Mental illness in your church is not an isolated problem. Current research highlights that one in five adults in the United States struggles with some form of mental-health issue each year. One in twenty adults experiences a serious psychiatric disorder. These suffering brothers and sisters are no doubt part of the flock you are called to shepherd.

Joel is one such congregant. He was recently arrested high on crystal meth, engaging the services of a prostitute. In fact, this is the third time this kind of behavior has happened in the last two years. What does pastoral care look like for him? What is the role of church discipline in his life? Should it make a difference that Joel has been diagnosed with bipolar disorder and ran out of his medications again, potentially precipitating the manic episode in which he stayed up all night using meth and engaging in illicit sex?

There are no easy answers here. In thinking about the juxtaposition of mental-health issues and church discipline, we want to be wary of two extremes. First, we don’t want to avoid corrective pastoral care out of fear that we will “add insult to injury” for those struggling with mental affliction. Second, we don’t want to care for someone with mental illness exactly as we would care for someone without such a struggle. We want biblical truth and love to guide us.

What Is Mental Illness?

Mental (or psychiatric) disorders are significant disturbances of thought, emotion, or behavior that cause distress to the person and often significant impairment in day-to-day functioning. Many struggles fall under the umbrella of mental illness, including schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, obsessive-compulsive disorder, major depression, and also problems such as substance abuse, autism, and dementia.1

Because there is such heterogeneity in what is understood as mental illness (not to mention the potentially myriad causes of such struggles), we must be careful of any one-size-fits-all approach. Each struggling person is different. A mental-health diagnosis is a starting point, not an endpoint, for understanding a person’s experience.

Much mental suffering is hidden, including among Christians. Many who bear a psychiatric label feel ashamed and stigmatized. They may already feel disconnected from the church body and even from Christ. In my experience, they are much more often “fainthearted” and “weak” rather than “idle” or disorderly (1 Thessalonians 5:14).

Mental illness always involves suffering. Church leaders, therefore, are wise to slow down, taking the time to draw near to the brokenhearted as the Lord himself does (Psalm 34:18). But suffering isn’t the only category to consider. All believers simultaneously live as saints, sufferers, and sinners this side of glory.2 When people struggle with mental-health problems, the battle with their sinful nature continues, and this battle may have significant consequences for self or others.

Sinful behavior can be particularly prominent in some mental-health struggles, such as manic excesses, multiple relapses associated with substance abuse, the relational harm associated with certain personality disorders, or angry and abusive outbursts associated with PTSD. In such cases, it becomes even more challenging to discern the priorities of pastoral care for this sister or brother who is both a sufferer and sinner.3

What Is Church Discipline?

Now that we have some general ideas about mental illness, what about church discipline? Jonathan Leeman highlights,

Church discipline is the process of correcting sin in the congregation and its members. Church discipline typically starts privately and informally, growing to include the whole church only when necessary. In its final, formal, and public stage, church discipline involves removing someone from membership in the church and participation in the Lord’s Table.

We see this process most clearly in Matthew 18:15–17. For the person under discipline, the goal is always restorative, not punitive. We want to see unrepentant sinners return to Jesus!

It’s helpful to think of church discipline on a spectrum. In one sense, all believers sit under the autocorrect function of God’s word (2 Timothy 3:16; Hebrews 4:12). As we read and hear Scripture, we are personally convicted — disciplined — by God’s indwelling Spirit to live in line with biblical truth.4

But God also grows us through community. When a friend approaches us and says, “Hey, I’m concerned about your harsh interactions at small group,” God, in his mercy, is using this person to help us see where we have sinned (Matthew 18:15). This broader practice of discipline is an utterly normal part of the Christian life. Informal but intentional conversations focused on what living for Jesus looks like should characterize our body life and our pastoral oversight.

