27th April 2025

In his recording of the revelation of Jesus Christ, John calls him the ‘faithful witness’. The Greek word for ‘witness’ is martus, from which we get the word ‘martyr’. Originally, the word martus meant a ‘witness’, either in a legal court setting or just generally somebody who bears testimony. But as so many Christians eventually gave their testimony and witnessed to Jesus by giving their lives, the term martus came to mean martyr: that is, someone who gives his or her life for a cause.

Over time, the word has gone through an extra metamorphosis. Now it can also mean somebody who feels sorry for himself. We say things like, ‘Don’t be a martyr’, which doesn’t mean somebody is giving his or her life for a cause; it’s a form of criticism or censure of someone who is being self-pitying. 

The use of the word ‘martyr’ then has gone through changes, beginning with someone who bears witness by what they say or by his or her life, to someone who is willing to die for a cause, and more recently someone who is so self-pitying they think they’re suffering for a cause when, in fact, they often perceive themselves as victims to gain social approval.

The transition of ‘martyr’ from the first to the second use of the word is going on in the book of Revelation, so how does it apply to Jesus? Jesus is the chief witness to what God is like: if we want to know what God is like, study Jesus. In the upper room, Philip said to Jesus, ‘Lord, show us the Father and that will be enough for us.’ To which, Jesus answered, ‘Don’t you know me, Philip, even after I have been among you such a long time? Anyone who has seen me has seen the Father.’ (John 14:8-9). Jesus, then, is the best witness to God. 

But ultimately, where does Jesus’s witness disclose most fully what God is like, and what is meant in our header scripture of Jesus, the faithful witness? Certainly, as he said to Philip, Jesus witnessed God by what he said and the way he lived; however, his witness-bearing function is tied to his death. Jesus is not a martyr in the Stephen sense: borne along by historical events he couldn’t stop. It is in his self-sacrificial death on the cross that Jesus supremely demonstrates God’s love and his desire to reconcile all people to himself. 

Whether in life or in death, Jesus is the faithful witness, the faithful martyr, the one who reveals to us who the Father is and what he is like. As theologian T.F. Torrence wrote: 

‘God is not one thing in himself and another thing in Jesus Christ—what God is toward us in Jesus he is inherently and eternally in himself…There is thus no God behind the back of Jesus Christ, but only this God whose face we see in the face of the Lord Jesus…There is only the one God who has revealed himself in Jesus Christ in such a way that there is perfect consistency and fidelity between what he reveals of the Father and what the Father is in his unchangeable reality. The constancy of God in time and eternity has to do with the fact that God really is like Jesus, for there is no other God than he who became man in Jesus and he whom God affirms himself to be and always will be in Jesus.’ ¹ 

And so, Jesus is the faithful witness.

¹ Thomas F. Torrance, The Christian Doctrine of God, pp. 243-244.

Local congregation:
Grace Communion West Hampstead 
Sidings Community Centre
150 Brassey Road
West Hampstead
LondonNW6 2BA

Meeting time:
Sunday 12.30 pm

Local congregational contact:
Gordon Brown
gordon.brown@gracecom.church

Word of Life contact:  
wordoflife@gracecom.church