Jesus, the Archetypal Martyr [Firebrand Big Read]

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The Book of Revelation is meant to be simultaneously shocking and comforting. The symbolism and graphic descriptions both stretch the bounds of our comprehension and make us feel that God is showing us something profoundly real. John’s heavenly vision is distant from us in both time and space but somehow also near to us, illuminating our life in this day and place. At the heart of Revelation’s message is its presentation of Jesus as “witness” (1:5; martus in Greek) and slain lamb (5:6). While the Greek word martus did not yet have the full sense of our related English word “martyr,” Revelation’s consistent portrayal of the faithful death of Jesus casts him as the archetypal martyr—the one who died out of faithful obedience to God and established a model of faithful death for all those who would follow him. To better understand this central theme of Revelation, we will explore its portrayal of Jesus as the paradoxically victorious witness and lamb, then turn to how believers are cast as those who follow Jesus’s example by conquering through death, and finally close with some reflections for the church today.

Jesus, the victorious martus in Revelation

Beginnings and endings are critical in any form of communication. The beginning sets the stage for what is to come and the conclusion is the final, ringing note that sounds over the whole work. Revelation is no different. Thus it is striking, and far from coincidental, that the first and last identification of Jesus in Revelation is that he is a martus. Revelation 1:4–8 is similar to other letter openings in the New Testament (compare 1 Cor. 1:1–3), identifying the author and audience (v. 4) along with a blessing of “grace and peace.” John expands this opening benediction in order to set forth a number of key themes and images that will fill this letter-book of prophecy. This “grace and peace” (v. 4) is from God the Father (“the one who is and who was and who is to come”) and from the Holy Spirit (“the seven spirits before God’s throne”) and climactically also from Jesus Christ, “the faithful witness [martus]” (v. 5). John then quickly signals to his audience the complex paradox of Jesus being “the firstborn from the dead.” Jesus was dead but somehow also re-birthed from that death. Jesus’s death is reiterated by the following declaration that he has “freed us from our sins by his blood” (v. 5). But again, Jesus’s story does not end in death, for John then calls his audience (in an echo of Dan. 7:13) to “Look! He is coming with the clouds” (v. 7). Already, Jesus’s identity as witness/martus is bound to his salvifically effective death as well as his resurrection and return.

That is not all, though. While Revelation 1:4–8 may have been the original opening to the letter-book, at some point someone added 1:1–3 to clarify the nature of the book and its contents. Here we see an aligning of Jesus as witness/martus with the followers of Jesus who also bear witness. We are told in v. 2 that John is the one who “testifies” or “bears witness” (martureō, the verb form of martus) to the things that God revealed to him. Moreover, what John “witnesses to” is both the “word of God” and the “testimony”(marturia) of Jesus. ThusJohn as a servant of God (v. 1) is engaged in martus activity just as Jesus was engaged in martus activity. Already, Jesus is the model for his followers in his role as witness. Leaping from here to the very end of Revelation, John’s final declaration about Jesus identifies him as “the one who testifies to these things” (22:20)—another use of the verb martureō. To close the book, John reminds his audience again of the core concept of Jesus as the one who bears witness, a witness that is closely associated with Jesus’ death (and secondarily his resurrection and return) throughout Revelation, as we will see.

After the letters to the churches found in Revelation chapters 2 and 3, John is transported to heaven. In chapter 4, we are given a glimpse of the awesome scene of continuous worship around God’s throne. Chapter 5 introduces a problem: Who is worthy to open the scroll in God’s right hand (v. 2)? After some delay and silence and mourning, one of the heavenly elders points out that “the Lion of the tribe of Judah . . . has conquered” and so is worthy to open the scroll. But when John looks, what he actually sees is a lamb, looking “as if it had been slaughtered” (v. 6). Verse 9 makes this connection even more obvious: “You are worthy to take the scroll and open its seals because you were slaughtered.” This is not just looking “as if” it had been slaughtered; this recalls Jesus’s actual crucifixion, which came about because of Jesus’s faithful obedience to God. It is the death of Jesus (not his triumph in resurrection) that makes him worthy to open the scroll. Paradoxically, Jesus has conquered by dying, and this is celebrated in song at the end of the scene: “Worthy is the lamb that was slaughtered” (v. 12). The presumably powerful lion turns out to be a slain lamb, and that lamb has conquered and is worthy precisely because it has been killed. Jesus died in faithful obedience to God. In modern parlance, he was martyred.

