Chapter 13: The Theology of Martyrdom. But there was more. As I studied the life of Jesus and the early Christians, I realized that as powerful and necessary as things such as preaching, prayer, and fasting are in Christian warfare, there is still one more weapon that surpasses all the others.
The more I studied the life of Christ and the testimony of the saints who have gone before us, the more I realized that the Christian's most ultimate weapon, his most formidable instrument of force, his most indestructible garrison against all attacks, and his most fierce arsenal against all enemies, is the cross. The cross of Jesus Christ towers as an eternal witness to the futility of man's strength, resources, and good ideas.
In his letter to the Corinthian church, warning the church about the foolishness of fleshly resources, the Apostle Paul taught that the true way to win does not come by might but by the power of laying down our life, even to the point of death. He wrote: "For the message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God. For it is written, 'I will destroy the wisdom of the wise and bring to nothing the understanding of the prudent.' Where is the wise?
Where is the scribe? Where is the disputer of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of this world?" Sheep Before Wolves. In the Gospel of Matthew, when Jesus was sending out his first group of missionaries, he gave them a graphic description of what they would experience ahead. From an earthly perspective, his depiction seemed pretty discouraging.
He said, "Behold, I send you out as sheep in the midst of wolves." Now, just imagine that scene in your minds for a moment: a fluffy white sheep standing there, defenseless, surrounded by a pack of growling, hungry, teeth-glaring wolves. It's not exactly an image that engenders bravery and confidence. Nevertheless, it's just the image Jesus chose to give them as an accurate picture of their ministry.
In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus sums up his description of the blessed with, "Blessed are ye when men shall revile you and persecute you and shall say all manner of evil against you falsely for my sake. Rejoice and be exceeding glad, for great is your reward in heaven, for so persecuted they the prophets which were before you." Matthew 5:11-12. The early Christians understood this principle. Writing in the year AD 190, Tertullian said, "The Lord will save them in that day, even his people, like sheep.
No one gives the name of sheep to those who fall in battle with arms in hand, or those who are killed when repelling force with force. Rather, it is given only to those who are slain, yielding themselves up in their own place of duty and with patience, rather than fighting in self-defense." Are ye able to drink my cup? When James and John requested to be on Jesus' right and left sides in the kingdom, Jesus turned to them and, reflecting on his approaching crucifixion, challenged them, "You do not know what you ask.
Are you able to drink the cup that I am about to drink and be baptized with the baptism that I am baptized with?" They both answered back with confidence, saying, "We are able." Jesus then looked right through them, into their souls and into their futures, and said, "You will indeed drink my cup and be baptized with the baptism that I am baptized with." Scripture tells us that James lost his head in Rome and that John was exiled on the deserted island of Patmos.
As Jesus prophesied, they did indeed experience his baptism of the cross. As a matter of fact, the life that followed all the apostles was one the world would have considered an unmitigated failure. But Christ called them blessed.
Here is just a small list of the faithful blessed: James beheaded, Philip crucified, Matthew slain by the sword, James son of Alpheus, stoned to death, Matthias stoned and then beheaded, Andrew crucified on an X-shaped cross, Peter crucified upside down, Paul beheaded under the orders of Nero in Rome, Jude crucified, Bartholomew beaten to death with clubs, Thomas speared to death, Simon the Zealot crucified, John exiled to Patmos.
They might have died horrible deaths, but to God they were shining examples of faithfulness. Perhaps the biggest tool of the enemy is the fear of death. So much of our life effort is spent trying to avoid suffering and death. In contrast, Jesus told us to take up our cross daily and follow him. When the Apostle Peter suggested to Jesus that he should not go to Jerusalem because he would most likely suffer there and be killed, Jesus sharply rebuked him. But he turned and said to Peter, "Get behind me, Satan.
You are an offense to me, for you are not mindful of the things of God but the things of men." Then Jesus said to his disciples, "If anyone desires to come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. For whoever desires to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will find it." Strange to our human understanding, Jesus tells us that grasping this crucified life will strengthen and actually encourage us.
In the upper room, just before his crucifixion, Jesus told his apostles, "These things I have spoken to you, that you should not be made to stumble. They will put you out of the synagogues. Yes, the time is coming that whoever kills you will think that he offers God service. And these things they will do to you because they have not known the Father nor me. But these things I have told you, that when the time comes, you may remember that I told you of them.
