Adventures of the Early Church …

THE FAITH THAT MADE THE DIFFERENCE

Be faithful unto death, and I will give you the crown of life. —Rev. 2:10

I am a Christian!, cried Polycarp to the Roman proconsul who sought to persuade him to “Swear by the genius of Caesar” and thus save his life. In 152 A.D. when Polycarp died as a martyr it was a crime against Caesar to be a Christian. If an accused believer in Jesus would visit a Roman temple, take a pinch of incense and sprinkle it over the eternal flame that burned at the altar and say Caesar is Lord!, he would be exonerated. He did not have to mean it, but he had to say it. Polycarp, who was bishop of Smyrna, was one of many believers in those days who wouldn’t say it.

When they brought him into the arena to stand before the proconsul, whose duty it was to certify his guilt, there were Christians there who heard voices from heaven telling him to “Be strong, Polycarp, be strong and play the man.” Even the proconsul, sensitive of his advanced years, wanted to save him from the lions. “Swear, and I will release you,” he commanded the beloved bishop, “Revile Christ.” That is when Polycarp made the grand confession that has lived on through the centuries:

“Eighty and six years have I been his servant, and he has done me no wrong. How can I blaspheme my King who saved me.”

One historian says that was the great saying of the century, while a theologian who believes in infant baptism notes that Polycarp was probably referring to his initiation into the church in infancy since it is unlikely that he was more than 86.

What it should mean to us all who believe is that we here have a beautiful testimonial of one who was faithful unto death and thus received the crown of life. That is what Rev. 2:10 must mean, not simply that we are to be faithful until we die but that we are to persevere unto martyrdom itself.

The proconsul kept questioning Polycarp, postponing the crucial question. It was when he forthrightly proclaimed that he was a Christian that he was self-condemned. His faith was even aggressive, for when he was told to “Repent, and say, Away with the atheists,” atheism being one of the charges against the Christians, he did indeed cry out A way with the atheists- as he motioned toward the angry mob in the arena. It was they that cried for his blood. A city like Smyrna would have no more than one lion on hand for such purposes, and it had no appetite for Polycarp, so they called for fire. The old saint was soon bound to a stake and engulfed in flames. When the flames behaved peculiarly, as if to rebel at such a task, a Roman soldier was commanded to thrust a knife into Polycarp’s brave heart and there he died, faithful unto death.

Polycarp’s 86 years reach back to the apostolic age itself. He was around when the New Testament writings were new, when they were copied and recopied and circulated among the churches. He was in the Smyrna church when the book of Revelation was first unfurled, which began with a letter to that very church, having those words Be faithful unto death, and I will give you the crown of life. He saw the church at peace in the empire, protected by the power of Rome, and then he witnessed the outbreak of persecution. He may well have known the apostle John personally in nearby Ephesus once he had returned from his long exile on the island of Patmos. And he must have known many who died for their faith, sisters and brothers alike who were faithful unto death.

It is estimated that during the first centuries of the church’s great adventure some 16,000 were martyred for their faith. Such a witness of courage and hope had telling effect upon unbelievers. Justin Martyr, whose name indicates that he himself was martyred, was led to Christ by the witness of those who died for their faith. Being a philosopher, he continued to wear the philosopher’s robe, and it was probably his fellow philosophers who rejected the message that he preached that were responsible for his death.

The most notable martyr in the post-biblical period was Ignatius, though we know little about how he died. Once tried by the emperor Trajan in Antioch in about 110 A.D., which takes us closer still to the apostolic period, he was sentenced to die in Rome. His journey from Antioch to Rome as a condemned man is one of the most moving in early Christian history. The ten soldiers who guarded him along the way (He called them leopards!) being susceptible to bribes, he was allowed not only to visit other believers along the way but also to write at least seven letters to churches, which are among the most important Christian documents outside the New Testament.

Some would pay a bribe in order to travel with the famous Christian for awhile, and for money the soldiers allowed the believers to conduct services with Ignatius. He was allowed to address the church in Philadelphia (in Phrygia) while chained to one of his “leopards.” That he could maintain such composure and continue to minister with such devotion while on his way to die as prey for wild beasts in the arena reveals a faith that defies explanation.

When we come to the New Testament period itself there are those examples of being faithful unto death with which we are more acquainted, whether the martyrdom of Stephen (Acts 7), James (Acts 12), Antipas (Rev. 2). But the number of martyrs, “the souls of those who had been slain for the word of God and for the witness they had borne” (Rev. 6:9) was innumerable. Babylon is described as “the woman drunk with the blood of the saints and the blood of the martyrs of Jesus” (Rev. 17:6).

The meaning of “faithful” in the context of martyrdom should liberate us from the superficial ideas of more recent history. Polycarp may have been the bishop of Smyrna, a practice in polity with which many modern Christians would disagree, but he lives in history as an example of what it means to be faithful, faithful unto death itself. Ignatius was not only a bishop, an office distinct from that of presbyter or elder, but was so convinced on the authority of the bishop that he insisted a church could not be a true church without the presence of the bishop, against which many of us would strongly protest, but there is no way to make Ignatius, who preached the gospel in chains and faced an agonizing martyrdom with a living hope, anything but gloriously faithful to Christ.