This paradoxical turn of conquering by dying puts several other references to “conquering” in Revelation in a new light and helps others to make even more sense. The Greek verb for “conquering” is nikaō, the verb form of nikē—yes, the namesake of the Nike shoe brand. In the ancient world, Nike was the goddess of triumph and victory, particularly victory in military and athletic events, where triumph comes after struggle. This association both underscores and heightens the irony of John’s use of “conquering” throughout Revelation. This verb appears repeatedly in the closing formula of the letters in Revelation chapters 2 and 3: “To the one who conquers . . ..” These blessed saints receive many things, including permission to eat from the tree of life (2:7), hidden manna and a white stone (2:17), and white robes (3:5; for other gifts, see 2:11, 2:26, and 3:12). They are worthy to receive these things for the same reason that their Lord is worthy—they faced the struggle with evil put before them and “won” by being faithful even to the point of death. This is made explicit at the end of the final letter in the collection, the one to Laodicea: “To the one who conquers I will give a place with me on my throne, just as I myself conquered and sat down with my Father on his throne” (3:21). Paradoxically, Jesus conquers death by dying, and his followers emulate this pattern. This obedient struggle against evil will not always end in a martyr-like death for the faithful ones. It may be fulfilled by continuing faithfully until the natural end of life or the arrival of Jesus (2:3, 26), but death as a result of faithful obedience is always a possibility (2:10).      

This paradox of “conquering” extends into the rest of the book of Revelation. The first beast attempts to mimic Jesus’s unusual form of conquering by appearing “to have received a mortal wound that was healed” (13:3; see Richard Bauckham, The Climax of Prophecy, 431–432), but we see the beast’s true nature in its exercise of violence and power against God’s people. In both 11:7 and 13:7, we hear of the beast making war on and “conquering” God’s people. This is the devil’s (and the world’s) version of conquering—defeating and killing others by force. 

In 13:8, we are reminded of the “Lamb who was slaughtered” and that those who resist the beast are written in the Lamb’s book of life. They are called to “endurance and faith” (13:10). Later in 15:2, we are told of those who “had conquered the beast and its image and the number of its name” (cf. 13:14–17). These are surely not people who have risen up in power and triumphed over the beast militarily. Rather, they are those who remained faithful to God in the midst of the beast’s exercise of power, even if it cost them their lives. This is described for us in 12:11: “They have conquered him [Satan] by the blood of the lamb [a reference to Jesus’s own death] and by the word of their testimony, for they did not cling to life even in the face of death” (see also 20:4). These faithful witnesses conquer the Devil through their death, just as Jesus did. In the end, it is “those who conquer” that inherit the water of life and all of the benefits of the New Jerusalem (21:7).

