Polycarp

What He Did

Polycarp was a young man when the Apostle John was an old one. He sat under John's teaching. He saw, with his own eyes, men who had walked with Jesus. He carried that into his old age, and when persecution came to Smyrna in the middle of the second century, the church there had a bishop who was, in a real sense, two handshakes from Christ.

Persecution under Marcus Aurelius made an example of Christians publicly. The mob in Smyrna demanded the bishop be brought to the arena. The Christians around Polycarp begged him to flee. He did, briefly — not out of fear, but because he was persuaded that disappearing for a season was wisdom rather than cowardice.

The Romans found him anyway. He was hiding on a farm outside the city. When the soldiers arrived at night, the old man came down, ordered food set out for them, and asked only for an hour to pray.

They brought him to the proconsul. The proconsul was reluctant. The crowd was not. The proconsul tried to talk him out of it. Have respect for your old age. Swear by the genius of Caesar. Curse Christ. Just say the words and you can go home.

The proconsul threatened wild beasts. Polycarp said bring them. The proconsul threatened fire. Polycarp said the fire that burns for an hour is nothing compared to the fire that burns forever, which the proconsul should fear, not him.

They burned him. According to the eyewitness account, the flames bowed around him without consuming him, and an executioner finally stabbed him to end it. The Smyrnaean church wrote down the whole sequence and circulated it to other churches as a witness. We have that letter to this day.

Why It Belongs Here

Polycarp's sentence is the entire shape of Christian masculinity in eleven seconds.

Eighty and six years have I served Him, and He never did me any wrong.

That is not a man who has been performing a role. That is a man who has actually walked with Christ for almost the full span of a human life and has tested Him against everything — persecution, betrayal, age, weakness, doubt — and found Him reliable. By the time the Romans came, the question wasn't whether to recant. The question had been settled decades earlier in a thousand smaller standings. The arena was just the last one.

Most modern Christian men want the arena moment without the eighty-six years of small standings that produce the man who can have it. There is no such man. The arena either reveals the long obedience or the long pretending. Polycarp's arena revealed a man who had been a Christian his entire adult life with no offstage gear.

“Be faithful unto death, and I will give you the crown of life.” Revelation 2:10 — written to the church at Smyrna, the church Polycarp would later lead

Note the address. The promise was made to that church, that congregation, that city. By the time Polycarp died, he was the living embodiment of the promise that had been spoken over the very church he was bishop of.

Christ kept the promise. Polycarp kept the faith. The crown was given.

Eighty-six years of service. One sentence at the end.