"...the seed of the church"

Tonight I started reading A Concise History of Christian Thought. Though I am still in the first 500 years of Christian history there seems to be a theme. That theme is martyrs. I knew that martyrs were a part of Christian history, but I never realized the role they played in spreading the word of Christianity.

In a message to the pagans of his time who were killing Christians, Tertullian wrote this:

Your Cruelty [against us] does not profit you, however exquisite. Instead, it tempts people to our sect. As often as you mow us down, the more we grow in number. The blood of the Christians is the seed [of the church]... The very obstinacy you criticize teaches for us. For who on seeing it is not excited to enquire what lies behind it? Who, having enquired, does not embrace our faith?"

This quote stands to show that Tertullian was witnessing a growth in the church that was caused by the sacrifice that people were being forced to make in the name of Christ. This was an idea that had been witnessed a generation prior to Tetullian by Justin Martyr.

Justin Martyr in late part of the 100s (approx 160s around the time of his arrest) said, when explaining why Christ was superior to Socrates, "For no one trusted in Socrates, so as to die for this doctrine. But in Christ... not only have philosophers and scholars believed, but also artisans and entirely uneducated people have despised glory, fear and death."

The idea that people were willing to die for their beliefs, not just to be persecuted while living out their beliefs, is an amazing thought. When a group of people can believe so earnestly in a common idea that they would die for it, there must be something to it. This is something that seekers were seeing in the martyrs of the early church.

I now hear so often high officials within our churches saying they need to grow the church. I feel if we want to grow the church then the Christians that fill the church need to be willing to shed their own blood. As Christians we hide from any type of persecution. We live church lives at church and that's it. If we stopped worrying about growing the church as a business and instead lived as the first Christians of the church we would be growing naturally.

I am not talking about suicide by faith. If you are willing to die for your faith, then that means you won't fear living for it either. These days in our blessed country we may not find our lives in mortal danger for living for God. We do, however, find our pride to be at stake and for some that seems to be harder to give up. I believe that history (and even the Bible) shows there are three types of people. Christians is one group and the other two are defined by the way they react to Christians. The first of other two are the ones that when encountering a Christian, disrespects and is in conflict with them. The other is the one that sees a Christian, and wants to know more about what Christians believe and are seeking. Those latter two though are only going to surface when they see how far Christians are willing to go for their faith. For who would die for their faith if they weren't fully convinced of its resurrecting power?