More formal steps of discipline (Matthew 18:16–17) are not carried out simply for those who sin (we all do this!), but for those who sin in significant, high-handed ways and do not repent despite multiple entreaties to return to the safety and beauty of God’s law.5

Seven Guiding Principles

For helpers and church leaders, seeing sin in the lives of fellow believers should prompt the question, “What is most wise and loving at this juncture to help this particular person with these particular patterns of sin?” Answering that question, however, is often more complicated when the person involved deals with mental illness. So, how might we bring together our understanding of mental illness and church discipline?

The following general guidelines are certainly not exhaustive. In any given situation, what is wisest pastorally is prayerfully discerned by a team of thoughtful and compassionate shepherds who know their people well.

1. Personalize mental illness.

Familiarize yourself with the general contours of the psychiatric disorders that you know members of your congregation struggle with, endeavoring to think biblically and theologically about such issues.6 Then personalize that growing awareness by having conversations with those brothers and sisters, along with their family members, counselors, and physicians. Get a sense of their daily lives. Where do they struggle to live out their faith? Where do they experience joy and contentment? How can the church better care for them? You don’t have to be a mental-health professional to know a person deeply, but the more complex the struggle, the greater the importance of broadening your understanding.

2. Deal patiently and gently.

Patience and gentleness are key (1 Thessalonians 5:14; Galatians 6:1–2). Notice that there is no specific timeline associated with the process of church discipline in Matthew 18. In general, apart from the clearest cases, we might expect there to be several or even many conversations while moving along the spectrum from informal to formal church discipline. The administration of church discipline is not on a hair trigger. Godly shepherds model the description of Israel’s high priest in Hebrews 5:2: “He can deal gently with the ignorant and wayward, since he himself is beset with weakness.”

“You don’t have to be a mental-health professional to know a person deeply.”

Along the way, seek the input of the mental-health professionals who are working with the affected person (assuming consent is given). Decisions about formal church discipline are always momentous, even when seemingly clear-cut. How much more so when there are additional factors to weigh in the case of someone with a psychiatric diagnosis.

3. Form wise expectations.

Prayerfully consider how the weaknesses of the person might temper your expectations for obedience. A parenting analogy may help explain what I mean. In parenting, the age and developmental stage of our children matter in terms of our specific expectations for obedience, and the way we discipline should align with those differences. “Honor your father and your mother” holds equally for both the three-year-old and the twelve-year-old, but we have more robust expectations for our twelve-year-old. Additional factors in the child — such as hunger, pain, illness, or sleeplessness — may also warrant an adjustment in expectations. For example, we may not correct our three-year-old who has had a meltdown during a fever and strep throat.

How might this look for someone with both mental-health and recurring sin issues? Years ago, I was consulted about a middle-aged single man who was undergoing formal discipline for laziness and failure to honor his parents. After having a string of part-time jobs for many years, he hadn’t worked for several years and was living with his elderly parents.

As I got to know him, I indeed noticed places where his fleshly propensities for ease and comfort led to laziness. But more was going on. He struggled with incapacitating anxiety in social settings. Further, I observed some impaired interpersonal and cognitive capabilities that no doubt made it difficult for him to hold a job. The elders and I ultimately crafted a shepherding plan that took into account this man’s true weaknesses and inabilities while at the same time exhorting him to take more proactive care of his parents. However, given the full picture, the process of formal church discipline no longer seemed appropriate.

4. Care for everyone involved.

At the same time, it is also important to consider the impact of the person’s struggle on family members and the broader body of Christ. The severity and chronicity of these harmful offenses factor into the extent and time course of church discipline. A wife raising concerns about her husband’s apathy and passivity amid his serious depression is one thing. A depressed husband who has become verbally or physically abusive to his wife is a different matter and requires more urgent pastoral intervention. Or consider the difference between a person with fluctuating psychosis who sometimes disrupts church gatherings and the same person who is also making unwanted sexual advances toward another church member.

You are simultaneously trying to recognize and address the harm done to others while also bringing hope, encouragement, and correction to the suffering sinner. Put another way, you are seeking to love multiple people at once: the person with mental illness, those impacted negatively by his struggle, and the wider body of Christ.

