Why Foreign Missions? 20f. The Gospel
According to Paul—Word Study 3: Martyrion/Martyreō
‘Martyrion’ in Paul
Not only is the Gospel something to proclaim (see the
previous study); it is also a ‘testimony’ or ‘witness.’ This study will explore the significance of
the Gospel as a witness by looking at the verb (martyreō) and the noun (martyrion).
While the word is widely used in the Bible (195 times in 170
verses in the New Testament and 529 times in 472 verses in the entire Bible[1]),
its relevance to a study on the content of the Gospel is limited to a few
verses in Paul, several in the Johannine literature, and a couple verses in
Acts. Once again, the content of the
Gospel is seen to be about Jesus Christ.
However, one of the passages in this study (1 Tim. 2.3-7) expands the
search for the Gospel’s content to include the use of Israel’s confessional
statement in the Shema. The following study, then, reaffirms that
Jesus is the content of the Gospel, but it also provides us a way to understand
the interesting link for Paul between Israel’s confession and the Gospel.
‘Martyrion’ in Paul
1. 1 Corinthians
1.4-7
The first use of maryrion
of interest is in 1 Cor. 1.4-7:
1 Corinthians 1:4-7 4 I give thanks to my God always
for you because of the grace of God that has been given you in Christ
Jesus, 5 for in every way you
have been enriched in him, in speech and knowledge of every kind-- 6 just as the testimony of Christ has been strengthened among you-- 7 so that you are not lacking in
any spiritual gift as you wait for the revealing of our Lord Jesus Christ.
One might,
conceivably, take ‘testimony of Christ’ (martyrion
tou Christou) as a subjective Genitive, such that the meaning is ‘a witness
that Christ himself gives.’ In that
case, the speech, knowledge, and spiritual gifts would be understood as
Christ’s witness among believers. While
that is true, the meaning that I prefer takes the phrase as an objective
Genitive: ‘the witness about Christ’ that the Church gives in its enriched
speech and knowledge. Paul gives thanks
for the Corinthian church’s strong witness to Christ. In this way, there is parity between Paul’s
proclamation of the Gospel and the Church’s witness of the Gospel. This witness of the church is not merely
verbal; whatever the church is and does is to be a witness about Christ. In this way, v. 7 is also significant. The church’s witness about Christ is
conducted through its spiritual gifts that bear witness to the truth of Christ,
and this is a witness that will be proven as true when our Lord Jesus Christ is
revealed at his second coming. To the
extent that the power of God is evident in the church through spiritual gifts,
the church functions as a testimony to the truth of the power of the cross and
resurrection of Jesus Christ. Paul is
subtly correcting the Corinthians while praising them in this thanksgiving at
the beginning of his letter. They have
not tied their understanding of the power of God to the cross (1 Cor. 1.17-18),
their experience of spiritual speech (tongues and prophecy; 1 Cor. 14),
spiritual knowledge (1 Cor. 8-10), and spiritual gifts (1 Cor. 12) to a witness
about the death and resurrection of Christ.
Some have even denied a future resurrection (1 Cor. 15.12), such that
they see their present life as a witness to the future coming of Christ. Thus, while Paul offers thanksgiving for
elements of the truth in the Corinthian church’s witness of Christ, he also has
much to critique about their witness. In
such a use of the phrase ‘witness of Christ,’ we see how much more Paul has in
mind than a proclamation of the Gospel in word.
One can witness without words, and the church is itself a witness to the
world about Christ Jesus.
2. Second
Thessalonians 1.10
Another passage of interest is 2 Thes. 1.10:
2 Thessalonians 1:6-10 6 For it is indeed just of God to
repay with affliction those who afflict you,
7 and to give relief to the afflicted as well as to us, when
the Lord Jesus is revealed from heaven with his mighty angels 8 in flaming fire, inflicting
vengeance on those who do not know God and on those who do not obey the gospel
of our Lord Jesus. 9 These
will suffer the punishment of eternal destruction, separated from the presence
of the Lord and from the glory of his might,
10 when he comes to be glorified by his saints and to be
marveled at on that day among all who have believed, because our testimony to you was believed.
The proclamation of the Gospel is a testimony. Just as the correct response to hearing the
proclamation is faith, so too the correct response to hearing the testimony is
belief (English has two words, ‘faith’ and ‘belief,’ while the Greek is the
same). The content of the witness is, in
this case, focussed on the future coming of Jesus. The reason for this focus is that this church
has been confused by a false prophecy or forged letter that claimed that Jesus
had already returned—that the day of the Lord was already present (2 Th.
