Written by J. Warner Wallace |
Saturday, December 16, 2023
There isn’t a single ancient document, letter or piece of evidence indicating any of the Christian eyewitnesses (the apostolic disciples) ever changed their story or surrendered their claims. Given the reasonable expectation of this Roman effort and the evidence from history confirming the trials of Christians, it’s remarkable none of the eyewitnesses ever changed their claims. Our willingness (as non-witnesses later in history) to die for what we believe has no evidential value, but the willingness of the first disciples to die for what they saw with their own eyes is a critical piece of evidence in the case for Christianity.

Many of us, as committed Christians, would rather die than reject our Savior. Around the world today, Christians are executed regularly because they refuse to deny their allegiance to Jesus or the truth claims of Christianity. But their deaths, while heartbreaking and compelling, have no evidential value. Many people are willing to die for what they don’t know is a lie. Martyrdom doesn’t confirm the truth, especially when the martyrs don’t have first-hand access to the claim for which they’re dying. But this wasn’t the case for the disciples of Jesus. They were in a unique position: they knew if the claims about Jesus were true. They were present for the life, ministry, death and alleged resurrection of Jesus. If the claims about Jesus were a lie, the disciples would have known it (in fact they would have been the source of the lie). That’s why their commitment to their testimony was (and is) so compelling. Unlike the rest of us, their willingness to die for their claims has tremendous evidential value. In fact, the commitment of the apostles confirms the truth of the resurrection.
The traditions related to the deaths of the apostles are well known. According to local and regional histories, all of the disciples died for their claims related to the Resurrection:
Andrew was crucified in Patras, Greece.Bartholomew (aka Nathanael) was flayed to death with a whip in Armenia.James the Just was thrown from the temple and then beaten to death in Jerusalem.James the Greater was beheaded in Jerusalem.John died in exile on the island of Patmos.Luke was hanged in Greece.Mark was dragged by horse until he died in Alexandria, Egypt.Matthew was killed by a sword in Ethiopia.Matthias was stoned and then beheaded in Jerusalem.Peter was crucified upside down in Rome.Philip was crucified in Phrygia.Thomas was stabbed to death with a spear in India.
As a detective (and a very skeptical one at that), I don’t necessarily accept all these traditions with the same level of certainty. Some are better attested than others; I have far greater confidence in the history related to Peter’s death, for example, than I have in the claims related to Matthias’ death. But I am still confident these men died for their claims, even if I may be uncertain about precisely how they died.
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Whilst we still sin and thus evidently are still sinners, we are more fundamentally holy and righteous in the sight of God, children adopted into Jesus’ sonship, indwelt and empowered by the Holy Spirit…When we remember and recall that is who we truly are now, I suspect we will be encouraged into living in line with what we are rather than being harangued into avoiding living in line with what we once were.

I wrote the other day (or, rather, re-posted) an article about not being afraid to repeat ourselves. The reason for the need to repeat ourselves—other than that people often haven’t heard us the first time—is that we are so prone to forget. We have been going through Deuteronomy recently and a repeated theme is the need to repeat the covenant because Israel are liable to forget it otherwise. It is a point made again and again—Deuteronomy has no problem repeating itself!
The key to not forgetting is to keep repeating. That is why Israel were told to keep reminding each other of the basic covenant stipulations, particularly the Shema. The most important fact about Israel was that Yahweh was their God and they were his people. This is the truth they were to keep repeating—when they get up and go to bed, in the house and out the house, in the city and out the city, with your family, friends and strangers—remember that you worship Yahweh alone. He is your God and you are his people.
The reason for landing on that so hard, and repeating it ad nauseam, is because Israel will ultimately act in line with what they are. If they remember they belong to God alone and they are his special covenant people, they are more likely to act as though they belong to God and are his covenant people. Knowing who they really are leads to acting like what they really are. Functioning as God’s covenant people was not about trying harder so much as remembering who they already are.
The same principle holds for God’s people today. The key to the Christian life is not trying harder to be better. It is fundamentally about remembering who we are in Christ. We worship God alone and we are his people. We are united to Christ and all that is his now belongs to us by faith.
More often than not, however, people in my tradition—theologically and soteriologically reformed people—land hard on something else. We tend to emphasise that we are sinners. And, of course, we are sinners by nature. The Bible is clear that all people are dead in their trespasses and sins. It is only in and through the person of Jesus Christ we can be forgiven for those sins. When we come to trust in Jesus—as Luther helpfully put it—we are simultaneously justified and yet sinners. Our sin is not eliminated in reality even if it is truly and properly forgiven, making us justified in God’s sight. And so we continue to hear an awful lot about sin.
But as I said, the Christian life is fundamentally about remembering who we are. Whilst we are still sinners, inasmuch as we still sin, when we have put our trust in Jesus that is no longer our core identity. Our fundamental identity is now our righteous standing in Christ. Let’s put it this way: stood before the throne of God, what is going to be the essential assessment of our lives? That we were sinners? Or, that we are united to Christ? Surely the latter. The Father, fundamentally, views us as those who are righteous in Christ, not fundamentally as sinners.

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“None is righteous, no, not one; no one understands; no one seeks for God. All have turned aside; together they have become worthless; no one does good, not even one.”
“Their throat is an open grave; they use their tongues to deceive.”
“The venom of asps is under their lips.”
“Their mouth is full of curses and bitterness.”
“Their feet are swift to shed blood; in their paths are ruin and misery, and the way of peace they have not known.”
“There is no fear of God before their eyes.” (Rom. 3:10–18)
This is what it looks like to be “dead” in trespasses and sins (Eph. 2:1). All sin is rooted in failing to glorify God as “the true God and our God” (Westminster Shorter Catechism 47). It is bad to be sinners before a holy God, but it is even worse to be unaware of who we are and why we need Christ to save us.
However, the Bible not only teaches that we are born dead in sin, that we are averse to living for God’s glory, and that we are inclined to evil, but it also teaches that all humanity died in Adam because all sinned in Adam (Rom. 5:12, 15, 19; 1 Cor. 15:22). This is what the church has called original sin. In order to understand this truth, I will show what original sin means and how it leads to all actual sins that we commit against God’s law. I will use Westminster Larger Catechism questions 24–26 to help us think through Scripture on the nature of sin and original sin. These issues are important because without understanding the nature, depths, and extent of our ruin, we cannot understand the glory of God’s remedy for sin in Christ.
What Is Sin?1
Before considering original sin, it is important to ask what sin is. For some people, sin means “brokenness” or “poor choices.” This misses the mark, focusing on the effects of sin on our lives rather than on the nature of sin itself. The Apostle John wrote, “Sin is lawlessness” (1 John 3:4). While we can understand “brokenness” or “poor choices” without referring to God, we cannot understand sin without God and His law. It is not stones and trees or even animals that break God’s law but human and angelic beings.
We break God’s law negatively and positively. Negatively, sin is “want of conformity unto” the law. The First Catechism defines “want of conformity” as “not being or doing what God requires.”2 We should love God supremely, and we should love Him while we love others and above others. Failing to be worshipers and servants of the true God, trusting in Christ as our Savior, and depending on the Spirit to trust and obey God makes everything we think, do, or say sinful by definition.