The predominant image of Jesus in Revelation is “The Lamb” (the slain lamb of 5:6); this title occurs over twenty times in the book, stretching from beginning to end (e.g., 6:1, 8:1, 14:1, 15:3, 19:7, 21:9, 22:1). That image of the slaughtered lamb is reinforced by statements about the “blood of the Lamb” (7:14, 12:11) and a later reiteration of “the Lamb that was slaughtered” (13:8). This recurring identification of Jesus as the Lamb (that was slaughtered) keeps the martyr-like death of Jesus present throughout the book. In contrast, power and authority across most of Revelation are placed squarely in the hands of God, who then delegates it to Jesus. Throughout the book of Revelation, we are reminded that the right to execute judgment belongs to God (the Father): 4:11, 11:15–18, 15:3–4, 16:4–6, 19:1–5, 21:5–8). As the altar responds in 16:7: “Yes, O Lord God the Almighty, your judgments are true and just.” The power of God, the one on the throne, is delegated to include Jesus (the Lamb) as well (5:13, 7:10, 11:15, 21:22). We do get one predictive reference to Jesus conquering in power in 17:14: “They [the kings of the earth] will make war on the Lamb, and the Lamb will conquer them, for he is lord of lords and king of kings.” However, before this actually happens, we have the great declaration of the victory of God in 19:1–8: “Salvation and glory and power are to our God, for his judgments are true and just; he has judged the great whore who corrupted the earth with her immorality, and he has avenged on her the blood of his servants” (19:1–2). It is only after this great victory of God that Jesus appears as the rider on the white horse to judge and make war (19:11), but we are reminded that this powerful rider is still the Lamb because his robe is dipped in and colored by his own blood (19:13; see Craig R. Koester, Revelation, 755–56). Furthermore, the sword coming out of his mouth (19:15) is perhaps a reference to the verbal testimony of Jesus (1:2) and not a literal sword (compare Isa 49:2). Differently than much of the extended and vivid apocalyptic descriptions in Revelation, the military victory of Jesus here is described matter-of-factly in just two verses: the two beasts are captured and thrown into the lake of fire (19:20) and the rest of their minions are killed by the sword that comes out of Jesus’s mouth (19:21) that is Jesus’s authoritative word of truth and judgment (see Craig R. Koester, Revelation, 762). Jesus is worthy of this authority precisely because of his redeeming death (recall 5:9). In this case, the conquering word of Jesus’s followers in the middle of the vision (12:11) presages the conquering word of their Lord here at the end. When we come to the final vision of the New Jerusalem, we no longer see this powerful, triumphing rider with a sword coming out of his mouth. Instead, we hear of the wife of the Lamb (21:9), the apostles of the Lamb (21:14), and the throne of God and of the Lamb (22:1, 3). Thus, as the book closes, it leaves us with the vivid imagery of Jesus the Lamb, the one that was slaughtered, who died in faithful obedience to God.

The portrayal of those who “keep the marturia of Jesus”

Revelation’s insistent portrait of Jesus the Lamb as the archetypal witness/martus provides the foundation for the book’s equally resolute portrayal of faithful believers as those who “keep the witness [testimony/marturia] of Jesus.” From the very opening lines of the book, John’s vision-recording activity is named as an act of “testifying” (martureō) to “the word of God and the testimony [marturia] of Jesus” (1:2, 9). It landed John on the rocky outpost of Patmos, probably banished there because his gospel witness posed a potential threat to the Roman social order. Whatever the specific chain of events that led him to Patmos, John identifies himself from there to the churches as one who shares with them in Jesus “the persecution and the kingdom and the patient endurance” (1:9). There is a clear assumption that these elements form the shared reality of the Christian experience. It is this reality—persecution, kingdom, patient endurance—that is bound up in the key phrase “keeping [holding, having] the testimony [marturia] of Jesus” (12:17; 19:10).

As we have already seen, John’s vision weaves an organic connection between the victory-through-suffering of the Lamb and the “conquering” or “overcoming” of the saints. The letters to the seven churches (Rev. 2–3) provide an interpretive grid for the rest of the book, especially in their presentation of “conquering” as patient endurance in the midst of suffering (cf. 2:2, 3, 10, 17). Jesus indicates that for the believers in Smyrna, this conquering will come, for some of them at least, through literal martyrdom (“be faithful unto death,” 2:10); and in the case of Pergamum, one of their number has already been killed (2:13). This martyr, Antipas, is the only believer other than John himself who is named in the book of Revelation, and he is described in terms exactly parallel to the initial identification of Jesus in 1:5, “the faithful witness” (ho martus ho pistos). The introduction of the double “my” in the description of Antipas (“my witness, my faithful one”) forges a strong connection between Antipas the martyr and Jesus the slain Lamb, the archetypal martyr. The community from which Antipas came is commended for holding fast to Jesus’s name and not denying their faith in him, despite the looming threat that Antipas’s fate could be replicated in their own experience (2:13). Given the thematic and structural parallels that permeate the collection of seven letters, we are surely meant to understand that the explicit conquering-through-death elements in the messages to Smyrna and Pergamum are implied in the other five letters as well—such as the exhortation to the Thyatiran believers to hold fast “to the end” in 2:25–26. From the earliest chapters of the book, it is clear that keeping the marturia of Jesus will be an embodied experience that may end in a faithful death, not a hypothetical concept or a mere metaphor.