These things I have spoken to you, that in me you may have peace. In the world you will have tribulation, but be of good cheer. I have overcome the world." How can I have good cheer in suffering and death? It seems ridiculous. However, even in my life, I can testify that time and time again I have come to the realization that more of me had to die. Each time I went through it, it hurt. But on the other side, I always experienced more of Christ, and in a much deeper and much more intimate way.
Death, even in the little things. One of those defining moments took place just a few years ago. It was at a time when Brother Denny Kenniston had called several of us men to a challenging time of early morning prayer together. We were meeting there three days a week, extremely early in the morning, literally hours before our workday began. Eventually, it really started to wear me out physically.
As I prayed about it, I felt clear that this was from the Lord, so I began to look for physiological reasons why this must somehow be good for my body. I even began to research how much sleep a person really needs. I kept looking at it from several different angles, trying to convince myself that somehow all of this was actually healthy.
Finally, one morning, Brother Mark Brubaker said very matter-of-factly, "You know, we're all probably going to die earlier because of this." As strange as it may sound, that statement completely liberated me. I felt free to die to myself and live to what I believe Christ had called me to. Now, don't get me wrong, I believe in being healthy, getting enough sleep, and being good stewards of our bodies in general. It is just that, at times, God calls us to things that are flat not healthy for us.
Martyrdom, in particular, would be one of them. To die is gain. The Apostle Paul lived his life on the cross. His motto was, "For to me to live is Christ, and to die is gain." When he discipled the churches under him, he expected them to follow his example of love, patience, and even suffering. To Timothy he wrote, "Now you followed my teaching, conduct, purpose, faith, patience, love, perseverance, persecutions, and sufferings, such as happened to me at Antioch, at Iconium, and at Lystra.
What persecutions I endured, and out of them all the Lord rescued me. Indeed, all who desire to live godly in Christ Jesus will be persecuted." The bottom line is that the early Christians had no fear of death. To die was to be with the Lord. Therefore, to compromise the teachings of Christ, even for the sake of life, was unthinkable. In the early church, the emperors bragged of their killing of the Christians.
The early Christians remarkably replied, "The blood of the martyr is seed." The more the Christians were killed, the more they grew. Today, when a skeptic challenges and questions Christ's followers with endless what-ifs, the cross answers them all. What if Hitler would never have been stopped? What if another Hitler comes? What if Islam gets out of control? What if communism would have survived? What if someone hits you first? What if someone shoots your grandmother? What if someone attacks your family?
What if someone kicks your dog? What if you get killed on the mission field? What if a snake bites you? What if you lose your job? What if your family rejects you? Where do these questions lead? Obviously, the only goal in mind with questions such as these is the preservation of this current life and the attempted safeguard of our happiness. Unfortunately, these questions have no end but to skirt around the cross. But once we accept the cross, suddenly the world has nothing with which to assail us.
It is the Christian nuclear weapon. The Christian nuclear weapon. Nowhere is this Christian nuclear weapon more emphatically articulated than in the eighth chapter of Paul's letter to the Romans. This chapter is the Theology of Martyrdom, in a nutshell. Take a moment and conjure up any and every what-if that you can possibly imagine. Now, with a fresh insight, reread these words of Romans. I can remember the first time I read the chapter in this way. It was liberating.
Beginning at verse 35, "Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword? As it is written, 'For your sake we are killed all day long; we are accounted as sheep for the slaughter.'" Now, read that last line again, "For your sake we are killed all day long; we are accounted as sheep for the slaughter." Can you believe that he said that? Read it one more time, and this time actually try to envision the sheep being slaughtered.
As it is written, "For your sake we are killed all day long; we are accounted as sheep for the slaughter." Okay, now, keep reading, "Yet in all these things." What things? Remember, he said things such as famine, nakedness, peril, sword, and being slaughtered like a sheep.
"Yet in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us; for I am persuaded that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor height, nor depth, nor any other created thing shall be able to separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord." That is the theory of martyrdom. Did he leave anything out? The way I read it, he covered just about everything.