2.1-2). As in 1 Corinthians, Paul places
in his thanksgiving at the beginning of the letter an indication of the error
in regard to the Gospel into which this church has fallen. Unlike 1 Corinthians, the error is not
focussed on the cross and resurrection of Jesus but is focussed on the future
coming of Christ. The cross,
resurrection, and future coming of Christ are all part of the Gospel to be
believed.
3. 1 Timothy 2.3-7
and Paul’s Use of the Shema
A third text using the term ‘witness’ in relation to the
Gospel is 1 Tim. 2.3-7. This passage
allows us to include a brief study of Paul’s use of the Shema in his writings to describe the content of the Gospel. The Shema
is a daily prayer composed of Dt. 6.4-9; 11.13-21; and Num. 15.37-41. Of significance for our purposes is only the
first verse:
Hear, O Israel: The LORD is our God, the LORD alone
(Dt. 6.4).
Commentators are aware of Paul’s use of the Shema, but they typically do not notice
that Paul’s use of the Shema is
related to his understanding of the Gospel’s content. Yet, since Israel’s
unique witness to the world was its belief in one God, and one might expect
that Paul would connect this witness to the Gospel, the Church’s and his own
witness to the world. Indeed, Paul does
this very thing in 1 Tim. 2.3-7:
3 This is right and is acceptable in the sight of
God our Savior, 4 who desires
everyone to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth. 5 For there is one God; there is
also one mediator between God and humankind, Christ Jesus, himself human, 6 who gave himself a ransom for
all-- this was attested at the right
time. 7 For this I was
appointed a herald and an apostle (I am telling the truth, I am not lying), a
teacher of the Gentiles in faith and truth.
The witness given at the right time (v. 6; the Greek might
be rendered as ‘who gave himself a ransom for all, the witness at the right
time’) in this passage is a witness that interprets the meaning of Jesus’ death
on the cross. Jesus’ death was a ‘ransom
[antilutron] for all.’ Paul’s words in v. 7 indicate further that
Jesus’ death as a ransom for all gets at the core of his Gospel, for it is the
substance of the message he offers as a herald, apostle, and teacher. Also interesting is how Paul’s alteration of
the Shema, Israel’s own ‘Gospel,’ as
it were, serves as a statement of Paul’s Gospel witness: one God, one mediator,
who gave himself as a ransom for all.
The ‘for all’ (v. 6) relates to the Shema
precisely because, if there is only one God, then there is only one God for all instead of each nation having
its own god or gods. That is, the Jews’ Shema is the basis for a universal
Gospel, in Paul’s view.
Paul appears to use the Shema
not only in 1 Tim. 2.5-6 but also in 1 Cor. 8.6; Rom. 3.30; and Eph.
4.4-6. In 1 Corinthians 8.6 he
says,
yet for us there is one God, the Father, from whom
are all things and for whom we exist, and one Lord [kurios], Jesus Christ, through whom are all things and through whom
we exist.
Paul’s expansion of the Shema in 1 Cor. 8.6 involves understanding ‘Lord’
in the Greek of Deuteronomy 6.4-5 (the beginning of the Shema) to refer to Jesus, as follows:
4 Hear, O Israel: The LORD [Greek: kurios] is our God, the LORD alone.
5 You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart, and
with all your soul, and with all your might (Dt. 6.4-5).
As Richard Bauckham notes in reference to 1 Cor. 8.6, Paul
is redefining monotheism as
christological monotheism. If he were
understood as adding the one Lord to
the one God of whom the Shema`
speaks, then, from the perspective of Jewish monotheism, he would certainly be
producing not christological monotheism but outright ditheism…. Thus, in Paul’s quite unprecedented reformulation
of the Shema`, the unique identity of
the one God consists of the one God,
the Father, and the one Lord, his
Messiah.[2]
If 1 Cor. 8.6 witnesses Paul’s emendation of the Shema to include Jesus as the one Lord
and mediator between God and men, then Rom .3.27 witnesses Paul’s emendation of
the Shema to include a confirmation
that justification (or righteousness) comes through faith for both Jews and
Gentiles—that is, for all. Romans
3.27-31 states,
27 Then what becomes of boasting? It is excluded. By what
law? By that of works? No, but by the law of faith. 28 For we hold that a person is
justified by faith apart from works prescribed by the law. 29 Or is God the God of Jews only?
Is he not the God of Gentiles also? Yes, of Gentiles also, 30 since God is one; and he will
justify the circumcised on the ground of faith and the uncircumcised through
that same faith. 31 Do we
then overthrow the law by this faith? By no means! On the contrary, we uphold the
law.