Also within the letters to the churches, we find the first explicit mention of “white robes” as part of the reward for those who conquer (3:4–5). Jesus says of the few believers in Sardis who “have not soiled their clothes” that they will walk with him “dressed in white” (v. 4), a destiny also available to all those in the church in Sardis, reproved and repentant, who join these as “conquerors” (v. 5). The imagery of glittering whiteness was part of John’s initial vision of the one like the Son of Man (1:13–14), and it reappears when Jesus appears on a white horse (19:11–16). Thus, white is a symbolic color that represents the victory-through-suffering of the Lamb. This association is made in 3:4–5 and repeated two more times in Revelation. In 6:9–11, white robes are given to those under the altar “who had been slaughtered for the word of God and the testimony they had given.” Significantly, these martyrs are told to rest until their number is completed by the addition of “fellow servants, brothers, and sisters” who will also be killed. Next, in chapter 7 we hear of a great throng “from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages” who are robed in white (7:9). This is no small elite group of martyrs; it is the great gathering of the people of God (represented by the number 144,000). This white-robed throng is explicitly identified as those “who have come out of the great ordeal” (thlipsis, suffering). Paradoxically, their robes are white because they have washed them in the blood of the Lamb (7:13–14), perhaps referring to their own blood being shed just as their Lord’s blood was shed. Keeping the marturia of Jesus was costly indeed, but the reward includes worshiping before the throne (7:15), protection from future physical harm (7:16), and the blessings of the New Jerusalem (7:17; cf. 21:4) 

Underscoring this portrait of the martyred saints is the use of another key word, “slaughtered” (sphazo). Eight of the ten  New Testament uses of this word are in Revelation—four times in the paradigmatic descriptions of Jesus (5:6, 9, 12; 13:8), twice to describe the saints who have kept the marturia of Jesus (6:9; 18:24), and once to describe the pseudo-martyrdom of the beast (13:3; and once to describe general violence in 6:4). In both the anticipatory waiting of the martyrs (6:9) and in the initial scene of victory (18:24; cf. 19:11–16), these faithful ones are described as those who were “slaughtered.” This word, richly evocative of Passover and Old Testament sacrificial imagery, is unmistakable in tone and scope, as well as in the intimate connection it draws between these faithful ones and their Lord—a connection that embraces both the patient endurance of suffering and victory-through-suffering, particularly the suffering of death.

Another key element in Revelation’s portrait of faithfulness as “keeping the testimony of Jesus” appears in chapter 11, where we are introduced to the two “witnesses.” The entire raison d’être of these figures is summed up in their “testimony” (11:7). Despite the persistent cloaks of mystery that interpreters have attempted to throw over these figures, their identification as “the two lampstands that stand before the Lord of the earth” (11:4) indicates who they are. Seldom in apocalyptic writing are we given an explicit “this is that” reference for a symbol or metaphor, but in the case of “lampstand,” Jesus himself has already told John (and us) how to interpret the imagery: “the seven lampstands are the seven churches” (1:20). These “two lampstands [witnesses]” then represent the churches. We have two here, instead of seven, probably because of the custom of requiring the evidence of two witnesses to corroborate the truth (Deut. 19:15). Echoing the experience of other faithful followers of Jesus, these two carry out their witness but are killed by the beast (11:7–8). However, also like Jesus, this is not the end of their story, for God sends life back into them and summons them into heaven (11:11–12; cf. Koester, Revelation and the End of All Things, 108–109). The placement of their appearance reinforces this identification: just as the multitude of martyrs (chs. 6–7) appeared between the sixth and seventh seals, here the two to-be-killed-and-raised witnesses appear between the sounding of the sixth and seventh trumpets. In the cyclical structure of Revelation’s visions, which present the same realities from varying angles (cf. McKnight, Revelation for the Rest of Us, 110–120), the two witnesses stand in parallel with the multitude of slaughtered saints (cf. 11:18). While chapter 7 provided an expansive vision of the church as the great company of martyr-witnesses and emphasizes their death like Jesus, chapter 11 provides a microcosmic view of two witness-martyrs and emphasizes their testifying activity.

