22. A Little Something I Prepared About Martyrs For Tonight's Bible Study

You're a Christian martyr, yes, honey, that's what you are, a Christian martyr!

The word martyr, like the word Christian, appears only three times in the New Testament. With its sparing use in Scripture (“martyr” appears in Acts 22:20, Revelation 2:13 and Revelation 17:6), it behooves us to take a deeper look at the meaning of the word “martyr” itself. As we can see in the above excerpt from the Tennessee Williams play The Glass Menagerie (in context, the speaker refers to a person who's doing so much and spreading themselves so thin already, whether or not they are necessarily Christian) the word martyr, which comes from the Greek word for “witness” in the sense of a person who is one – a witness as opposed to one who witnesses – has in our culture by and large been co-opted by the Christian community of faith to refer to someone who is not only willing, but more often than not DOES, die for their belief in Jesus the Christ as their Savior and Lord.

Too often the definitions for martyr and witness overlap, for someone who testifies to what they have seen and heard (say, a witness in a court of law) can be considered a martyr if they hold to their story after being questioned many times. Not often in a court of law are you put to death for that. The key to martyrdom, despite what many sources would have you believe, is not so much death as it is suffering. That shocked me. Stephen, who is so often cited as the first Christian martyr (but not called so in Acts 7 when he's stoned; the term martyr for him is first used by Paul in Acts 22 when he's giving his mini-autobiography) truly wasn't. Peter and John being arrested in Acts 19 and the apostles imprisoned by the high priest and Sadducees in Acts 5 are also examples which show us that to be a martyr does not necessarily guarantee death. But it does guarantee suffering, and not always physical suffering either.

And they departed from the presence of the council, rejoicing that they were counted worthy to suffer shame for his name.

Acts 5:41 that I cite above has the apostles themselves citing that they would suffer, and were willing to suffer more, for the sake of proclaiming Jesus the Christ as their Savior and Lord. And by tradition (except for James, who is actually documented as being beheaded on Herod Agrippa's orders in Acts 12:2) all of them save for John DID die a martyr's death. But a martyr's life can be equally challenging. Granted, most of us aren't facing the prospect of physical exile or ostracism from our families, as John did when he was exiled to Patmos and was inspired by God to write down what's become the book of Revelation. But have any of us ever lost reputation, lost freedom, lost friends because of Who Jesus is?

Jesus has already said and continues to say through His Word that to be His witness to an increasing bitter, increasingly hostile world will cost us, and the question posed to you and me today is: what are we willing to give up to stand up for Him. And sometimes who: see Matthew 10:37, “He that loveth father or mother more than me is not worthy of me: and he that loveth son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me.” Does this mean we have to cut them off completely? NO, but it does mean that to share the Good News of Jesus, that He died on the cross and rose again from the dead to save us from the just (read : deserved) consequences of our sins we have got to be willing to make our relationships with them not paramount – not to be disobedient or break any commandment God's given us for relating with them for Jesus' sake, for that would make us contradictory to ourselves. To be a true a witness, to be as true a martyr, as we can be, we must be willing to place Jesus first. Amen.