Paul takes biblical non-resistance beyond merely refusing to participate in war to cover every aspect of our lives. The world constantly tells me that I should do everything in my life to seek health and happiness. Jesus said, "Most assuredly, I say to you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the ground and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it produces much grain." My flesh tells me to do everything to pamper and preserve myself.
In contrast, the Apostle Paul, who understood that resurrection power exists side by side with the cross, wanted to know him and the power of his resurrection and the fellowship of his sufferings being conformed to his death. Lawsuits. Even in everyday things, my flesh lies to me and tells me that God wouldn't want me to be taken advantage of or to be considered a doormat.
At times, it is easy to have a non-resistant attitude about war, but when it comes to business and personal offenses, I can act just like the world. But Paul applies the cross to my personal life just as much as to warfare. Specifically, addressing personal offenses and lawsuits, Paul said, "Now therefore, it is already an utter failure for you that you go to law against one another. Why do you not rather accept wrong?
Why do you not rather let yourselves be cheated?" More and more, I realize that when I die to myself, I can let more of Christ and less of me be manifested. Moreover, when I suffer for him, I find that I am not suffering alone, but I actually am allowing the life of Christ to be lived out through me. To be dead to myself and alive to Christ is to allow Christ's suffering to be lived out in me.
As Paul said to the Romans, "I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that ye present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God, which is your reasonable service." Power of forgiveness. From 1948 to 1994, South Africa maintained legalized racial discrimination. The Afrikaans called this segregation apartheid. During this time, horrible acts of violence and cruelty were committed based solely on the color of someone's skin.
After 1994, once apartheid was over, a new government was set up under Nelson Mandela. Soon after he was in leadership, Mandela set up an investigative commission called Truth and Reconciliation Commission that looked into many of these acts of racial violence and human rights violations. Many former government and military officials were brought to trial and punished. John D.
Roth, in his book Choosing Against War, says that, "At one meeting early in their work, the commission gathered to reach a verdict on a particularly painful case involving an elderly South African woman. At the hearing, a group of white police officers, led by Mr. Van De Broeck, admitted their personal responsibility in the death of her 18-year-old son.
They acknowledged shooting the young man at point-blank range, setting his body on fire, and then partying around the fire until the body had been reduced to little more than ashes." Eight years later, Van De Broeck and his fellow officers had again intersected with the woman's life, this time to take her husband into captivity. And then, some time later, Van De Broeck had come knocking at her door once more.
Rousing her from bed, in the dead of night, he brought the woman to an isolated setting by a river where her husband lay tied to a pile of wood. As she watched, he and the officers doused the man with gasoline and then ignited a fire. The last words her husband spoke to her in the midst of the blazing pyre were, "Forgive them." Now, at long last, the time had come for justice to be served.
Those involved had confessed their guilt, and the commission turned to the woman for a final statement regarding her desire for an appropriate punishment. "I want three things," the woman said calmly. "I want Mr. Van De Broeck to take me to the place where they burned my husband's body. I would like to gather up the dust and give him a decent burial. Second, Mr. Van De Broeck took all my family away from me, so I still have a lot of love to give.
Twice a month, I would like for him to come to the ghetto and spend a day with me so I can be a mother to him. Third, I would like Mr. Van De Broeck to know that he is forgiven by God, and that I forgive him too. And I would like someone to come and lead me by the hand to where Mr. Van De Broeck is so that I can embrace him and he can know my forgiveness is real." As the elderly woman made her way across the silent courtroom, Van De Broeck reportedly fainted, overcome by emotion.
And then the silence was broken when someone began singing, "Amazing Grace." Others soon picked up the words of the familiar hymn so that finally, the entire audience in the courtroom was joined in song. What a testimony of love. Everything that had been dear to this woman was brutally taken from her. Yet somehow, she was able to die to her losses, her pain, her regrets, and her rights, and was able to reach out and hug the very man that caused all her pain. How?
Because there was something more real in this elderly woman's life than life itself, more true than temporal circumstances, and more meaningful than any earthly reward. She had died to herself years before and was alive in Christ. Nothing could take that away from her. Gelassenheit. In 1527, shortly after the beginning of the radical Reformation, laws were quickly passed against the Anabaptists by both the Catholics and the Protestants.