The Shema is
also the basis for Paul’s theology in Eph. 4.4-6:[3]
4 There is one body and one Spirit, just as you were
called to the one hope of your calling, 5
one Lord, one faith, one baptism, 6
one God and Father of all, who is above all and through all and in all.
The oneness of God is the reason for every other
oneness of the believers. In fact, Eph.
4.4-6 offers a Trinitarian version of the Shema:
One
body, one Spirit, one hope
One
Lord, one faith, one baptism
One
God and Father of all—above all,
through all, in all
The unity of God is the Trinitarian fullness of God,
‘God in three Persons,’ as the Church will later say. It is not a tri-theism, which would mean a
plurality. The monotheistic confession
of Israel’s Shema is the very basis
of the Christian doctrine of the Trinity.
Also, the Trinitarian unity of God is the basis for the unity of the
Church and its faith. Furthermore, it is
the basis for God’s universal fatherhood,[4] as in Rom.
3.29-30 and Eph. 4.6.
This reflection on the Shema in a Trinitarian statement is something that Paul explored
before writing Ephesians in 1 Cor. 12.4-7:
Now there are varieties of gifts, but the same Spirit; 5 and there are varieties of
services, but the same Lord; 6
and there are varieties of activities, but it is the same God who activates all
of them in everyone. 7 To
each is given the manifestation of the Spirit for the common good.
Thus 1 Tim. 2.6-7 combines the expansion of the Shema in 1 Cor. 8.6; Rom. 3.27-31 and Eph.
5.4-6 (a passage that is paralleled in 1 Cor. 12.4-7 and again affirms unity
among believers). 1 Tim. 2.6-7 does not
include the Trinitarian expansion of Eph. 5.4-6 and 1 Cor. 12.4-7, however. The witness of Judaism, that there is one God
who should be obeyed by every Israelite, becomes the witness of the Church,
that there is one God, with Jesus Christ sharing in the divine identity,
serving as a mediator between God and humanity, and giving himself as a ransom for
all, both Jews and Gentiles. This is the
substance of the ‘witness’ given at the proper time that constitutes Paul’s
Gospel (1 Tim. 2.5-7).
Earlier (study 20b), I discussed Gordon Fee’s
argument that, in Paul’s Corinthian correspondence, there is a Trinitarian
dimension to the Gospel’s content. The
previous paragraphs have found this in Paul outside the Corinthian
correspondence in Eph. 5.4-6. There may
also be some further evidence of this outside of Paul in Hebrews 2.1-4 (note
the Trinitarian declaration in my italics and structuring):
Therefore we must pay greater attention to what we have heard, so that we
do not drift away from it. 2
For if the message declared through angels was valid, and every transgression
or disobedience received a just penalty,
3 how can we escape if we neglect so great a salvation? It
was
*declared at first through the Lord, and it was attested to us by those who heard him,
*4 while God added his testimony by signs and wonders and various miracles,
*and by gifts of the Holy Spirit, distributed according to his will.
To be sure, the content of the Gospel is not
typically stated in a Trinitarian form, even though this comes to be the form
for the Apostles’ Creed much later. The
focus is usually Christological, as we have it in, e.g., 2 Tim. 1.8, which also
uses the term ‘martyrion’:
Do not be ashamed, then, of the testimony [martyrion] about our Lord[5] or of me
his prisoner, but join with me in suffering for the gospel, relying on the
power of God.
The Johannine Literature
The term ‘martyrion’
as a way of speaking about the message of the early Church that is focussed on
Jesus is common in the Johannine literature.
For example,1 John 5.6-10:
6 This is the one who came by water and blood, Jesus
Christ, not with the water only but with the water and the blood. And the
Spirit is the one that testifies, for the Spirit is the truth. 7 There are three that
testify: 8 the Spirit and the
water and the blood, and these three agree.
9 If we receive human testimony, the testimony of God is
greater; for this is the testimony of God that he has testified to his
Son. 10 Those who believe in
the Son of God have the testimony in their hearts. Those who do not believe in
God have made him a liar by not believing in the testimony that God has given
concerning his Son. 11 And
this is the testimony: God gave us eternal life, and this life is in his Son.
Here again, with the term ‘martyrion,’ we find the content of the Gospel to be Jesus Christ
(cf. 1 Jn. 1.2; 4.14). The Gospel of
John also understands Jesus’ message, a revelation of the Father, to be a
‘witness’ or ‘testimony’ (e.g., Jn. 3.33; 18.37), and God’s witness to be about
Jesus (Jn. 5.31; 8.18). Jesus’ works,
inasmuch as they are given Jesus by the Father, also function as the Father’s
witness about Jesus (Jn. 5.36; 10.25).
