We want to live full of faith and the Holy Spirit. We want to live boldly, preaching the gospel; and then we want to die in confidence that when we take our last breath here, our next breath will be taken in his presence.

Stephen’s Boldness

The Bible is very honest about people. With many of the characters we see in Scripture, we see both good things and bad things. But one of the characters that we are shown only good things would be Stephen. We read about him in Acts 6–8.

He’s introduced to us as a man who is full of faith and the Holy Spirit. He’s full of grace. He’s doing miracles, so he’s a man who’s truly living out the faith he claims, and he’s living it out in boldness.

He’s there, it says, in the Synagogue of the Freedmen—which is a Greek-speaking synagogue—and he’s being challenged. Evidently, Stephen is suggesting that you don’t really need the whole temple system anymore because the true temple has come in Jesus himself. You don’t really need to keep offering sacrifices week-by-week at the temple, and you don’t have to live expecting that you’re going to be saved through your keeping of the law.

Read More