The church of our day has learned to honour what the world honours. Its platforms go to the successful. Its boards fill with the wealthy. Its conferences feature the men with the largest followings, and its language of admiration, influential, impactful, a leader in his field, is the language of the market. Nobody decided this. It's the automatic ranking every group generates, operating on a body that has stopped inverting it.
And it's the exact reverse of the God the Bible describes. Not a softer version. The reverse.
The God who defines himself by the weak
Start where God states his own character in law, and notice what he chooses to say about himself:
For the LORD your God is God of gods, and Lord of lords, a great God, a mighty, and a terrible, which regardeth not persons, nor taketh reward: He doth execute the judgment of the fatherless and widow, and loveth the stranger, in giving him food and raiment. (Deuteronomy 10:17-18)
The greatness is asserted and then immediately defined, by impartiality, and impartiality is defined by what he does for the three people with no standing: the orphan, the widow, the foreigner. That triad runs through the whole law. If thou afflict them in any wise, and they cry at all unto me, I will surely hear their cry (Exodus 22:23). The corners of the field and the gleanings are theirs by statute (Leviticus 19:9-10). And the ranking must not run either way: Thou shalt not respect the person of the poor, nor honour the person of the mighty (Leviticus 19:15).
The Psalms make it his address: A father of the fatherless, and a judge of the widows, is God in his holy habitation (Psalm 68:5). For the oppression of the poor, for the sighing of the needy, now will I arise (Psalm 12:5). Psalm 72 defines what a king is for: He shall judge the poor of the people (72:4). The measure of a ruler is the condition of the weakest under him.
The prophets make it the definition of knowing God at all. Jeremiah, to a king who had built himself a palace, recalls the king's father: He judged the cause of the poor and needy; then it was well with him: was not this to know me? saith the LORD (Jeremiah 22:16). The same prophet forbids the three glories the modern church runs on: Let not the wise man glory in his wisdom, neither let the mighty man glory in his might, let not the rich man glory in his riches (9:23). Wisdom, might, riches. Prestige, power, money. Named and forbidden in one sentence.
He chooses the small on purpose
Then the pattern in the choosing, where God's concern for the weak becomes his method. The LORD did not... choose you, because ye were more in number than any people; for ye were the fewest of all people (Deuteronomy 7:7). Jacob the younger. Joseph the despised brother. Gideon, the least in my father's house (Judges 6:15). David the youngest, left in the field: man looketh on the outward appearance, but the LORD looketh on the heart (1 Samuel 16:7). Hannah's song: He raiseth up the poor out of the dust... to set them among princes (1 Samuel 2:8).
Then the New Testament opens with a peasant girl singing Hannah's song back: He hath put down the mighty from their seats, and exalted them of low degree. He hath filled the hungry with good things; and the rich he hath sent empty away (Luke 1:52-53). The first theology of the gospel era is an inversion of rank. Jesus's first sermon: he hath anointed me to preach the gospel to the poor (Luke 4:18). His proof to John that he's the one ends and the poor have the gospel preached to them (Matthew 11:5). Blessed be ye poor... But woe unto you that are rich (Luke 6:20, 24). The child set in the midst as the greatest. The guest list of the poor, the maimed, the lame, the blind (Luke 14:13). The widow's two mites rated above every large gift in the treasury (Mark 12:41-44).
And one sentence that judges the modern church's whole scale of admiration: That which is highly esteemed among men is abomination in the sight of God (Luke 16:15). He said it to Pharisees who were covetous. Not merely rated lower. Abomination. The thing the world's ranking puts at the top is, by that fact, suspect.
The apostles held the line. Not many wise men after the flesh, not many mighty, not many noble, are called: But God hath chosen... the weak things... things which are despised... that no flesh should glory in his presence (1 Corinthians 1:26-29). Hath not God chosen the poor of this world rich in faith? (James 2:5), said to a congregation that had just seated the man with the gold ring. To poor Smyrna, thou art rich (Revelation 2:9); to wealthy Laodicea, thou art wretched, and miserable, and poor (3:17).
