What Can We Learn From Stephen the Martyr? — Spurgeon on Forgiveness While Dying
⏱ 14 min read
You know the chapter. A young deacon, full of grace and power, set apart for the small daily work of distributing food among the Greek-speaking widows in Jerusalem. A man, by Luke’s careful description, full of faith and of the Holy Ghost. And the chapter ends with him kneeling under a hail of stones outside the city walls, his face shining like an angel’s, his last sentence not a curse but a prayer — Lord, lay not this sin to their charge. And the strange detail at the corner of the scene that Luke wants you to notice — the young man named Saul, holding the cloaks of the witnesses, watching. The first martyr’s last prayer was the seed of the apostle Paul. You do not get over that detail when you have noticed it. You should not.
This is the slow version of what Stephen’s life and death actually teach. Not the heroic-martyr version that ends at be brave. The harder, gentler one, the one Charles Spurgeon kept circling in Morning and Evening — that the prayer Stephen prayed under the stones was not a prayer he composed in the moment, but the slow fruit of a prayer-life he had been quietly building for years before the stones ever arrived. The Everspring Bible Study Workbook for Women carries this kind of slow reading into a daily place, if you want somewhere to take the practice after the article. For now — read slowly.
Stephen is named once before Acts 6, and he is not named. He is one of the seven men of honest report the apostles select to take over the food distribution because the widows are being neglected. He is a deacon — the original meaning, one who serves at table. He was not, by his job description, supposed to be a preacher. He was supposed to be a man who counted the loaves and made sure the Hellenist widows got the same share as the Hebrew ones. The work was administrative. The work was small. The work was, on the world’s scale, invisible. And it was inside that small invisible work that the prayer-life grew strong enough to pray for his murderers while the stones were still falling. What can we learn from Stephen in the Bible? That the seed of the prayer at the wall was the prayer at the table. That the holy hours of the deacon’s daily service were what made the final hour of the deacon’s death look like Jesus’ own. (For the companion arc of how the older Christian tradition spoke of dying well, what does the Bible say about death — Spurgeon on dying well walks the slower vocabulary for it. For the joy that does not collapse under suffering — the joy Stephen carried into the stoning — what does the Bible say about joy — Augustine on eternal joy sits beside this one. And for the older Christian distinction between the joy a martyr keeps and the happiness a martyr loses, joy vs happiness in the Bible — the older Christian distinction is the doctrinal floor underneath this article.)
The first passage: the perfect peace that arrived in the chair
“I was sitting, the other night, meditating on God’s mercy and love, when suddenly I found in my own heart a most delightful sense of perfect peace.”
— Charles Spurgeon, Till He Come
Read it once. Then read it again, slowly.
Notice the conditions Spurgeon describes. He was sitting. He was meditating on God’s mercy and love. The peace arrived — suddenly — in the middle of an ordinary evening. He was not performing under crisis. He was not preaching to a thousand people. He was alone, in the chair, with the slow meditation. And the peace, when it came, was delightful — not earned, not engineered, simply given. Stephen’s last hour was a version of Spurgeon’s quiet evening, lifted onto a public stage by violence Stephen had not chosen. The peace he carried into the stoning was the peace he had been carrying in private for years.
This is the line that quietly undoes the modern misreading of Stephen’s death. The hero reading says: he was a martyr because he had unusual courage in the moment. Spurgeon’s reading, and the older Christian one, says the opposite. He was a martyr because he had usual proximity in the chair. The unusual moment was the public stoning. The usual practice was the daily meditation on God’s mercy and love that had filled his chest with the kind of peace that does not flinch when the stones begin. The deacon’s small daily prayer-life, repeated for years inside the small daily work of feeding widows, was the slow building of the chest that, on the day of the stoning, could pray Lord, lay not this sin to their charge and mean it.
What can we learn from Stephen in the Bible at this point in the arc? That the chair is the seed-bed of the wall. That the martyr’s last prayer is the slow harvest of the deacon’s daily one. That nothing you have to do, on the hard public day, will be possible if you have not been doing the small private practice for the quiet years that led up to it. Stephen did not improvise the prayer for his killers. He prayed a prayer he had been praying, in some quieter form, every morning for years.
For the modern Christian woman, this is the part that makes the chair non-negotiable. You are not, by all reasonable measure, going to be stoned for your faith this Tuesday. The hard moments coming for you are smaller and just as real — the difficult conversation, the unjust criticism at work, the family member’s cruelty, the years-long forgiveness you have not yet been able to extend. The capacity to not curse in those moments, to not retaliate, to even, slowly, pray for the person who has hurt you — that capacity is not produced in the moment. That capacity is built, slowly, in the chair. The peace Spurgeon names. The meditation on God’s mercy and love. The slow accumulation of a soul that knows what it has been forgiven, and is, by daily proximity to that forgiveness, becoming a soul that can extend it.
