53 you who have received the law that was put into effect through angels but have not obeyed it.
Are we ever guilty of not putting into practice everything we know to be true? Do we ever not fully act on what we know will bring glory to God and accomplish His will? I have to admit that I fall into this category. In fact, I think this is the category of every human being. We all fall short of the glory of God. We all sin. None of us fully obeys. In addressing the religious leaders of his day Stephen points out an obvious truth. They have been the guardians of God’s Word. Their jobs were to protect and teach the Word. Their fulltime jobs were studying and explaining the Scriptures. And that is what they did. But Stephen gets to the point of the matter. They had taught it, but they had not lived it. We can all be guilty of this. We do it when we point a finger at someone and say they wronged us, but we are unwilling to face our own wrongs. We don’t take the proverbial log out of our own eye. The revelation of God through history and in His Word is a powerful record. It records the miraculous and the mundane, because God works in and through both the miraculous and the mundane. These leaders proclaimed that God had worked in history and yet they were unwilling to see God’s hand working right in front of their faces. They had witnessed the events of Jesus’ life and ministry. Many of them had seen and participated in the last events of his life. They had heard the first person accounts of his resurrection and ascension. They had seen and heard about the miraculous healings that had taken place at the hands of the Jesus-followers. That is exactly the reason they have arrested Stephen. They know all these things and yet they are ready to murder him. If you remember from the trials of Jesus, they don’t have the authority to kill anyone. Only the Romans have that authority. And yet here they are taking the law into their own hands. Do we ever do what we know is wrong?
The Arnold Journey 