Acts 6:2

2. Then the twelve This is the first recorded movement for forming a Church economy; we can hardly say government. Beyond the appointment of his twelve, Christ had left no draft of a constitution for his Church.

There is clearly no connection between this seven and the seventy deacons sent forth by our Lord, nor any certain connection between them and the deacons of the Epistles or of subsequent ecclesiastical history. The whole movement of their election is a measure of immediate expediency, suggested by an incidental want, adopted without any claim or consciousness of special inspiration, and without the least apparent thought that they are adopting a permanent order for the universal Church, without which a complete and valid Church cannot exist. The whole act suggests the doctrine that any Church is endowed by the great Head of the Church with the right of shaping itself into any organic form most conducive to its great mission of salvation. (See note on Acts 13:3.)

Called the multitude The apostolic mind originates the new idea, but the body of the Church alone can give it reality. The thought moves in the brain, but the energetic and active soul lives in the whole body.

Serve tables The Greek word τραπεζα may signify either a money table or a meal table indifferently, (Matthew 16:27, Acts 16:34, and also Matthew 21:12, and Luke 19:23,) and perhaps includes both here.

This deaconship was certainly not a merely pecuniary office, a mere agency to apply the moneys laid at the apostles’ feet. In all probability the seven, with the funds, supplied the ministrations of the daily table-provisions where the oversights took place.