The second passage: the soul ready to hear
“Speak, Lord, for thy servant heareth! O that he would walk with me; I am ready to give up my whole heart and mind to him, and every other thought is hushed. I am only asking what he delights to give. I am sure that he will condescend to have fellowship with me, for he has given me his Holy Spirit to abide with me forever. Sweet is the cool twilight, when every star seems like the eye of heaven, and the cool wind is as the breath of celestial love.”
— Charles Spurgeon, Morning and Evening
Read it twice. The first time at speed, to get the shape. The second time slowly, one phrase at a time.
Speak, Lord, for thy servant heareth. This is the posture Stephen lived in. Acts says he was full of faith and of the Holy Ghost. The fulness was not a one-time event; it was a daily condition. The deacon at the widow-tables was the same man who, on his way home in the evening, sat down in some quiet corner of Jerusalem and said, in some quiet form, speak, Lord, for thy servant heareth. The fulness was not poured into him once. The fulness was the slow daily filling of a soul that had made itself available to be filled.
Notice the phrase every other thought is hushed. The deacon’s life was full of thoughts. The widows. The food. The complaints. The Hellenist-Hebrew tensions inside the early church. The threat from the Sanhedrin growing in the background. The thoughts were many. The hushing of them was the daily evening discipline. Spurgeon describes it as something the soul, by long practice, learns to do — every other thought is hushed. The hushing was the precondition of the hearing. The hearing was the precondition of the dying well.
For you, the modern Christian woman with a thousand legitimate thoughts in your head by Tuesday afternoon, this is the line that returns to you the practice of the hush. You will not hush by trying. You will hush by sitting somewhere quiet for twenty minutes and letting the thoughts settle, one by one, the way silt settles in a glass of water when the glass is not jostled. The hush is the silt settling. You do not have to push the silt down. You have to stop jostling the glass. The chair is the not-jostling. The hush, given enough minutes, comes on its own.
I am only asking what he delights to give. Stephen, in Acts 7, gives the longest sermon in Acts before he is killed. The sermon traces Israel’s whole history of refusing the prophets — which of the prophets have not your fathers persecuted? — and ends in the accusation that the Sanhedrin sitting in front of him has just resisted the Holy Ghost in the same line. The sermon is not what most people would ask to deliver. But it is, Luke tells us, what the Spirit delighted to give him to say. Stephen had narrowed his asking, by years of quiet practice, to what the Spirit delighted to give. When the Spirit gave him the sermon, he could preach it without fear, because the sermon was not his — it was the answer to the prayer he had been praying all along.
The narrowed asking is the most overlooked part of Stephen’s life. The deacon who narrows his asking to what God delights to give is the deacon who, on the day of the stoning, has nothing left to bargain for and can pray the simple prayer for his killers. The woman whose asking has been narrowed for years to what He delights to give is the woman who, in her own hard moment, can extend mercy because she is not still trying to hold on to the small mercies she had hoped He would give her instead.
The somatic that goes with the kneeling under stones
Pause here. The teaching has a body to it, and the body is where Spurgeon’s vocabulary becomes most translatable to a modern week.
Sit somewhere quiet. Bring your hands together in your lap, gently, the way a deacon’s hands rest when he is listening rather than serving. Take one slow inhale. On the exhale, notice the jaw — the small, chronic clenching at the hinge of the jaw that the woman who has been holding her tongue for years carries without knowing. Let the jaw release by a small amount. Not by opening the mouth. By stopping the small ongoing effort to hold the teeth lightly together. Let the breath go all the way out. Let the next inhale arrive on its own.
That single un-clenching of the jaw is the body’s equivalent of Lord, lay not this sin to their charge. The jaw that is clenched cannot pray for its enemies. The jaw that has been allowed to release, by small daily practice, becomes a jaw that can speak the forgiveness when the moment asks for it. Stephen’s last prayer was prayed by a body that had been unclenching its jaw for years. The body of the modern Christian woman whose forgiveness has been getting stuck in the teeth — held, but not released — can begin the unclenching tonight. Sixty seconds. The hands quiet in the lap. The slow exhale. The jaw allowed to release the bracing it has been holding without telling you.