5. Prayerfully assess repentance.

Prayerfully assess the person’s level of repentance (2 Corinthians 7:10–11). Remember, Scripture reserves the most serious manifestations of church discipline for church members who refuse to repent of clear-cut, significant sin. Questions to consider include the following (I’ll use he as a generic pronoun):

Does the person understand what he has done?
Is he grieved by this sin before God and others?
Has he asked forgiveness from those he has sinned against?
Is he doing the hard work of rebuilding trust with others?
Is he availing himself of all reasonable help, including counseling and/or medical care?
Is he compliant with prescribed medications?
Does he welcome greater pastoral oversight and accountability?

The more concern these questions raise, the more reason we may have for continuing a process of formal church discipline.

6. Remain open to change.

Be ready to change direction. Sometimes a decision regarding discipline needs rethinking. In many cases, this is not being wishy-washy but being wise and humble stewards of additional information and insights as they become apparent. No doubt, it is difficult to discern the difference between can’t and won’t in a struggling person. Sometimes, we will realize later that we erred on either side — being too lenient when greater accountability would have been wiser, or being too quick to advance formal discipline when greater patience and mercy would have been appropriate.

7. Love beyond discipline.

What about those (hopefully infrequent) instances where a congregant with a mental-health diagnosis requires removal from membership and the Lord’s Supper for serious and unrepentant sin — despite a prayerful, thoughtful process and multiple entreaties of love and warning? We do it with gentleness and tears, continuing to acknowledge the person’s real suffering as well as the sins that have harmed others and brought the gospel into disrepute.

If possible, communicate well with those outside the church who are involved in the person’s care (like counselors and physicians), as the discipline process may impact the person’s emotional state, and caregivers may need increased vigilance. Be prepared that taking such a step may incite anger and/or self-harm in the person. Ideally, family members and friends understand the need for this final step of church discipline and can offer ongoing support to the person.

Excommunication doesn’t mean that the person is barred from attending your church (a potential exception being harm done to others in the congregation by his continued presence). But it does mean that this person’s profession of faith is no longer seen as credible, and he is therefore viewed as an unbeliever. What does that look like? The person is welcomed and encouraged to attend the gathering but not partake of the Lord’s Supper, and leaders and members continue to urge him toward repentance and faith in Christ.

While this article cannot fully address the complexity involved in the exercise of church discipline in cases of mental illness, I hope these reflections provide biblical perspective and guidance as you, together with your fellow pastors, seek to wisely love those God has called you to shepherd.

When we come to Luke 4:41, near the end of this message, we are going to see something that has a direct bearing on your life in 2023 and on how you relate to demons and fevers and death and sin and the sovereignty of Christ over all of it. I point this out now lest you be tempted to think that these two-thousand-year-old stories are interesting, but not really relevant to “my issues today” or the problems swirling in our culture. That would be a big mistake.

Luke writes in verse 41 that “demons also came out of many, crying [to Jesus], ‘You are the Son of God!’ But he rebuked them and would not allow them to speak.” Why? Why won’t he let them talk? They just spoke one of the greatest truths in the world: “You are the Son of God.”

That’s better than what their master, Satan, said back in Luke 4:3 in the wilderness: “If you are the Son of God, command this stone to become bread.” These demons aren’t playing that game. They came out crying, “You are the Son of God.” There’s no if about it. They know whom they’re dealing with. So why does Jesus silence them when they speak such truth?

He gives the answer at the end of verse 41: “ . . . because they knew that he was the Christ.” Eventually, the word Christ became virtually a proper name along with Jesus — Jesus Christ. But in our text, it’s a title: “the Christ.” Luke tells us, “They knew that he was the Christ” — which is the English transliteration of Christos, which is the Greek translation of the Hebrew Mashiah (1 Samuel 2:10), which means “anointed one” or “Messiah.”

So the demons know that Jesus is the long-expected Son of David, the kingdom-bringing, world-conquering, enemy-defeating Jewish Messiah. They know this. And at the end of verse 41, Luke says that precisely because they know this truth, Jesus silences them. My point here is simply this: in that act of Jesus, when he silences that truth, there is a worldview that has everything to do with your life today. That’s where we are going. But let’s get there by starting at the beginning of the text.

