Luke, who wrote both his Gospel and the book of Acts, gives Stephen's final words a structure that closely mirrors Jesus's own words from the cross as Luke records them: a commendation of the spirit, Lord Jesus, receive my spirit, echoing Jesus's Father, into your hands I commit my spirit, and a prayer of forgiveness for those causing his death, Lord, do not hold this sin against them, echoing Jesus's Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.
Scholars of Luke-Acts generally read this parallel as deliberate literary and theological patterning, part of Luke's broader interest in presenting the early church's experience, including its suffering, as continuing the pattern set by Jesus himself rather than as coincidental resemblance. Stephen, described in Acts as the first Christian martyr, delivers his prayer while being stoned by a crowd following his speech to the Jewish council, a scene Acts presents as the direct trigger for a wider persecution that scatters the Jerusalem church and, notably, first introduces Saul of Tarsus, later Paul, as a witness approving of Stephen's death. Acts also notes that Stephen, before his death, is described as gazing into heaven and reporting a vision of Jesus standing at the right hand of God, a detail that gives his final prayer a distinct theological context of assurance rather than presenting it as a plea spoken without any accompanying sense of what awaited him beyond death.