Then take the hands apart and continue reading. The Everspring Bible Study Workbook for Women is built around this kind of small daily settling. One page each day, a short passage, room for the honest sentence, no demand to perform. The workbook is not the stoning, and it is not the sermon. It is the chair Stephen sat in on the quiet evenings before either — the small daily place where the asking gets narrowed, the hush gets practised, and the jaw gets, slowly, allowed to unclench.
The third passage: the heart in right tune for the moment of mercy
“‘Come, then, my Lord, and give me Thy love with Thy grace.’ Take good heed, Christian, that thine own heart is in right tune, that when the fingers of mercy touch the strings, they may resound with full notes of communion.”
— Charles Spurgeon, Till He Come
This is the most piercing of the three passages, because of the image at the centre. Read it once at speed, then read it again, slowly.
Spurgeon imagines the heart as a stringed instrument. The strings have to be in right tune before they will resound. The fingers of mercy — God’s mercy, touching the strings — will find the heart in whatever tune the heart has been left in. If the strings are slack, the touch produces no music. If the strings have been retuned to grievance, the touch produces dissonance. If the strings have been kept, by small daily practice, in right tune, the touch produces full notes of communion.
Stephen’s heart was, by the day of the stoning, in extraordinary right tune. The fingers of mercy touched the strings of a soul that had been quietly tuned, every morning and evening, for years — and the resounding was the prayer for his killers. The full notes of communion that came out of Stephen at the stoning were not the sudden production of an extraordinary man. They were the daily, ordinary tuning of a deacon’s heart, brought into a moment that required everything the tuning had been preparing him for.
Take good heed, Christian, that thine own heart is in right tune. The line is for you. Spurgeon is not addressing martyrs. He is addressing the woman reading Till He Come in a small parlour in London in 1869, and he is, by extension, addressing the woman reading this article now. The tuning of the heart is the daily, unglamorous work of the chair. The slow page. The honest sentence. The half-hour by the window. The minute of un-clenching the jaw. The slow narrowing of the asking to what He delights to give. Each act of tuning is small. The cumulative effect, over years, is a heart that can resound the way Stephen’s resounded — when the fingers of mercy touch it on the unexpected day, the response is communion, not dissonance.
What can we learn from Stephen in the Bible at this third passage? That the tuning is the practice. That the day of the stoning will not announce itself with adequate warning. That the woman who has been tuning her heart, in the chair, for years, is the woman who will be ready — not because she has rehearsed the moment, but because the moment will simply ask of her what her daily life has been quietly preparing her to give.
And then there is the young Saul, holding the cloaks. The detail Luke insists on. The persecutor who, three chapters later, is met on the Damascus road by the very Lord whose mercy Stephen had asked, with his dying breath, to be extended to him. The prayer was answered. The fruit was not visible the day Stephen died. The fruit was Paul. Lord, lay not this sin to their charge — and within five years, the chief of the charge-able was preaching the same Christ Stephen had preached, to half the known world. You do not get to see the fruit of your hardest prayers in the moment you pray them. You may not get to see them at all. Stephen did not. The fruit grew anyway.
What the tuning looks like in your week
You are not Stephen. The stones in your week are not stones. They are the harsh email, the cold sister-in-law, the colleague who has, again, taken credit for what was yours, the family wound that has not, in forty years, healed. The tuning of the heart for these smaller stonings is the same tuning Stephen practised for his. The chair. The slow meditation on God’s mercy and love. The narrowing of the asking. The unclenching of the jaw. The honest sentence in the journal at night. The forgiveness that does not have to be heroic; it has to be tuned, slowly, until the fingers of mercy on the strings produce the right resounding when the day requires it.
The young Saul of your own hard prayers may be alive somewhere — a person you cannot now imagine being changed by the slow forgiveness you are, in this season, being asked to extend. You will not see the change in the moment. You may not see it for years. The Lord saw Saul. The Lord sees the unseen people on the far end of your prayers. Stephen’s prayer was not in vain. Neither is yours. The tuning is the work; the resounding is His.
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A daily home for the practice
The slow practice we just walked has its 140-day form in Bible Study Workbook for Women. Each day a short passage and room for the honest sentence — the small daily chair where the deacon’s heart was, evening by evening, tuned for the day the fingers of mercy would touch the strings in earnest.
The sibling articles in this Bible-figures series sit at what can we learn from King David — Spurgeon on the man after God’s heart and what can we learn from Paul the Apostle — Owen on Paul’s sufferings.
The Everspring Bible Study Workbook for Women carries Spurgeon’s slow vocabulary — the perfect peace, the hushed thought, the right-tune heart, the fingers of mercy on the strings — into a daily companion built for the woman whose own hard prayers are, in some quiet way, being prepared for by every evening of small faithful tuning.