Utmost Authority

His own hometown of Nazareth has just tried to throw him off a cliff (Luke 4:29). But they couldn’t. Because, for now, Jesus is untouchable. He will decide when he is to be killed. “No one takes [my life] from me, but I lay it down of my own accord” (John 10:18). So he walks away unscathed through the crowd. And after a twenty-mile journey, he comes to Capernaum, where Simon Peter lives (which becomes significant in Luke 4:38). And on the Sabbath, he enters the Jewish synagogue and does the same thing he was doing in Nazareth. He teaches:

He went down to Capernaum, a city of Galilee. And he was teaching them on the Sabbath, and they were astonished at his teaching, for his word possessed authority. (Luke 4:31–32)

In other words, he spoke as one who had the right to tell them what they ought to believe about God. We know that’s the focus of his teaching because down in Luke 4:43, when he leaves to go teach elsewhere, he says, “I must preach the good news of the kingdom of God to the other towns as well; for I was sent for this purpose.” When he mentions “other towns as well,” he means that’s what he was teaching here, in Capernaum — the good news of the kingdom of God.

And his teaching came with authority. In other words, he claimed to have the right to tell them what they ought to believe about God and his kingdom — the way God would rule the world, and the way people should live under his rule. And verse 32 says, “They were astonished.”

The authority of Jesus is astonishing. I mean, if it doesn’t astonish you, you’re not paying attention, or your emotional capacities are out of whack. Listen to the way he teaches in his first extended sermon in Luke, one chapter later.

Why do you call me ‘Lord, Lord,’ and not do what I tell you? Everyone who comes to me and hears my words and does them, I will show you what he is like: he is like a man building a house, who dug deep and laid the foundation on the rock. And when a flood arose, the stream broke against that house and could not shake it, because it had been well built. But the one who hears and does not do them [my words] is like a man who built a house on the ground without a foundation. When the stream broke against it, immediately it fell, and the ruin of that house was great. (Luke 6:46–49)

If I spoke like that — if I said, “What you do with my words determines whether your life will be swept away in the final judgment” — you’d think I was a nutcase. That’s breathtaking authority. And, of course, they did call him a nutcase (Mark 3:21) and worse: “possessed by Beelzebul” (Mark 3:22).

Demons in the Light

But here in the synagogue of Capernaum, that’s not the effect. The effect of Jesus’s teaching here is not only going to astonish the audience; it’s going to drive a demon out of the darkness and make him a witness to the truth.

The reason I say that’s the effect of his teaching is because Jesus doesn’t do anything — nobody does anything — to cause the demonic outburst of Luke 4:33–34. Jesus is just teaching. He’s telling the good news of the kingdom. He’s magnifying God as king and liberator (Luke 4:18–19). And he’s doing it with unprecedented authority. And the next thing we hear is this loud demonic voice: “Ha! What have you to do with us, Jesus of Nazareth? Have you come to destroy us? I know who you are — the Holy One of God” (verse 34).

Verse 33 gets us ready for this outburst: “In the synagogue there was a man who had the spirit of an unclean demon, and he cried out with a loud voice . . .” Why? This is demonic suicide. Why did he do that? He knows Jesus is the Holy One of God. This is not going to go well for the demon.

I don’t know why he made such a suicidal appearance instead of keeping his head down. But what I see, and what you can see, is this: the teaching of Jesus with authority provokes demonic exposure — and then deliverance. It was true then. It is true now.

“The steady-state, normal way that demons are exposed and removed is the teaching of truth in love.”

In 2 Timothy 2:24–26, the apostle Paul said that if the Lord’s servant teaches God’s truth with clarity and authority and love and patience and boldness, two things may happen: (1) God may grant people to repent and come to a knowledge of the truth, and thus (2) they may escape from the snare of the devil, who had captured them to do his will. The steady-state, normal way that demons are exposed and removed is the teaching of truth in love. The devil is a liar and a hater. He cannot abide a heart or a community ruled by truth and love.

