- Question: In what ways should we be a witness to those around us? And what is the appropriate motivation behind witnessing?
- The early church gives us some perspective because, although they agreed with us that Christians are meant to be witnesses, their answers to these two questions focused on different themes than the answers we give.
- While we focus on God’s love for every individual person as one of our main motivations for witnessing, the early church focused not simply on winning individual people to salvation, but on manifesting the victory of Christ in the world
- This is an extension of what is known as Christus Victor theology, which focuses on a particular theme of what Christ did for us on the cross. To put it in context, we generally give priority to a system of theology known as Substitutionary/Penal Atonement—that when Christ died on the cross, what he was doing was taking on himself the sins that should have fallen on us instead (Romans 3:23-25). While the early church wouldn’t have disagreed with that, they put their focus instead on a different theme of Christ’s death—that on the cross, he triumphed over the powers of sin, Satan, and death (Colossians 2:15; Hebrews 2:14). Note that both of these themes are present in the New Testament; it’s just a question of which one you choose to emphasize in the way you present the Gospel. Since the early church emphasized the Christus Victor model, their attempts at witnessing were less about convincing people that they were sinners who needed to be forgiven through Jesus’ sacrifice, and more about demonstrating to the world that Christ had won and that his Kingdom was taking over the world. By gaining new converts, the early Christians were participating in the onward march of Christ’s triumphant reign.
- How to be a Witness
- Evangelical Christians nowadays think about “witnessing” as primarily involving the act of telling another person directly about Jesus in one-on-one conversation. No doubt the early church did their fair share of this as well, but, once again, they focused on different areas of “witnessing” as more foundational.
- Means #1: Living out the values of the radical new Kingdom of Christ
- The primary means of witnessing was simply the witness of example—in the context of the Roman Empire, the morals of the New Testament made Christians stand out. Unlike their pagan neighbors, Christians were well-known for saving abandoned babies and tending the sick during times of plague.
- Means #2: Martyrdom & Persecution
- Martyr literally means “witness.” One of the main ways that new converts were attracted to the faith were by watching the way that Christians bore up under persecution, and even while being executed for their faith. In the New Testament, Christians are regularly told to expect persecution and even rejoice in being persecuted (Matt. 5:11-12; James 1:2-3). Early church history is full of examples of Christians showing radical courage and devotion while facing death by burning or wild animals, and many of those in the audience were converted.
- Means #3: Power Encounters
- Some of the clergy were involved in a much more direct means of evangelization. And, since their message was that Christ had won the victory, they wanted to demonstrate this fact. Sometimes this was done by way of miraculous healings (especially of those afflicted by evil spirits)—very similar to the apostolic pattern of evangelization shown in the book of Acts. More often, though, they wanted to show that the pagan gods’ power had been vanquished by Christ; this could be shown by impressive demonstrations like idol-smashing or the chopping down of sacred trees. This may sound disrespectful or overly forceful to us, but to the pagan audience it was a powerful and irrefutable proof that the power of the old gods was gone.
- Applications for Today’s Christians
1.) We can check our attitudes in the light of the early church’s way of looking at the world. Do we have the unshakable feeling that we are on the winning side, that nothing—not persecution, not secularism, not drugs, not militant Islam, not anything in the world—can stand against the power of Christ and his church? If not, we need to re-examine what we believe in the light of the New Testament promises.
2.) Instead of beating ourselves up for not being door-to-door evangelists, we can start by focusing on the kind of witness that the New Testament exhorts us to: living a life of fervent, passionate holiness. When we do that, people sit up and notice.
3.) We need to remember that persecution is the normal state of affairs for the Christian church, and that our current situation of blessing and political freedom is abnormal. We need to make sure that we are walking so closely with Christ that if we were ever called upon to make that ultimate sacrifice for our faith, we would face up to the challenge as well as the early church did. And in the meantime, we need to remember, pray for, and support our brothers and sisters in Christ who are currently undergoing persecution.