Finally, Revelation 20 offers a stunning portrait of the reward of those who “had been beheaded for the marturia of Jesus and the word of God” (v. 4).  They are seated on thrones with the authority to judge (v. 4), are set to reign alongside Christ (v. 4), and are called “blessed, holy, and priests of God and Christ” (v. 6). These co-regents represent all the faithful who have not worshiped the beast or received its mark, some of whom have paid for their faithfulness by being brutally beheaded (v. 4; the only place in the New Testament where this word occurs). Regardless of all the other questions that may persist about their “thousand-year reign,” at the heart of this passage is the intimate relationship between the saints and Jesus. Each one is a faithful martus like Jesus. Because they died as Christ died, so they will reign and judge with Christ (see 3:21). Their costly commitment to Jesus in this life is vindicated and honored by God in the life to come—a perfect fulfillment of the initial anthem to the Lamb’s victory and his people’s reign in 5:9–10.

Implications for faithful Christian living

Both sides of Revelation’s portrait of “martyrdom” have serious implications for faithful Christian living in every historical-cultural moment, for the church is always called to this “witness.” In its portrait of Jesus as the archetypal martus, Revelation highlights both the struggle against evil in faithful obedience to God and the victory that is won in that struggle precisely through weakness and even crucifixion. The “Lamb that was slain” is both the Lord of the church and the model for the church, which means that any attempts by the church to win the victory over evil by means of power (military, political, cultural, etc.) must be seen as belonging more to Satan and earthly empires than to God’s kingdom and, therefore, ultimately doomed to fail and disappoint. Jesus’s own pattern of patient endurance, radical obedience, and victory-through-suffering must be reflected in the life of his church.

In its portrait of faithful believers as those who “keep the marturia of Jesus,” two elements in particular hold implications that the contemporary church must engage seriously and thoughtfully. One is the essentially embodied nature of “witness-keeping”; the faithful ones in Revelation are those who have given their literal flesh and blood as witnesses to the victory of Christ. Their death (and resurrection) points to his death (and resurrection). At the very least, this means that a concept of witness-as-word is insufficient; it probably also calls us to examine our willingness to “keep the witness of Jesus” in physical places and spaces that are openly hostile to our presence. 

A second significant aspect of witness-keeping in Revelation is the scope of its portrait of the faithful martyrs, especially as seen in chapters 6, 7, and 11. The presence around the throne of a vast multitude from every tribe, tongue, people, and nation of those who have “washed their robes in the blood of the Lamb” suggests that this costly witness, far from being limited to a few super-saints, is, in fact, the nature of all faithful Christian living. Every member of Christ’s church is called to this kind of costly witness, which may include actual martyrdom for some. Jesus declared that his followers must take up their crosses and lay down their lives just as he does (Mark 8:34–35). Revelation portrays the same kind of self-sacrificial, Christ-emulating discipleship in its own distinctive way.

The call of Revelation is clear: “Let anyone who has an ear listen to what the Spirit is saying to the churches.” The voices of heaven herald the slain Lamb: “Worthy is the Lamb that was slaughtered to receive power and wealth and wisdom and might and honor and glory and blessing!” And those who wash their robes in the blood of that Lamb and keep his testimony “will hunger no more, and thirst no more; the sun will not strike them, nor any scorching heat; for the Lamb at the center of the throne will be their shepherd, and he will guide them to springs of the water of life, and God will wipe away every tear from their eyes.” 

Bart B. Bruehler is Professor of New Testament for Wesley Seminary at Indiana Wesleyan University. 

Rachel L. Coleman is affiliate professor of Biblical Studies for Asbury Theological Seminary, adjunct professor of Nuevo Testamento for United Theological Seminary, and the regional theological education consultant (Latin America) for One Mission Society.