Absolute Sovereignty

Now at this point in Luke 4, someone might say, “I’m not sure bringing demons out of the dark is safe.” No, it’s not safe, unless Jesus is present and on your side. If you turn away from Jesus because you want to play with the demonic (sorcery, séances, necromancy, fortune-telling, Ouija boards, mediums, crystal balls, palm reading, witchcraft, astrology, yoga), you may draw the demons out of darkness, but you won’t have Jesus’s help. That is a dangerous place to be.

But if you stand with Jesus, if you trust him and position yourself under his authority and in his care, here’s what happens:

Jesus rebuked him [the demon], saying, “Be silent and come out of him!” And when the demon had thrown him down in their midst, he came out of him, having done him no harm. And they were all amazed and said to one another, “What is this word? For with authority and power he commands the unclean spirits, and they come out!” (Luke 4:35–36)

Surely this is the main thing Luke wants us to see: Jesus is absolutely sovereign over demons. The people were “astonished” at the authority of his “teaching” (verse 32), and now they are “amazed” (verse 36). For when that teaching provokes demonic exposure, there is not only “authority,” but “power” — authority and power to dispatch that exposed demon and deliver the one who was in bondage. Let the last part of verse 36 sink in and be your boldness as a follower of Jesus: “With authority and power he commands the unclean spirits, and they come out!”

No Demon Can Disobey

Why? Why do they obey? I mean, the whole point of being a demon is that you don’t obey God. Demons hate God. So what’s with the obedience? Here’s the answer: God has two kinds of willing.

He has a moral will, like the Ten Commandments: “Don’t take the Lord’s name in vain. Don’t kill. Don’t steal. Don’t lie.” That’s God’s moral will. And demons don’t give a hoot about obeying those commands. The very meaning of being a demon is to be opposed to the moral will of God.

But the other kind of divine will is not the moral will, but the sovereign will: “Let there be light” — and there was light. “Lazarus, come out” — and the dead man came out. “Demon, be silent, and come out of him” — and he came out. He obeyed.

And the people were amazed and said, “What is this word?” (verse 36). Indeed! That’s the right question. The Ten Commandments are the word of God, and they don’t get obedience from demons. What is this word?

The closest we get to an answer is the last part of verse 36: “With authority and power he commands the unclean spirits, and they come out.” The Ten Commandments have authority. God has a right to tell us how to live. But this word of Jesus comes with authority and power.

“Jesus Christ forms a thought in his mind, he turns it into a word, and that word creates reality.”

We don’t know how this works. We don’t know what kind of power this is. Electromagnetic? Bluetooth? Wi-Fi? Radio waves? Those are all mysterious enough. But Jesus Christ forms a thought in his mind, he turns it into a word, and that word creates reality — which we should expect, since Hebrews 1:3 says, “He upholds the universe by the word of his power.”

Fevers Flee Before Him

Then Luke wants us to see that this absolute authority and power of Jesus’s word extends not only to the world of demons, but also to the world of nature. So we follow him to Simon’s house in verses 38–39:

And he arose and left the synagogue and entered Simon’s house. Now Simon’s mother-in-law was ill with a high fever, and they appealed to him on her behalf. And he stood over her and rebuked the fever, and it left her, and immediately she rose and began to serve them.

Surely it’s not a coincidence that Luke uses the same word for how Jesus spoke to the fever that he did for how Jesus spoke to the demon. Verse 35: “Jesus rebuked him [the demon].” Verse 39: “He stood over her and rebuked the fever.” This is an even more graphic picture of how mysterious this power is. You might argue that a demon obeys the sovereign word of Jesus because he is a rational creature, making up his mind to do so and then obeying. But here, Jesus is talking to a fever — rebuking a fever.

What is a rebuke? It’s telling someone they’ve done something wrong, said something wrong, gone where they’re not supposed to go. So Jesus says in effect, “Fever, you should not be doing that. You don’t belong here.”

