Revelation 2 · Story · Faithfulness
Polycarp: Eighty-Six Years
Polycarp, bishop of Smyrna, told the Roman proconsul that he had served Christ eighty-six years and would not deny Him, and he was put to death at Smyrna in the second century.
The men sent to take Polycarp marvelled at his age and his constancy.
Do not fear what you are about to suffer. Look, the devil is about to throw some of you into prison to test you, and you will suffer tribulation for ten days. Be faithful even unto death, and I will give you the crown of life.
- Where
- Smyrna
- Who
- Polycarp, The proconsul Statius Quadratus, The church at Smyrna
- When
- about 155 AD, by Waddington's reckoning; Eusebius places it under Marcus Aurelius (probable)
Summary
Polycarp was bishop of Smyrna, a church that Revelation 2 addresses by name. In old age he was hunted, arrested and brought into the stadium, where the proconsul urged him to swear by the fortune of Caesar and revile Christ. He refused and was put to death. His church wrote down his arrest, his answers and his death in a letter to the church at Philomelium.
- Irenaeus, a younger contemporary, connects Polycarp with the apostles.
- His last answer to the proconsul rested on a lifetime of service to Christ.
- Readers date his death to about 155 or to the reign of Marcus Aurelius.
The Bishop of Smyrna
Irenaeus and the letter of Smyrna's church describe the old man the proconsul faced.
The letter on Polycarp's death tells of a bishop who kept faith with Christ to the end, and it was written by people who watched it. It matters to every reader who is asked to give up Christ for safety, comfort or the good opinion of others. The question it answers is what faithfulness looks like after a lifetime of it, when the cost is life itself.
Below stand Polycarp's place in the church, a timeline of his last days and his answers in the stadium. Then come his death, the question of its year, the teachers who read the word to Smyrna, and its meaning.
Irenaeus wrote that Polycarp "conversed with many who had seen Christ" and was "by apostles in Asia, appointed bishop of the Church in Smyrna". He added, "whom I also saw in my early youth" (Against Heresies, book 3, chapter 3, section 4, translated by Roberts and Rambaut, 1885). In the same passage Irenaeus tells of Polycarp "coming to Rome in the time of Anicetus" and of the church in Ephesus, where John remained "until the times of Trajan".
To the angel of the church in Smyrna write: These are the words of the First and the Last, who died and returned to life.The letter to Polycarp's city opens with Christ's own death and life, the ground a martyr stands on.
The Last Days
The letter of Smyrna's church dates his last days by days and hours.
The letter follows Polycarp from the search to the gathering of his bones.
- When the search beganHe left the city for a country housein deference to the wish of many, he was persuaded to leave it (chapter 5)
- Three days before he was takenA vision while he prayedthe pillow under his head seemed to him on fire (chapter 5)
- The day of the preparation, at supper-timeArrested; he fed his captors and prayed two hourshe ordered that something to eat and drink should be set before them (chapter 7)
- The great SabbathBrought into the city on an assthey set him upon an ass, and conducted him into the city, the day being that of the great Sabbath (chapter 8)
- In the stadiumHe refused to revile Christthe tumult became great when they heard that Polycarp was taken (chapter 9)
- The eighth hour of the great SabbathHis deathon the great Sabbath, at the eighth hour (chapter 21)
- AfterwardsHis bones gathered, and an anniversary hoped forthe Lord shall grant us to celebrate the anniversary of his martyrdom (chapter 18)
A timeline of seven rows in the order of events, each with the words of the Roberts and Donaldson translation of 1885 and its chapter.
In the Stadium
The proconsul pressed Polycarp more than once, and Polycarp answered each time.
The proconsul told him to have respect for his old age and to swear by the fortune of Caesar. The proconsul said, "Swear, and I will set you at liberty, reproach Christ". Polycarp answered, "Eighty and six years have I served Him, and He never did me any injury: how then can I blaspheme my King and my Saviour?" (Martyrdom of Polycarp, chapter 9).
Pressed again, he said, "hear me declare with boldness, I am a Christian" (chapter 10). He was threatened with wild beasts and then with fire. He answered, "You threaten me with fire which burns for an hour, and after a little is extinguished, but are ignorant of the fire of the coming judgment" (chapter 11).