The Scriptures also testify about Jesus (Jn. 5.39), the Spirit will
testify about Jesus (Jn. 15.26), and the disciples testify about Jesus (Jn.
15.27). In other words, the Gospel is
understood as a ‘witness’ that centres on Jesus.
The same can be said in regard to the book of
Revelation. In Revelation, the ‘word of
God’ is another way of speaking about the ‘testimony’ or ‘testimony of Jesus
Christ’ (Rev. 1.2, 9; 6.9; 20.4), and Christian ‘testimony’ is what is
otherwise spoken of as proclaiming the Gospel about Jesus (Rev. 11.7; 12.11,
17; 17.6; 19.10. Moreover, John the
Baptist and the disciples are witnesses—eye-witnesses—to Jesus (Jn. 1.17f, 15,
19; 19.35; 21.24).
The Book of Acts
Similarly, Acts has two verses that affirm that
Jesus is the content of the Gospel. The
apostles are eyewitnesses who can witness to Jesus’ resurrection (Acts 4.33) just
as Paul, who was not an eyewitness, witnesses about Jesus (Acts 22.18).
Conclusion
This study affirms what we find through other word
studies and methods of examining the content of the Gospel. By examining the use of the term ‘witness’ as
a verb (martyreō) and as a noun (martyrion)
in relevant New Testament passages in Paul’s letters, John’s writings, and
Acts, we have seen that the Church’s witness was a witness about Jesus Christ.
In this study, Paul’s use of ‘martyrion’ in 1 Tim. 2.6
raised a further point of interest in regard to the Gospel and its content: the
relation between Israel’s testimony in the Shema
and the Church’s testimony in the Gospel.
Paul adapts the Shema to the
Christ-focussed Gospel. The Christian (Paul
and Hebrews) adaptation can also be stated in a Trinitarian way. Whether Jesus is understood as participating
in the identity of the One God or whether the Trinity is understood as the
fullness of the One God, the early Church continued to affirm that there is
only One God. In addition to Christology and Trinitarian
theology, Paul found the Shema to be
a way to affirm that there is a single plan of salvation for both Jews and
Gentiles. He also found in the Shema’s affirmation of God’s Oneness the
grounds for unity among God’s people, the Church, and God’s fatherhood over all
peoples of the earth.
The significance of such a study might be stated in
how erroneous understandings of the Christian Gospel fail to understand what
has been observed here. Any who would
attempt to articulate the Christian faith apart from Jesus at its very centre
are manufacturers of another Gospel altogether.
Second, any who would attempt to downplay the significance of the
Trinity in Christian teaching have not noticed the relationship between
Israelite monotheism in the Shema and
the Christian Trinitarian Gospel. Third,
any who would attempt to understand the Gospel as only for a particular group
of people, not for all people, have failed to understand the Fatherhood of God
and the good news that He offers to all people.
Fourth, God’s universal Fatherhood is not the same as universal
salvation: the Gospel of Jesus Christ
is the Church’s witness to the world about Jesus Christ. It is a witness that must be believed or
received.
[1] Many
of the times the word is used in the Old Testament occur in the phrase ‘tent of
witness’—the tabernacle.
[2]
+Richard Bauckham, God Crucified: Monotheism and Christology in the New
Testament (Carlisle: Paternoster, 1998), p. 38.
[3]
+Andrew Lincoln also sees that the Shema
underlies this passage (Ephesians (Word Commentaries, Vol. 42; Waco, TX:
Word, 1990), p. 240).
[4] I say this because of Rom. 3.29-30,
already discussed, as well as because of Eph. 3.14-15: ‘For this reason I bow my knees before the Father, 15 from whom every family in
heaven and on earth takes its name.’ See +Markus Ephesians: Introduction, Translation, and
Commentary on Chapters 4-6 (Anchor
Bible, Vol. 34a; Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1974), p. 471; Andrew Lincoln,
Ephesians, p. 240. Contra +Harold Hoehner, Ephesians: An Exegetical Commentary (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker
Academic, 2002), p. 519. Paul’s point is
that the basis for unity in the Church and its faith—which applies only to
Christians, as Hoehner points out—is the Trinity and God’s universal
fatherhood—which applies to all.
[5]
This is, again, an Objective Genitive: the witness of our Lord (to martyrion tou kyriou).
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