According to verse 14, the opposers accused Stephen of saying that Jesus would destroy the temple and change the customs delivered by Moses. This indicates that there must have been words circulating among the believers concerning the destruction of the temple, as prophesied by the Lord in Matthew 23:37-39 and 24:2, and words concerning the termination of the dispensation of law, as spoken by the Lord in Matthew 11:13. The opposing Jews twisted the believers’ words, as they did in Matthew 27:40 regarding the Lord’s word in John 2:19 when they crucified Him. Undoubtedly, the Jews’ opposition was instigated by Satan to frustrate God’s New Testament economy. But the ground used by Satan for his instigation was the change of dispensation, which contradicted the Judaic traditions. God’s New Testament economy is to have a new dispensation absolutely separated from Judaism. This offended the Jews by touching the traditions they had inherited for generations and stirred up their opposition, which began with the Lord’s ministry in the Gospels and grew more fierce toward the apostles’ ministry in the Acts, during which the Lord’s New Testament move was passing through a transitional period.
According to Luke’s narration in Acts, the church among the Jews, including the early apostles, did not pass through this transition successfully due to the remaining influence of their Judaic background and the entangling opposition from their Judaic kinsmen. This trouble returned to them again and again in Acts (11:1-3; 15:1-5; 21:18-26). Even the apostle Paul was in danger of being brought back to the Judaic practices in his last visit to Jerusalem (21:20-26).
In Acts the Jewish believers still practiced the keeping of the Old Testament law, as indicated by the word in 21:20 spoken to Paul by James and the elders in Jerusalem. James, the elders in Jerusalem, and many thousands of Jewish believers still remained in a mixture of the Christian faith and the Mosaic law. They even advised Paul to practice such a semi-Judaic mixture (21:17-26). They were unaware that the dispensation of law was altogether over and that the dispensation of grace should be fully honored, and that any disregard of the distinction between these two dispensations would be against God’s dispensational administration and would be a great damage to God’s economical plan for the building up of the church as the expression of Christ.
The children of Israel had been given the law through Moses. They also had a system of worship involving the temple, the priests, and the offerings. With the children of Israel the two main things were the law and the temple as the center of their worship. Both the law and the temple were types of Christ. It is not God’s intention to have a written law and a material temple. God’s intention is to have the living Christ as the law of life and also to have Christ as the living temple for God’s New Testament economy. God desires to have Christ as the living law within us and as the living temple outside of us so that He may carry out His New Testament economy. This economy is absolutely a matter of the Triune God mingling Himself with His chosen people to produce a corporate entity for His expression. This was God’s intention from the very beginning in the book of Genesis. However, the children of Israel regarded the law and the temple in a traditional way according to dead letters.
About fifteen hundred years after the law was given, the Triune God came in incarnation. One day this incarnated One said, “All the prophets and the law prophesied until John” (Matt. 11:13). This indicates the termination of the Old Testament dispensation. Although the principles of the law cannot be terminated, the dispensation of the law was ended.
Furthermore, in Matthew 23:37-39 the Lord forsook Jerusalem with its temple. In verse 38 He said, “Behold, your house is left to you desolate.” Here “house” denotes the house of God, the temple (Matt. 21:12-13). This prophecy concerning the desolation of the temple corresponds to that in Matthew 24:2, where the Lord said concerning the temple, “Truly I say to you, A stone shall by no means be left upon a stone which shall not be thrown down.” This was fulfilled in A.D. 70 when Titus destroyed Jerusalem with the Roman army. Therefore, in Matthew 23:38 and 24:2 the Lord indicated to His disciples that the material temple, which had become a frustration to God’s economy, would be destroyed.
The Lord Jesus indicated plainly that the law would be terminated and that the temple would be destroyed. No doubt, His word made a deep impression on the disciples. They must have had fellowship concerning the termination of the law and the destruction of the temple, since both the temple and law were great matters to the Jews.
After the Lord ascended to the heavens and the Spirit was poured out, there was a prevailing move among His disciples. The opposers began to twist the words that must have been circulating among the believers concerning the termination of the dispensation of the law and the destruction of the temple. In particular, the opposers accused Stephen of “speaking blasphemous words against Moses and God” and of saying that “Jesus the Nazarene will destroy this place and will change the customs which Moses delivered to us” (Acts 6:11, 14). To be sure, the opposers were twisting the truth. The Lord Jesus had spoken concerning the termination of the dispensation of law and the destruction of the temple. But the opposers twisted His word.
The old dispensation was the dispensation of the law and of the temple. The new dispensation is the dispensation of Christ as the law of life and as the living temple. Between these two dispensations there was a transitional period in which God was transferring His chosen people from the old dispensation into the new. All the early disciples, including Peter, were undergoing God’s transfer. They had been born into the old dispensation, and they had been raised with the knowledge of that dispensation. Thus, they were people of the old dispensation. However, they had been called by the Lord and had spent three and a half years with Him. Moreover, they spent forty days with Him after His resurrection in a wonderful, spiritual way. We may think that this would be sufficient for God to transfer them fully out of the old dispensation into the new, that is, out of the law in letters and the material temple into Christ as the law of life and as the living temple. Although they had come to know Christ in this way, they were still under a strong Judaic influence, and they were surrounded by their Jewish kinsmen. Therefore, it was very difficult for them to be released from their old background.
This was especially true of James, a flesh brother of the Lord Jesus. James was godly, pious, and highly respected by the Jews. It was very difficult for him to be transferred out of the Judaic background. On the contrary, he took the lead to remain there, as indicated by the record in Acts 21.
According to Acts 21, when Paul made his last visit to Jerusalem, he went in to James, and all the elders were present (v. 18). James encouraged Paul to come back to certain Judaic practices: “Four men are with us who have a vow on themselves; take these and be purified with them, and pay their expenses that they may shave their heads; and all will know that there is nothing to the things of which they had been instructed concerning you, but that you yourself also walk orderly, keeping the law” (vv. 23-24). Paul followed this advice and went to the temple with those who had made the vow. It is difficult to believe that Paul could do such a thing after having written the book of Romans and the book of Galatians, books that indicate that the dispensation of law is over. But Paul in Acts 21 was not able to overcome the Judaic environment.
According to the record in Acts, the church in Jerusalem, including the twelve apostles, did not pass through the transitional period successfully. Rather, they had a failure. Their failure to make the transition in full was one of the reasons the Lord sent the Roman army to destroy Jerusalem with its temple. The religious mixture there in Jerusalem was also destroyed at that time.