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If we have received human witness, God's witness is greater. This is the witness of God, the testimony he has born to his son. All those who believe in the son of God have the witness in themselves . . I am writing these things to you so that you may know that you, who believe in the name of the son of God, do indeed have the life of the age to come. - The Kingdom New Testament
The word “witness” in the Greek is an interesting word. It refers to those how are witnesses to facts. As one person put it, “Facts, not ideas, are at issue. Those who bear witness to these facts have lived through them.” The Greek word for “witness” is martyres. It is the root of our English word “martyr.” Now the word originally did not mean what it means today. Granted, it can mean something as silly as someone who always seems to be suffering, and we may say to that person, “Don’t be such a martyr.” But the meaning most of us think about is someone who is willing or who actually dies for his or her beliefs. But that is not what the word meant at first.
Early on it meant those who were witnesses to the facts they knew about -- such as the life of Christ. For a variety of reasons, others felt that these Christians should not be saying these things, and if those individuals had power, they could begin to persecute the Christians who were simply witnesses to what they had seen. And so early Christians began to be persecuted and even killed for simply being witnesses to the fact that they had seen this risen Christ. When enough of them had been killed, the meaning of the word began to change from one who witnesses to the facts they have experienced, to one who ends up dying for his or her faith.
This Sunday we will be talking about what it means to have God as our witness to the truth about Jesus. That truth can not only change our lives – it can change the world!
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