Ten years ago, I saw a video from the Middle East. Twenty-one Christian men in orange jumpsuits were made to kneel. I learned later that right after the video stopped, ISIS beheaded most of them. One of the condemned, trembling, said, “Jesus, help me.”
That pathetic plea pierced my heart because I’ve said it myself. I’ve felt desperation in reaching out to the Savior. Every real Christian knows what that means.
The difference is that none of us reading this post went on to be decapitated.
What had they done wrong? Nothing. They had simply borne the name of Christ. Their connection to the Son of God got them killed.
These slain believers remind me what it costs to follow Jesus. I’ve always conceptually known the price is high in foreign lands, but not in a country like the United States. For a long time, the concept of sacrifice here was mainly measured in being insulted by people on social media or being cursed out and rejected when offering someone a gospel tract.
That is, until a spate of murders began creeping into the news–mainly church shootings, and now, Charlie Kirk, a high-profile Christian.
Jesus told the first crop of disciples, “You will be my witnesses” (Acts 1:8). The Greek word for witness is martyr.¹
A Christian martyr bears witness that Jesus Christ is real and His salvation authentic. It seems odd to say, but as Christians, we’re all supposed to be martyrs. You can either bear witness of Him with your life or with your death. Sometimes you don’t get to choose. You simply find yourself in situations where you’re called upon to be faithful. In any case, witness mainly comes through words, which is closely supported by lifestyle. It comes through your work ethic. Your biblical morals. Your compassion to a neighbor. Your faithfulness to your family. Your love for Christ and His believers. It could come from answering a call that blesses others, but places you in harm’s way. It might involve calling others out, like John the Baptist, who was killed for making statements in public about the sexual indiscretions of King Herod.
But for sure, martyrdom is not what extremists think. It doesn’t mean taking your own life while you’re trying to kill other people. We shouldn’t confuse the words martyr and murderer. Nor is a martyr someone who likes the idea of being killed.
As far as the recent Charlie Kirk murder, I guess the Christian thing to do is to pray for the perpetrators. But I just don’t feel like doing that right now. The most I can do right now is pray about them.
Don’t get me wrong, love and mercy is an appropriate sentiment, and one modeled in Jesus Himself—“Father forgive them for they know not what they do” (Luke 23:34). Yet this same Jesus posted notice to His killers: “you will see the Son of Man seated at the right hand of Power and coming on the clouds of heaven” (Mt. 26:64). He also told them, “You will die in your sin” (John 8:21).
Similarly, when Paul considered those who were persecuting early Christians, he didn’t always wax eloquent about compassion for the persecutors. There were no naive calls for a Kumbaya-style reaction to them.
Instead, the apostle considered the divine kingdom as providing the ultimate justice upon all the unrepentant:
“God considers it just to repay with affliction those who afflict you, and to grant relief to you who are afflicted, as well as to us, when the Lord Jesus is revealed from heaven with His mighty angels in flaming fire, inflicting vengeance on those who do not know God and on those who do not obey the gospel of our Lord Jesus. They will suffer the punishment of eternal destruction, away from the presence of the Lord and from the glory of His might, when He comes on that day to be glorified in His saints and to be marveled at among all who have believed…” (2 Thess. 1:6-10).
Martyrs also pray for justice, even after their deaths. In the book of Revelation, John wrote,
“I saw under the altar the souls of those who had been slain for the word of God and for the witness they had borne. They cried out with a loud voice, ‘O sovereign Lord, holy and true, how long before you will judge and avenge our blood on those who dwell on the earth?’” (Rev. 6:9-10).
The answer to this prayer is, in its own way, a bit unsettling. The martyrs were “each given a white robe and told to rest a little longer until the number of their fellow servants and their brothers should be complete, who were to be killed as they themselves had been” (Rev. 6:11)
This is mildly unsettling because no one wants to be murdered, and yet more martyrs will join those under the altar.
- Let’s pray that God will accelerate His redemptive operations in this world and close this evil age. Sinners are still being saved. At times in history, the most egregious enemies of the saints became the most loyal to the faith, in fact, even laying down their own lives in the process.
- Let’s insist that God-ordained human governments will do what good governments ought to do–restrain violence and severely punish murderers. Where such measures fail, we must look to the throne of God for final justice.
- Let’s grow in the knowledge and service of Christ. Enjoy the many extras He likes to give, like food and shelter and various freedoms, but remember that we’re not entitled consumers.
We’re witnesses.
Literally, the Greek word is martus, which originally meant one who supplies evidence in a legal proceeding.
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This is an updated edition of a post originally published on John Myer
Featured Image by Andrea Don from Pixabay