Now the fever doesn’t understand anything Jesus is saying. It has no ears. No brain. No comprehension. It has no will. And it leaves her. It obeys just like later, when the wind and the water obey him (Luke 8:25).

Do we have any scientific categories at all to explain that kind of power? No. This is the scientifically inexplicable sovereignty of the Son of God over all things. All demons. All nature. That’s what Luke wants us to see — the sovereignty of Jesus over demons and nature.

Every Demon, Every Disease

But suppose someone says, foolish as it may sound, “Well, that was a one-off. One demon. One fever. You can’t generalize this power to other situations.” Luke now shows that the power both over demons and over disease is not a one-off. Verses 40–41:

Now when the sun was setting, all those who had any who were sick with various diseases brought them to him, and he laid his hands on every one of them and healed them. And demons also came out of many, crying, “You are the Son of God!”

Various diseases. Many demons. When Jesus speaks or touches, they go. His authority and power are absolute. No demon and no disease can stand when Jesus exerts his sovereign will, which he can do whenever he pleases. Then and now.

Why Christ Came Once

And now we have arrived at the end of verse 41, where we started, and we can turn to the twenty-first century. The second half of verse 41 says that when the demons declared Jesus to be the Son of God, “he rebuked them and would not allow them to speak, because they knew that he was the Christ.”

Why didn’t Jesus want the news to spread that he was the Messiah? Jesus gives part of the answer in Luke 9:20–22, when he told his disciples not to spread this news. He says it’s because “the Son of Man must suffer many things and be rejected by the elders and chief priests and scribes, and be killed, and on the third day be raised.”

The common conception of the arrival of the Messiah did not include his crucifixion. It included his supernatural military triumph over all Israel’s enemies and the establishment of his earthly kingdom. That’s what they expected from the Messiah, and that was not going to happen for another two thousand years or more.

In Luke 4:41, when Jesus blocked the spread of that misunderstanding of the kingdom and of his Messiahship, he signaled a view of the world — a worldview — that accounts for the twenty-first century, for our place in history, and points to how demons and fevers and death and sin and the sovereignty of Christ relate to us.

The mystery of the kingdom (Luke 8:10) was that the Messiah, in his first coming, would heal the sick and cast out demons and raise the dead and forgive sins, and in this way he would give many signs of what his final, perfect, sinless, painless, deathless kingdom would be like, after his second coming. The mystery was that there would be an unspecified period of time between the inauguration of the kingdom in Christ’s first coming and the consummation of the kingdom at his second coming. That’s where we live.

God’s number-one purpose in the first coming of the Messiah was that he die in the place of sinners and so purchase forgiveness. “The Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many” (Mark 10:45).

Until He Comes Again

So, here’s our situation between the two comings of Christ. By trusting Jesus Christ, his sacrifice for sin becomes mine. It counts for me, for you. All our sins are forgiven once for all (Colossians 2:13). There is no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus through faith (Romans 8:1). God’s just condemnation and Satan’s legitimate accusation are gone.

The one damning weapon with which Satan and his demons could ruin you is stripped from their hands — namely, the record of your unforgiven sin. That record was nailed to the cross. “This he set aside, nailing it to the cross” (Colossians 2:14)!

“God is totally, one hundred percent for you and not against you, if you are in Christ Jesus.”

Which means this for our lives: We live in the period of time between the Messiah’s two comings. In this period, Jesus — the risen, reigning Son of God, who upholds the universe by the word of his power (Hebrews 1:3) — is absolutely sovereign over demons and disease. But he does not remove them in this period of time. That’s the next phase of redemptive history, after the second coming.

But what he does remove, absolutely and completely, is your guilt and condemnation. Which means that in this period — in your life today — God is totally, one hundred percent for you and not against you, if you are in Christ Jesus. And if God is for you, who can be against you (Romans 8:31)?

And if you say, “Demons can be against me; disease can be against me,” no, actually, they can’t be. Because in Christ Jesus, whatever disease and whatever demon assaults you, Jesus turns it for your good (Romans 8:28). This is the good news of the kingdom: Jesus is sovereign, and he is for you. Trust him. Be valiant for him until he comes or until he calls.

