On This Day: Stephen’s Prayer for Saul’s Forgiveness

   Then they cast him out of the city and stoned him. And the witnesses laid down their garments at the feet of a young man named Saul. And as they were stoning Stephen, he called out, “Lord Jesus, receive my spirit.” And falling to his knees he cried out with a loud voice, “Lord, do not hold this sin against them.” And when he had said this, he fell asleep. And Saul approved of his execution. (Acts 7:58-8:1)

   Sometime in the past couple of weeks, someone posted another stereotypical post about Christians only having two options in dealing with how we relate to those who wrong us. One option is always presented as forgiveness (even if the person hasn’t repented), the other option is always presented as anger or bitterness. Since we all know we shouldn’t give room for sinful anger or bitterness, we are tricked into thinking we must then choose to forgive people who have never repented of what they have done.

   When I ask people who believe this where in the Bible do we have an example of God, the prophets, Jesus, or the apostles forgiving someone who is clearly unrepentant, I am never given a text where this is shown. I can show multiple examples of unrepentant people not being forgiven, but there isn’t one example where a person is unrepentant about their sin but is forgiven anyway.

   However, there are two Scriptures that are claimed as proof that we are to forgive unrepentant people. One is when Jesus from the cross prayed, “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.” The other is when Stephen was dying and he prayed, “Lord, do not hold this sin against them.” I am told that this was them forgiving their enemies. And, because I just came to Stephen’s prayer this morning, it seems timely to once again share some very liberating insights.

   My response to the claim that Jesus and Stephen were forgiving their enemies is always something to the effect of, “Read it again.” If the texts were telling us that Jesus and Stephen were forgiving their persecutors, the wording would need to be from Jesus, “Father, I forgive them…”, and from Stephen, “Lord, I do not hold this sin against them.”

   The wording by both Jesus and Stephen is prayer. They are both talking to “our Father in heaven”, and they are both praying for their persecutors. When we realize Jesus DID instruct us to pray for our persecutors, and we see that this is what Jesus was doing, we can back up a bit and ask ourselves what it would look like for us to pray for our enemies like that.

   Back in 1993, I was introduced to the concept of “freedom in Christ”. I was on the verge of heading through one of the most painful valleys of my life as childhood trauma and abuse came leaking out of my people. I began to see how many Scriptures spoke of God doing things for us that I had not seen him doing in me or others, and I felt a longing to experience God the way I was learning in his word.

   In the 3+ decades since then, it has become clear to me why it is so important to show people the difference between praying that God would forgive someone (like Jesus and Stephen did) and just forgiving them even if they haven’t repented (which can’t be found in Scripture). When we know that God never forgives people until they repent, then our prayer for their forgiveness is with the understanding that people “presume on the riches of his kindness and forbearance and patience, not knowing that God's kindness is meant to lead you to repentance”.

   Why do we need God’s kindness leading us to repentance if we are forgiven without repenting? If all our sins are cancelled without repenting, why did Jesus say that “repentance for the forgiveness of sins should be proclaimed in his name to all nations, beginning from Jerusalem” (Luke 24:7)? There is no forgiveness anywhere in the Bible without repentance.

   It is very liberating for abused and traumatized people to understand that no one is forgiven until they repent. Their abusers, their persecutors, their enemies, will not be forgiven unless they repent. If we pray for God to bless them, he won’t answer that prayer without humbling them to repentance first.

   So, instead of these victims cringing at the feeling of injustice with the “just forgive” mantra that can’t be found in the Bible, they can let God lead them into his grace where they truly want God to reach those people with his love and mercy because they have no hope until they repent and are forgiven.

   And when we can truly pray for these people that God would forgive them, and we know this can only happen if they repent, we are able to accept God’s will in this because we can allow ourselves to want these people to experience God’s kindness leading them to repentance just as we experienced for ourselves.

