclamation of the Word of God. Throughout the years various so-called restorationist movements in the church have attempted to reach back and recapture the explicit forms and practices of the earliest Christians and have tried to reproduce them as far as possible in their pristine forms, believing that in doing so they are more truly biblical than other church groups. But Luke’s narrative here suggests that to be fully biblical is to be constantly engaged in adapting traditional methods and structures to meet existing situations, both for the sake of the welfare of the whole church and for the outreach of the Gospel.

Finally, Luke’s account suggests certain restraining attitudes that could well be incorporated into contemporary churchmanship. Among these are (1) refusing to get involved in the practice of assigning blame where things have gone wrong, preferring rather to expend the energies of God’s people on correcting injustices, praying, and proclaiming the Word, and (2) refusing to become paternalistic in solving problems, which implies a willingness to turn the necessary authority for working out solutions over to others—even, as was possibly the case here, to those who feel the problem most acutely and may therefore be best able to solve it.