The word martyr comes from the Greek martys, “witness.” In the first three centuries of the church it came to mean a believer who bore witness to Jesus with his or her life. Jesus said, “ye shall be witnesses unto me” (Acts 1:8), and told the church at Smyrna, “be thou faithful unto death, and I will give thee a crown of life” (Revelation 2:10). Here are some of those who were.
In the pages of Scripture
- Stephen (about AD 34), the first martyr, stoned in Jerusalem, saw “Jesus standing on the right hand of God” and prayed, “Lord, lay not this sin to their charge” (Acts 7:55–60).
- James, the brother of John, the first apostle to die, “killed... with the sword” by Herod around AD 44 (Acts 12:2).
- Antipas of Pergamos, named by Jesus Himself: “Antipas was my faithful martyr, who was slain among you” (Revelation 2:13).
- Peter and Paul, who died in Rome under the emperor Nero in the mid-60s, as the early church remembered. Jesus had told Peter “by what death he should glorify God” (John 21:19), and Paul wrote, “I am now ready to be offered” (2 Timothy 4:6). The Roman historian Tacitus records that under Nero Christians were torn by dogs, crucified, and burned as torches.
The Apostolic Fathers
- Ignatius of Antioch (about AD 107–110), carried in chains to Rome to face the beasts, wrote seven letters on the way: “I am the wheat of God, and let me be ground by the teeth of the wild beasts, that I may be found the pure bread of Christ.”
- Polycarp of Smyrna (about AD 155), the disciple of John, told the governor, “Eighty and six years have I served Him, and He never did me any injury: how then can I blaspheme my King and my Saviour?” (Read more: Polycarp of Smyrna.)
The second century
- Justin Martyr (about AD 165), a philosopher who found the truth in the prophets and in Christ, defended the faith in writings to the emperor and was beheaded in Rome with several of his students.
- The martyrs of Lyons and Vienne (AD 177) in Gaul: Pothinus, their overseer, over ninety, who died in prison; Sanctus, who answered every question with “I am a Christian”; and the slave girl Blandina, who through days of torture kept saying, “I am a Christian, and there is nothing vile done by us.” Their churches' letter about them survives in Eusebius's Church History. It was after this persecution that Irenaeus became overseer of Lyons. (Read more: Irenaeus of Lyons.)
The third century
- Perpetua and Felicity (AD 203), a young noblewoman and a slave, died together in the arena at Carthage. Perpetua's prison diary still survives. When her father begged her to deny Christ, she told him she could not call herself anything other than what she was, a Christian.
- The persecutions of Decius and Valerian (AD 250–260) demanded that every person sacrifice to the gods and carry a certificate proving it. Many believers refused and died.
- Cyprian of Carthage (AD 258), overseer of the church, was beheaded. When his sentence was read, he said, “Thanks be to God.”
“The blood of Christians is seed”
Around AD 197, Tertullian of Carthage wrote to the persecutors: “The oftener we are mown down by you, the more in number we grow; the blood of Christians is seed.” Rome tried for 250 years to stamp out the church, and the church kept growing, until in AD 313 the empire itself stopped persecuting Christians. Jesus had said it first: “Except a corn of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abideth alone: but if it die, it bringeth forth much fruit” (John 12:24).
The martyrs were not superheroes. They were slaves and nobles, old men and young mothers, scholars and believers only just baptized. What they shared was not strength of their own but love for the Jesus who first loved them. “They overcame him by the blood of the Lamb, and by the word of their testimony; and they loved not their lives unto the death” (Revelation 12:11).
The church still suffers
Persecution did not end with Rome. In many countries today, believers are still imprisoned, beaten, driven from their homes or killed for the name of Jesus. Scripture calls us to “remember them that are in bonds, as bound with them” (Hebrews 13:3). Will you pray for them this week?
For a day-by-day walk through these lives with the Scriptures, start the study Faithful Unto Death in the Bible's Plans. Quotations from the early church are from the Ante-Nicene Fathers (1885) and Eusebius's Church History (1890), public domain.