   I know I am in the minority when I show these things from God’s word. If you’re not convinced, I’m still waiting for someone to show me a scene in Scripture where someone is clearly unrepentant and either Yahweh or his prophets in the Old Testament, or Jesus and his apostles in the New Testament, forgave the unrepentant person who was continuing in sin. In all my times through the Bible, I have not come across one instance of this.

   To encourage me in this viewpoint of Stephen’s prayer for his persecutors (not him forgiving his enemies), I found this comment from William Hendriksen in his commentary on Acts 7. He wrote,

Reflecting on the death of Stephen and Paul’s consent, Augustine made this penetrating comment:
    “If Stephen had not prayed,
    the church would not have had Paul.”[1]

Augustine (and William Hendriksen with him) saw that Stephen’s prayer, “Lord, do not hold this sin against them,” is linked to our introduction to sinful Saul, who became the beloved apostle Paul. When we continue down the road and see how God’s kindness brought Paul to repentance, we can see how Stephen’s prayer was answered in God’s gift to Paul of repentance and faith.

   For me, this hit the bull’s eye of my heart today, not as a way to win a debate on the topic of “to forgive or not to forgive”, but to realize that I have “Sauls” in my life who need me to pray for their forgiveness. I know God will only answer that prayer by leading them to repentance (I have lots of Beatitudinal Valley illustrations to go along with this), and I know I want them to experience that mercy from God as I have on so many occasions.

  Ultimately, we do not pray to make God do something our way. Our praying is to line us up with God’s will. God leading me to pray this way is his will, and it is up to him if I ever see the answer. Stephen did not see his prayer answered that day because he died just seconds later. But seeing Paul’s arrival in eternity some decades later (whatever that feels like in the spiritual realm) would have been an experience of joy filled with praise to God.

   Today, I will pray in hope and praise in confidence. God will work it for good, and I might live long enough to see some of my Sauls reconcile with both God and his people. In the meantime, praying the way Jesus and Stephen did keeps my heart free, and that’s what the people in my life need from me each day. 

 

© 2025 Monte Vigh ~ Box 517, Merritt, BC, V1K 1B8

Email: in2freedom@gmail.com

Unless otherwise noted, Scriptures are from the English Standard Version (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version. ESV® Text Edition: 2016. Copyright © 2001 by Crossway Bibles, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers.)

 

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[1] Kistemaker, S. J., & Hendriksen, W. (1953–2001). Exposition of the Acts of the Apostles (Vol. 17, pp. 281–282). Baker Book House.

On This Day: When God Serves Notice on Sin

   But a man named Ananias, with his wife Sapphira, sold a piece of property, and with his wife's knowledge he kept back for himself some of the proceeds and brought only a part of it and laid it at the apostles' feet. But Peter said, “Ananias, why has Satan filled your heart to lie to the Holy Spirit and to keep back for yourself part of the proceeds of the land? While it remained unsold, did it not remain your own? And after it was sold, was it not at your disposal? Why is it that you have contrived this deed in your heart? You have not lied to man but to God.” When Ananias heard these words, he fell down and breathed his last. And great fear came upon all who heard of it. The young men rose and wrapped him up and carried him out and buried him.

   After an interval of about three hours his wife came in, not knowing what had happened. And Peter said to her, “Tell me whether you sold the land for so much.” And she said, “Yes, for so much.” But Peter said to her, “How is it that you have agreed together to test the Spirit of the Lord? Behold, the feet of those who have buried your husband are at the door, and they will carry you out.”  Immediately she fell down at his feet and breathed her last. When the young men came in they found her dead, and they carried her out and buried her beside her husband. And great fear came upon the whole church and upon all who heard of these things. (Acts 5:1-11)

   Yes, I have kazillions of questions about this. However, they come down to two main ones. Why doesn’t God judge liars in the church today the way he did that one time? And what is the church to do about lying, hypocrisy, cheating in business, deceiving, bearing false witness, and whatever synonymous expressions come to mind?