The Fire
The letter tells of the pyre, his prayer and his death as the witnesses saw them.
When they came to nail him to the pyre, he told them to leave him as he was. He said that "He that gives me strength to endure the fire, will also enable me" to stand without nails (chapter 13). He prayed, "I give You thanks that You have counted me, worthy of this day and this hour, that I should have a part in the number of Your martyrs" (chapter 14).
The witnesses wrote that the fire took "the form of an arch, like the sail of a ship when filled with the wind" around him (chapter 15). When the fire did not consume him, an executioner was ordered to pierce him with a dagger (chapter 16).
Faithful After a Lifetime
His church's verdict on his death closes its letter.
His church called him the twelfth martyr of Smyrna and "a pre-eminent martyr, whose martyrdom all desire to imitate, as having been altogether consistent with the Gospel of Christ" (chapter 19).
I know your affliction and your poverty—though you are rich! And I am aware of the slander of those who falsely claim to be Jews, but are in fact a synagogue of Satan.The church that later wrote the Martyrdom had heard Christ call it rich in its poverty.
How the Word to Smyrna Has Been Read
Tertullian in the third century and Matthew Henry in the eighteenth read the word to Smyrna.
died 220 · Tertullian
“Nay, then, He does even choose. He calls us to it. To him who conquers He says, ‘I will give a crown Of life.’ Be you, too, faithful unto death, and fight you, too, the good fight, whose crown the apostle feels so justly confident has been laid up for him.”
Tertullian · De Corona · on Revelation 2:10Patristic
1662 to 1714 · Matthew Henry
“Those who will be faithful to Christ must expect to go through many tribulations; but Jesus Christ takes particular notice of all their troubles. In all their afflictions, he is afflicted, and he will recompense tribulation to those who trouble them, but to those that are troubled rest with himself.”
Matthew Henry · Commentary on the Whole Bible · on Revelation 2:10Puritan
The Year of His Death
Readers have reckoned the year in two ways.
About 155, under Antoninus PiusW. H. Waddington; A. C. McGiffert
The Martyrdom names "Statius Quadratus being proconsul" (chapter 21). In his notes to Eusebius, A. C. McGiffert wrote that the death came "between 154 and 156 (probably in 155)", as Waddington had shown in 1867. He called the date "now almost universally accepted" (note on Church History 4.15.1, in the edition of 1890).
The objection is that the year depends on dating the proconsul's term.
Under Marcus Aurelius, about 166Eusebius; Jerome; Adam Clarke
Eusebius placed the death after the accession of Marcus Aurelius and headed the chapter "Under Verus, Polycarp with Others suffered Martyrdom at Smyrna" (Church History 4.15). McGiffert wrote that the Chronicle of Eusebius seems to put it in 166 to 167, the date Jerome followed. Adam Clarke, on Revelation 2:10, gave the year as 166.
The objection is that the proconsul the Martyrdom names held office earlier, by Waddington's reckoning.
The One Who Overcomes
The letter to Smyrna ends with the promise Polycarp's church held to.
He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches. The one who overcomes will not be harmed by the second death.The promise answers the proconsul's fire with a death that cannot touch the faithful.
Sources
Scripture is the Berean Standard Bible.
- The Martyrdom of Polycarp, translated by Alexander Roberts and James Donaldson, Ante-Nicene Fathers, volume 1 (Buffalo: Christian Literature Publishing, 1885)
- Irenaeus, Against Heresies, book 3, chapter 3, section 4, translated by Alexander Roberts and William Rambaut, Ante-Nicene Fathers, volume 1 (1885)
- Eusebius, Church History, book 4, chapters 14 and 15, translated by Arthur Cushman McGiffert, with his notes, Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, second series, volume 1 (1890)
- Tertullian, The Chaplet (De Corona), on Revelation 2:10.
- Matthew Henry, Commentary on the Whole Bible (1710), on Revelation 2:10.
- Adam Clarke, Commentary on the Bible, on Revelation 2:10.
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