Of the multitude of feasts celebrated in the popular culture of medieval Europe — wherein lie some of the key roots of the modern West — only two remain in popular North American culture today: Saint Patrick’s Day (March 17) and Saint Valentine’s Day (February 14). With Saint Patrick, we have two important texts by Patrick himself that reveal the true man. But who was Saint Valentine?

The name was a popular one in the Roman world, for the adjective valens expressed the idea of being vigorous and robust. In fact, we know of about a dozen early Christians who bore this name. Our Saint Valentine was an Italian bishop who was martyred on February 14, 269, after a trial before the Roman emperor Claudius Gothicus (reign 268–270). According to the meager accounts that we have, Valentine’s body was hastily buried, but a few nights later some of his associates retrieved it and returned it to his home town of Terni in central Italy. Other accounts list him as an elder in Rome. One embellishment has him writing a letter before his death and signing it, “your Valentine.”

“Saint Valentine was a martyr — yes, a lover, but one who loved the Lord Jesus to the point of giving his life.”

What seems clear, though, from all that we can determine, is that Saint Valentine was a martyr — yes, a lover, but one who loved the Lord Jesus to the point of giving his life for his commitment to Christ. For Christians to adequately remember Saint Valentine, then, we would do well to consider what it meant to be a martyr in the early church.

Witnesses and Martyrs

Our word martyr is derived from the Greek martys, originally a juridical term that was used of a witness in a court of law. Such a person was one “who has direct knowledge or experience of certain persons, events or circumstances and is therefore in a position to speak out and does so.”1 In the New Testament, the term and its cognates are frequently applied to Christians, who bear witness to Christ, often in real courts of law, when his claims are disputed and their fidelity is tested by persecution.

The transition of this word within the early Christian communities from witness to what the English term martyr” entails serves as an excellent gauge of what was happening to Christians as they bore witness to Christ. In Acts 1:8, Jesus tells the apostles that they are to be his “witnesses” (martyres) in Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria, and to the end of the earth. At this point, the word does not have the association of death, although in Acts 22:20 we do read of the “blood of Stephen,” the Lord’s “witness” (Greek martyros), being shed. But it is really not until the end of the writing of the New Testament canon that the term martys acquires the association with death.2

At the very close of the apostolic era, the risen Christ in Revelation 2 commends his servant Antipas, his “faithful witness,” who was slain for his faith at Pergamum, “where Satan dwells” (Revelation 2:12–13). Pergamum, it should be noted, was a key center of emperor worship in Asia Minor, and the first town in that area to build a temple to a Roman emperor, Augustus Caesar. It may well have been Antipas’s refusal to confess Caesar as Lord and worship him that led to his martyrdom.3 It has been estimated that by the mid-first century, eighty or so cities in Asia Minor had erected temples devoted to the cult of the emperor.4

The word martys seems thus to have acquired its future meaning first in the Christian communities in Asia Minor, where the violent encounter between church and empire was particularly intense.5 In this regard, it was certainly not fortuitous that Asia Minor was “unusually fond” of the violent entertainment of the gladiatorial shows. There was, in fact, a training school for gladiators at Pergamum. Along with fascination with such violence, there would have been a demand for victims over and above the requisite gladiators. Thus, recourse was had to Christians, among others.6

And so, the word martys became restricted in its usage to a single signification: bearing witness to the person and work of Christ to the point of death. Stephen and Antipas were the first of many such martyrs in the Roman Empire.

Neronian Persecution

One of the most memorable clashes between church and empire was what has come to be called the Neronian persecution. In mid-July 64, a fire began in the heart of Rome that raged out of control for nearly a week and gutted most of the city. After it had been extinguished, it was rumored that the emperor Nero (reign 54–68) himself had started it, for it was common knowledge that Nero wanted to level the capital of the empire in order to rebuild the city in a style in keeping with his conception of his own greatness. Conscious that he had to allay suspicions against him, Nero fixed the blame on the Christians.