Some 60 of these radical, early Anabaptist reformers met in Augsburg, Switzerland, to discuss mission, theology, and church planting. Historians later called this little meeting the Martyr Synod because within a few years of this meeting, nearly all the men present were martyred. Immediately after the meeting, laws were being passed everywhere to put these new radicals to death.
The cruelest of these laws was a decision of the Swabian League passed at Augsburg authorizing a band of 400 armed horsemen to hunt the Anabaptists down and bring them to headquarters. All who had not recant were burned at the stake without trial. Those who did recant were beheaded. Women were executed by drowning. One eyewitness during this time was quoted saying, "It is such a misery that the whole city of Augsburg is saddened.
They are daily beheading some, at times four or six, and at times ten persons." One of the men present at the Martyr Synod, anticipating their nearly certain martyrdom, described their plight with almost unnatural resolve, saying that their lives were ready to be offered to God, like food being given to the farmer. He said that with animals, the lower creatures exist for the sake of higher ones. He said many plants and animals fulfill their destiny through being killed and consumed by humans.
Similarly, humans attain their destiny through crucifixion. He said that these experiences purge and prepare them for communion with God, especially as they share in the crucifixion of his son. These were fitting words for all those present because five years later, only two of the original 60 men were still alive. Today, the German term that has come down through the years to describe this kind of total humility and yieldedness to the will of God is the word Gelassenheit. It is the theology of martyrdom.
I believe that without Gelassenheit, biblical non-resistance is nonsense. Martyrdom of loved ones. When the joy of the cross is fully embraced, we can accept God's will, even for our loved ones. As discussed in the previous chapter, the best thing that we could ever do for our families is to entrust them to Jesus Christ. One such case of trusting God, even when it might mean the death of a loved one, comes from the story about the wife of John Welsh.
When the King of England banished John to France, he quickly learned French and began preaching to the persecuted church there. Later, when his health started to decline, his wife pleaded with King James to let him return to England because he was dying from the conditions in France. King James said he could return if he would submit to the English bishops.
After being challenged with this compromise, John Welsh's wife simply lifted up her apron and replied, "I would rather have his head cut off and placed in my apron than have him betray the truth." She loved her husband, but she loved the rewards of Christ for her husband even more. She knew it would be more important for him to be faithful to the end. The theology of martyrdom in heaven.
In the book of Revelation, chapter 5, the Apostle John describes a scene of heaven that is so far beyond the values, attitudes, logic, and goals of this present world that only an inspired text could begin to do it justice. He describes a scene in which God, high and lifted up, is seated upon his throne with a giant book in his hand, sealed tightly with seven very strong seals.
Wanting to reveal the contents of the book, a strong angel cried out, "Who is worthy to open this scroll and to loose its seals?" As that question rang out through heaven, it was discovered that no man, either in heaven or on earth, was found worthy to open it. Moved by the scene, John tells us that he began to cry and that he cried a lot. But as he was there crying, an angel came up to him and told him to stop crying because they finally had found someone strong and worthy enough to open the seals.
This person was described to John as a lion. "The lion of the tribe of Judah, the root of David, has prevailed to open this scroll and to loose its seven seals." I wondered, what must John have been thinking at that time? He might have wondered, who would be powerful and holy enough to open such seals? He might have thought, of course, a lion of the root of David, that sounds powerful enough.
But then, as John looked up with the anticipation of seeing this strong and mighty lion, he was directed right to the center of the throne of God, where his eyes beheld instead a slaughtered lamb. And I looked, and behold, in the midst of the throne and of the four living creatures, and in the midst of the elders, stood a lamb as though it had been slain, having seven horns and seven eyes, which are the seven spirits of God sent out into all the earth.
Then he came and took the scroll out of the right hand of him who sat on the throne. After that, John saw that this slain lamb boldly took the book and opened it. Next, he describes a scene in which millions of people, gathered from every country on earth, are praising and worshiping this slain lamb, singing to him a new song.
And they sang a new song, saying, "You are worthy to take the scroll and to open its seals, for you were slain and have redeemed us to God by your blood out of every tribe and tongue and people and nation, and have made us kings and priests to our God, and we shall reign on the earth." I thought, I want to worship this slain lamb and be in his kingdom. I long to sing that new song with them.