   When we face scenarios where God did something once and it never appears to be repeated, I see it as God serving notice. A singular event can still reveal things about what God is like as a person, what he wants us to understand about what he’s up to, and how he works to get things done. Noah’s flood will never happen again, but we certainly learn a lot about God in that unique event. Moses’ burning bush was a once-in-history experience, but through it we come to know so much about who God is as the great “I AM”, and how he speaks to his people about what he is doing so we can join him in his work.

   When we come to God’s death sentence on Ananias and Sapphira, and the way it instilled godly fear in everyone when they realized how seriously God took dishonesty, we must accept that this is still what he is like, it is still how he feels about falsehood, and he still wants us treating lying and deceiving as seriously as he does.

   The church is living between that unique event when God pronounce a death sentence on Ananias and Sapphira, and the coming judgment when “all liars, their portion will be in the lake that burns with fire and sulfur, which is the second death” (Revelation 21:8). God has served notice through his judgment on the church’s first two liars, and he has served notice of the judgment that will come on all who live in such sin.

   When I then consider how the church is to live in light of this revelation of God, I am aware that many of us may wonder why God doesn’t do this judgment again with those people who have hurt us so terribly by lying about us, bearing false witness about us, and deceiving people into believing their lies instead of the truth. Yes, I have often asked God why it wouldn’t be advantageous to stop liars from doing so much damage to the church!

   The problem is stated by the Psalmist: “I said in my alarm, ‘All mankind are liars’” (Psalm 116:11). You see, if God put to death every liar in the church there wouldn’t be any church! Okay, maybe that is an exaggeration, but I think you get the point. Who hasn’t lied? Who hasn’t pretended to be doing well when inside we are really dying? Who hasn’t listened to slander about another believer because it was one of our favorite people telling the story? Who hasn’t answered someone to their face with one story and then gone and told our people a totally different one?

   My point is that God served notice how he feels about the sin of lying, and we are now to help one another in the church take this seriously. This means that the church, the body of Christ, must address lying in the church without favoritism or partiality. We side with the truth. We “speak the truth in love”. We worship God “in spirit and in truth”. We seek to be our real “in Christ” selves with all people so that, even when we can’t tell people everything going on inside us, we certainly don’t promote external appearances that contradict our inner love of truth. We must express genuineness, realness, sincerity, so that, even if we keep to ourselves things that only concern us, what we express and say to others is still our truthful and real expression of trying to “Let no corrupting talk come out of your mouths, but only such as is good for building up, as fits the occasion, that it may give grace to those who hear” (Ephesians 4:29). We can absolutely aim to do that in sincerity and truth even while having other struggles and difficulties inside us that we are dealing with just between us and God.

   Obviously, there is much more to say on this matter. However, the main point for me is that, through Ananias and Sapphira, God has told us how deadly serious he is about lying because it is so not him, and it is so Satan. We can ask God if it would be advantageous to do this again in scenarios that seem even more grievous to us than what that first partners-in-crime brought into the church. However, he has left church discipline to the church, so we must follow Jesus’ instructions, follow the apostles’ teaching and examples in the New Testament, and be absolutely truthful in any participation regarding lying, dishonesty, and deception in the church no matter who it is we must side with and who it is we must hold to accouny for sin.

   And, since so many churches can’t discipline the liars because of the power of church politics, we need to be at peace with God that “Beloved, never avenge yourselves, but leave it to the wrath of God, for it is written, ‘Vengeance is mine, I will repay, says the Lord’” (Romans 12:19).   

   Today we must look in the mirror of God, his word, and his Spirit, confess anything in us that smacks of dishonesty, repent and reconcile with people we have hurt with our lying, entrust to God’s sovereign goodness and justice anyone who has wronged us and never repented, and go into our days seeking to “walk in the light, as he is in the light,” because that is the way “we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus his Son cleanses us from all sin” (I John 1:7).

  

© 2025 Monte Vigh ~ Box 517, Merritt, BC, V1K 1B8

Email: in2freedom@gmail.com

Unless otherwise noted, Scriptures are from the English Standard Version (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version. ESV® Text Edition: 2016. Copyright © 2001 by Crossway Bibles, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers.)