It is a pity that ‘witness’ is a word generally used as a verb within the Christian church today. It conjures up images of the door-to-door evangelism technique popular among evangelical churches in the 1980’s.
Few things make the Christian introvert’s tongue stick to the pallet more than the vision of standing in someone’s living room, after delivering the ‘turn-or-burn’ message and enduring the long, awkward silence, only to be shown the door without time to finish a cup of tea. And then, by the dim light of a distant street lamp fumbling for the list and marking down another ‘No’, it’s on to the next house.
“They will be my witnesses”
Yet in the broad context of scripture witness is a noun denoting a legal term. For example, the Old Testament law details the number of witnesses it takes to establish the truth of a claim, and it warns against bearing false witness. It is a sin to refuse to testify to something you have knowledge of. Sometimes it is God himself who is a witness. And sometimes even stones witness to God’s miraculous power:
‘So Joshua called together the twelve men he had appointed from the Israelites, one from each tribe, and said to them, “Go over before the ark of the Lord your God into the middle of the Jordan. Each of you is to take up a stone on his shoulder, according to the number of the tribes of Israelites, to serve as a sign among you. In the future, when your children ask you, ‘What do these stones mean?’ tell them that the flow of the Jordan was cut off before the ark of the covenant of the Lord. When it crossed the Jordan, the waters of the Jordan were cut off. These stones are to be a memorial to the people of Israel forever.”’
And in the New Testament the same sense of witness continues: The disciples intentionally bore witness, testifying publicly about what they saw while with Jesus, fulfilling his last words on earth that “… [they] will be my witnesses…”
Their witness involved much more than words; it became their life, and often their death too. Martyr, describing someone who is put to death for refusing to renounce their faith, is derived from the Greek word martur meaning witness.
Every Christian is witness to the risen Christ. Every person witnesses God’s existence because He does not leave himself without testimony. God has chosen us not so much to witness as to be His witnesses: Messengers of His love; ambassadors of His kingdom; His salt and light to the world.