The faithful in “Be thou faithful unto death” is not doctrinaire, and so one may be wrong about some things and still be eminently faithful in what really matters: devotion and loyalty to Jesus Christ as Lord. The presumed “heretics” of the church, condemned for their truancy from orthodoxy, are often the church’s most faithful sons, faithful in the true, biblical sense. So we can say that the faith that made the difference in the early church was strongly personal, centered in a Person whom it believed to be the Lord of glory. And so the faithful would never confess that Caesar was Lord, not even at the pain of death.

As I often did with my students in philosophy, we can better understand what a quality like faith is when we identify what it is not. We see what faithful is not in Peter’s denial of his Lord on the night of his betrayal. The beloved fisherman denied Jesus with an oath and even with a curse, insisting that “I do not know the man.” Peter had been “wrong” before, even dull and slow of heart to believe, if we accept Mark’s portrayal of the apostles, but he had not been unfaithful before. He must have supposed that all was lost, that Jesus was powerless to deal with the forces that were destroying him. Peter’s little world had crumbled before his eyes. Fear overwhelmed him. He was led to lie and curse so as to save his own neck in a crisis that was too much for him. In his confusion he went away and wept bitterly. For the moment at least he had lost his faith.

In a few short weeks there was a dramatic change. Peter, along with John, is proclaiming in the streets of Jerusalem the Jesus he had previously denied. When the rulers who arrested them observed that they were “uneducated and untrained” they marveled at the boldness and confidence with which they spoke. That means that an untrained layman would be expected to cower in the presence of the learned Jewish clergy, but Peter, who had earlier trembled with fear when a mere maiden accused him of knowing Jesus, is now so bold that the proud, learned “rulers and elders of the people” are made to marvel. They came to see, as Acts 4:13 tells us, that they were behaving like Jesus, or “They began to recognize that they had been with Jesus.”

That is not all. When the PhDs of the law ordered them not to speak to the people anymore about Jesus, their reply indicates that they were the ones in control: “Whether it is right in the sight of God to give heed to you rather than to God, you be the judge; for we cannot stop speaking what we have seen and heard” (Acts 4:19-20).

This tells us why Peter is now a different man. Like Ignatius and Polycarp after him, and thousands of others, he is now ready to die if need be for what “we have seen and heard.” And so verse 8 tells us that Peter was filled with the Holy Spirit, one of the gifts of his faith that further empowered him. The heart of it is that the Jesus he once supposed to be a lost cause was now the Lord of glory: “whom you crucified, whom God raised from the dead” (verse 10).

When Peter saw the soldiers take Jesus away into the night, he believed that he was no longer with him. After all that Jesus had taught them and after all the things he did, he was now gone, out of control. Peter no longer had his Lord! His faith was shipwrecked, especially when Jesus was dead and gone.

Now that Peter had “seen and heard” the rest of the story he was a different man. It was the difference that faith made. He no longer believed that Jesus was dead and gone. Jesus was now not only alive but he was with him, as if standing by his side as he preached the gospel in the streets of Jerusalem and even when he was threatened by the rulers. What Peter had seen was the risen Christ. What he had heard was I will be with you always even unto the end of the age.

Tradition has it, which is probably reliable, that Peter was in Rome at the outbreak of Nero’s persecution, but fled for his life at the insistence of his friends. Out on the Appian Way he was arrested in his flight by the voice of the Lord. Here the tradition of Quo Vadis? was born in that Peter asked Which way?, and the Lord instructs him to return to Rome to die. Finally learning that he was to be crucified, he requested that he be placed upside down on the cross, for he was unworthy to die as his Lord had.

It was not only that the early Christians died for their faith, for men have always died for various causes, but it was how they died and why they died. They were faithful unto death. As in the Colosseum in Rome, to the consternation of Nero, they died praising God and even in death there were smiles on their faces. This is why “the blood of martyrs became the seed of the kingdom of God.” It was the faith that made the difference. Faith beget faith, martyrdom beget martyrdom.

In time the early Christians received further revelation and created very profound concepts concerning Christ, such as his being the eternal Word (Logos) of God and “the very image of the invisible God,” all of which they believed. But the great secret of their faith and power was their deep trust that Jesus was the living Christ and that he was with them. They saw him in life and in death, and they marked his grave. Then they saw him alive, triumphant over death as well as sin. They watched as he disappeared in the clouds. They believed the glorious paradox that he was both their absent friend and their ever-present Lord. In being filled with the Holy Spirit they were filled with the presence of Christ. That is why they could cry out We are Christians! even in the face of roaring lions and the burning fagot.

This is what faithful must come to mean to the modern church, which may one day be called upon to die for what it believes. And only this can be our bond of union — commitment and obedience to Jesus Christ according to one’s understanding. We are to accept each other on no other grounds. If a person has it in his heart to die for Christ, if need be, as he died for us, then I should accept him as a Christian. Other matters can be discussed and hopefully resolved within the fellowship of acceptance.

If a man or woman will walk out on the floor of the Colosseum (or if it is in his or her heart to do so) and declare I am a Christian even in the face of an angry mob and ravenous beasts, then I can stand by his or her side in comforting love and make the same confession. And if I can do that I can certainly accept him or her in church as an equal in Christ. - the Editor