Polycarp of Smyrna learned the faith from the apostle John, led the church at Smyrna for decades, and at eighty-six would not deny Jesus to save his life. His story is one of the best documented in the early church, and it begins in the Bible itself.
The church Jesus told to be faithful unto death
In Revelation 2:8–11, the risen Jesus sends a letter to the church at Smyrna, a wealthy port city on the coast of what is now Turkey. It is one of only two of the seven churches He does not rebuke. He tells them: “I know thy works, and tribulation, and poverty, (but thou art rich)... Fear none of those things which thou shalt suffer... be thou faithful unto death, and I will give thee a crown of life” (Revelation 2:9–10).
Polycarp was a leader in that church, and later its overseer (bishop), for most of his long life. Whether he was already leading it when John wrote Revelation we cannot say for sure. But some sixty years later, he lived out that letter to the letter.
A disciple of John
Polycarp was born around AD 69. Irenaeus, who heard him preach as a boy, wrote that Polycarp “was not only instructed by apostles, and conversed with many who had seen Christ, but was also, by apostles in Asia, appointed bishop of the Church in Smyrna” (Against Heresies 3.3.4). In a letter to a friend, Irenaeus remembered how Polycarp would tell of “his intercourse with John and with the others who had seen the Lord,” and would repeat their words about Jesus, His miracles and His teaching, all “in harmony with the Scriptures.”
That makes Polycarp one of the most important links in the whole history of the church: a man who knew the apostle John and lived long enough to teach the next generation.
His letter, and his friends
One of Polycarp's own letters survives, his Letter to the Philippians, written around AD 110. It is full of the New Testament: in a few pages he quotes or echoes Matthew, Acts, Romans, 1 Corinthians, Ephesians, 1 Timothy, 1 Peter and 1 John, among others. He wrote it when Ignatius of Antioch had just passed through Smyrna in chains on his way to die in Rome. Ignatius also wrote a letter to Polycarp, urging him, “Stand firm, as does an anvil which is beaten.”
Around AD 155, Polycarp traveled to Rome to meet Anicetus, the overseer there, about when to celebrate Easter. The churches of Asia followed the day John had kept; Rome kept another. They did not agree, but they shared the Lord's Supper together and parted in peace.
His arrest
Soon after, persecution broke out in Smyrna. Several believers were thrown to wild beasts in the stadium, and the crowd began to shout for Polycarp. His friends convinced him to hide on a farm outside the city. When the soldiers found him, he came down to meet them, ordered food and drink for them, and asked for an hour to pray. He prayed for two hours, remembering everyone he had ever known, and some of the soldiers were sorry they had come for such a godly old man.
Eighty and six years
In the stadium, the governor urged him to respect his age, swear by the fortune of Caesar, and say, “Away with the atheists” (the Romans called Christians atheists because they would not worship the gods). Polycarp looked at the crowd, waved his hand toward them, and said, “Away with the atheists.” The governor pressed him: “Swear, and I will set thee at liberty; reproach Christ.” Polycarp answered:
“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?”
When he was threatened with wild beasts and then with fire, he answered that the governor's fire “burneth for an hour, and after a little is extinguished,” but the governor knew nothing “of the fire of the coming judgment and of eternal punishment, reserved for the ungodly.”
He was bound to the stake and prayed, thanking God that he had been counted worthy “to have a part in the number of Thy martyrs, in the cup of thy Christ.” The account says the fire arched around him like a sail without consuming him, and an executioner was ordered to stab him. He died around AD 155 or 156.
Why it matters
The church at Smyrna wrote an account of his death, The Martyrdom of Polycarp, and sent it to other churches. It is the oldest account of a Christian martyr we have outside the New Testament, written by people who were there.
Polycarp did not become faithful at the stake. He had been faithful for eighty-six years, one ordinary day at a time. When the hour came, he simply kept doing what he had always done: trusting the King who had never once done him wrong. “Be thou faithful unto death, and I will give thee a crown of life” (Revelation 2:10).
Quotations from the early church are from the Ante-Nicene Fathers (1885), public domain.