From the law to the Apocalypse, the same God: defining his greatness by the widow, choosing the fewest, looking to the contrite, and calling the world's esteem an abomination. The modern church's scale of honour isn't a neutral drift. It's the one scale the text names as inverted.
Acts 6: the inversion applied to power
Next is the passage that shows the apostles doing it, not to seating or greetings, but to office and money, where inversions are hardest.
And in those days, when the number of the disciples was multiplied, there arose a murmuring of the Grecians against the Hebrews, because their widows were neglected in the daily ministration. (Acts 6:1)
Read the cast. The Grecians are Greek-speaking Jewish believers, largely from the diaspora, a minority in a church whose core was Aramaic-speaking and Jerusalem-born. Their widows were the weakest members of the weaker group: women without husbands, of a linguistic minority, dependent on the common fund. And they were being shorted. The complaint came from the bottom of the church, about the bottom of the church.
Look at what the twelve didn't do. They didn't defend the arrangement, tell the murmurers to be grateful, discipline anyone, or appoint a committee of the established. They treated a complaint from the margin about the margin as the first structural crisis of the church, and answered it with the first structural reform.
Wherefore, brethren, look ye out among you seven men of honest report, full of the Holy Ghost and wisdom, whom we may appoint over this business. (Acts 6:3)
Three things in that sentence. First, the diagnosis is structural: not someone has been unfair but the arrangement is wrong. Twelve men can't run both the word and the tables, and when they try, the tables lose, and the ones who lose at the tables are the ones with the least voice. Second, the selection is given away. Look ye out among you. The twelve, who had every claim to appoint, didn't appoint. They handed the choosing to the body, the same body that included the aggrieved, and kept for themselves only the laying on of hands. The served were given a say in who would serve them. Third, the criteria are character and Spirit, not standing: honest report, full of the Holy Ghost and wisdom. Not wealth. Not prominence. Not the men whose gifts had filled the fund.
Then the outcome, which Luke records without comment:
And they chose Stephen, a man full of faith and of the Holy Ghost, and Philip, and Prochorus, and Nicanor, and Timon, and Parmenas, and Nicolas a proselyte of Antioch. (Acts 6:5)
All seven names are Greek. The last is explicitly a Gentile convert from a Greek city. Palestinian Jews sometimes bore Greek names, so hold the inference with care, but it's the reading of most commentators: a list of seven uniformly Greek names, capped by a proselyte, in a story about Greek-speaking widows, means the church chose the aggrieved party's own men to run the fund the aggrieved party had been shorted from. The minority that complained was handed custody of the remedy.
In every institution the world has built, a complaint from the margin is handled by the centre, and the remedy is administered by the people who caused the problem. Here the centre handed the remedy to the margin. That is 1 Corinthians 12:24 in administrative form: more abundant honour to that part which lacked.
What came of it
Luke's next sentence is the design's signature: And the word of God increased; and the number of the disciples multiplied in Jerusalem greatly; and a great company of the priests were obedient to the faith (6:7). A reform in the care of the weakest, and growth in the next verse, among the most establishment class in Jerusalem. Care for the least made the gospel credible to the most. And the men given the lowly office included Stephen, the church's first martyr and the preacher of the longest sermon in Acts, and Philip the evangelist. The church's two most consequential voices in the next stage of its history came from the seven chosen to serve widows' tables. The keystone was in the pantry.
The contrast
Set the modern pattern beside Acts 6 and the reversal is exact. The modern board is chosen from the successful; Acts 6 chose for character and Spirit. The modern complaint from the margin is managed by the centre; Acts 6 handed the remedy to the margin. The modern served have no say in who serves them; in Acts 6 the body chose.
And the reason it matters isn't fairness. It's credibility. A church that honours the same people the world honours shows the world nothing. A church whose money is administered by the people it once shorted, whose platforms go to men of honest report rather than men of means, and whose widows aren't neglected, shows the world the God of Deuteronomy 10, and a great company of the priests may yet be obedient.
Name the last complaint that came from the margin of your congregation. Who handled it? Then name the last seven people given office in your body, and ask which list they were chosen from: honest report, full of the Holy Ghost and wisdom, or wise, mighty, rich. The text has already told you which list God uses.