The fullest description that we have of this violence against the church is from the Roman historian Tacitus (about 55–117), who describes the execution of these Christians as follows:

To scotch the rumour [that he had started the fire], Nero substituted as culprits, and punished with the utmost refinements of cruelty, a class of men, loathed for their vices, whom the crowd styled Christians. Christus, from whom they got their name, had been executed by sentence of the procurator Pontius Pilate when Tiberius was emperor; and the pernicious superstition was checked for a short time, only to break out afresh, not only in Judaea, the home of the plague, but in Rome itself, where all the horrible and shameful things in the world collect and find a home.

First of all, those who confessed were arrested; then, on their information, a huge multitude was convicted, not so much on the ground of incendiarism as for hatred of the human race. Their execution was made a matter of sport: some were sewn up in the skins of wild beasts and savaged to death by dogs; others were fastened to crosses as living torches, to serve as lights when daylight failed. Nero made his gardens available for the show and held games in the Circus, mingling with the crowd or standing in his chariot in charioteer’s uniform. Hence, although the victims were criminals deserving the severest punishment, pity began to be felt for them because it seemed that they were being sacrificed to gratify one man’s lust for cruelty rather than for the public weal.7

A number of Christians — including the apostle Peter, according to an early Christian tradition that seems to be genuine8 — were arrested and executed. Their crime was ostensibly arson. Tacitus seems to doubt the reality of this accusation, though he does believe that Christians are rightly “loathed for their vices.” Tacitus’s text mentions only one vice explicitly: “hatred of the human race.” Why would Christians, who preached a message of divine love and who were commanded to love even their enemies, be accused of such a vice?

Well, if one looks at it through the eyes of Roman paganism, the logic seems irrefutable. It was, after all, the Roman gods who kept the empire secure. But the Christians refused to worship these gods — thus the charge of “atheism” that was sometimes leveled at them.9 Therefore, many of their pagan neighbors reasoned, they cannot love the emperor or the empire’s inhabitants. Christians thus were viewed as fundamentally anti-Roman and so a positive danger to the empire.10

‘Blood of Christians Is Seed’

This attack on the church was a turning-point in the relationship between the church and the Roman state in these early years. It set an important precedent. Christianity was now considered illegal, and over the next 140 years the Roman state had recourse to sporadic persecution of the church. It is noteworthy, though, that no emperor initiated an empire-wide persecution until the beginning of the third century, and that with Septimius Severus (reign 193–211).11 Nonetheless, martyrdom was a reality that believers had to constantly bear in mind during this period of the ancient church.

“Instead of stamping out Christianity, persecution often caused it to flourish.”

But persecution did not always have the effect the Romans hoped for. Instead of stamping out Christianity, persecution often caused it to flourish. As Tertullian (born about 155), the first Christian theologian to write in Latin, put it, “The more you mow us down, the more we grow: the blood of Christians is seed.”12 And as he said on another occasion: “whoever beholds such noble endurance [of the martyrs] will first, as though struck by some kind of uneasiness, be driven to enquire what is the matter in question, and, then, when he knows the truth, immediately follow the same way.”13

Surpassing All Earthly Loves

It was during the Middle Ages that the various stories of Saint Valentine circulated and were embellished, solidifying the remembrance of him as a martyr. But it was a medieval writer, Geoffrey Chaucer (1340s–1400), who explicitly linked romantic love to Saint Valentine in a poem entitled “Parliament of Fowls” that described the gathering of a group of birds on “seynt valentynes day” to choose their mates.

To what degree Chaucer influenced the later link between Saint Valentine’s Day and lovers is not exactly clear, but as early as the fifteenth century lovers were sending each other love notes on Saint Valentine’s Day. Of course, with the rise of the commercial cultures of the West in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, this practice was commodified and became an important part of the commercial world we see today. There is nothing inherently wrong with modern commercial traditions, but Saint Valentine’s Day is a good day to also remember that there is a love that surpasses all earthly loves: our love for our great God and our Savior, his dear divine Son, Jesus.