Filling Up the Afflictions of Christ

This morning, I began reading the fifth volume in John Piper’s biographical series, The Swans are Not Silent. In this volume, entitled Filling Up the Afflictions of Christ: The Cost of Bringing the Gospel to the Nations in the Lives of William Tyndale, Adoniram Judson, and John Paton, Piper draws vital theological lessons from three men whose lives are chronicles of sacrifice and suffering for the sake of the gospel. In his introduction, he sets the tone by presenting an important fact of Christian life: suffering and martyrdom are not merely unfortunate results of service to Christ in a lost world; they are part of God’s design. Piper writes:

The truth that is especially illustrated by the lives of these servants is that God’s strategy for breaking through Satan’s authority in the world, and spreading the gospel, and planting the church includes the sacrificial suffering of his frontline heralds. Again I emphasize, since it is so easily missed, that I am not referring only to the fact that suffering results from frontline proclamation. I am referring also to the fact that this suffering is one of God’s intended strategies for the success of his mission. Jesus said to his disciples as he sent them out:

Behold, I am sending you out as sheep in the midst of wolves, so be wise as serpents and innocent as doves. (Matthew 10:16)

There is no doubt what usually happens to a sheep in the midst of wolves. And Paul confirmed the reality in Romans 8:36, quoting Psalm 44:22:

As it is written, “For your sake we are being killed all the say ling; we are regarded as sheep to be slaughtered.”

Jesus knew this would be the portion of his darkness-penetrating, mission-advancing, church-planting missionaries. Tribulation, distress, persecution, famine, nakedness, danger, sword (Romans 8:35)—that is what Paul expected, because that is what Jesus promised. Jesus continued:

Beware of men, for they will deliver you over to courts and flog you in their synagogues, and you will be dragged before governors an kings for my sake, to bear witness before them and the Gentiles. (Matthew 10:17–18)

Notice that the “witness” before governors and kings is not a mere result or consequence, but a design. Literally: “You will be dragged before . . . kings for a witness to them [eis marturion autois].” God’s design for reaching some governors and kings is the persecution of his people. Why this design for missions? One answer from the Lord Jesus goes like this:

A disciple is not above his teacher, nor a servant above his master. . . . If they have called the master of the house Beelzebul, how much more will they malign those of his household. (Matthew 10:24–25)

Suffering was not just a consequence of the Master’s obedience and mission. It was the central strategy of his mission. It was the way he accomplished our salvation. Jesus calls us to join him in the Calvary Road, to take up our cross daily, to hate our lives in this world, and to fall into the ground like a seed and die, that others might live.
   We are not above our Master. To be sure, our suffering does not atone for anyone’s sins, but it is a deeper way of doing missions than we often realize. When the martyrs cry out to Christ from under the alter in heaven, “How long before you will judge and avenge our blood?” they are told “to rest a little longer, until the number of their fellow servants and their brothers should be complete, who were to be killed as they themselves had been” (Revelation 6:10–11).
   Martyrdom is not the mere consequence of radical love and obedience; it is the keeping if an appointment set in heaven for a certain number: “Wait till the number of martyrs is complete who are to be killed.” Just as Christ died to save the unreached peoples of the world, so some missionaries are to die to save the people of the world.

—John Piper, Filling Up on the Afflictions of Christ: The Cost of Bringing the Gospel to the Nations in the Lives of William Tyndale, Adoniram Judson, and John Paton (Crossway, 2009), 19–21.

I scanned my shelves this morning and counted Bibles. In my office alone, I found three reader’s Bibles, eight Study Bibles, one Parallel Bible, two Greek New Testaments, one Harmony of the Gospels, and one Harmony of Samuel, Kings, and Chronicles. If I lost all those, I could still find at least two complete Bibles and a couple of nearly complete Bibles in commentary sets, plus the Gospels, Psalms, and other books in various other commentaries. I also have a Douay-Rheims, a New World Translation, and an NIV parked between Charles Finney and Rick Warren, but I’m not counting those. Then there are the ten-or-so paperbacks I’ve got for giving away. If I went through the whole house, I’m sure I could find a dozen and a half more.

The point, as you’ve probably guessed, is that that’s a lot of Bibles. I admit that I seldom give much thought to this abundance of treasure. Only occasionally do I think of the history of the Bible — my English Bible, to be precise — and what it cost and who paid the price so I could have just one.

Five hundred years ago, men like William Tyndale paid the ultimate price to bring the Bible, in English, to common folks like me.

Having promoted the Reformation teachings of Luther, Tyndale had fled King Henry VIII and England and gone into hiding on the continent. Eventually, Henry was “inclined to mercy,” and an English merchant named Stephen Vaughn was commissioned to find Tyndale and ask him to return home to England. Vaughn, having found Tyndale, informed the King in a letter, “I find him always singing one note.” John Piper writes:

   The thirty-seven-year-old Tyndale was moved to tears by this offer of mercy. He had been in exile away from his homeland for seven years. But then he sounded his “one note” again: Will the king authorize a vernacular English Bible from the original languages? Vaughan gives us Tyndale’s words from May 1531:

I assure you, if it would stand with the King’s most gracious pleasure to grant only a bare text of Scripture [that is, without explanatory notes] to be put forth among his people, like as is put forth among the subjects of the emperor in these parts, and other Christian prices, be it of the translation of what person soever shall please his Majesty, I shall immediately make faithful promise never to write more, nor abide two days in these parts after the same: but immediately to repair unto his realm, and there most humbly submit myself at the feet of his royal majesty, offering my body to suffer what pain or torture, yea, what death his grace will, so this be obtained. Until that time, I will abide the asperity of all chances, whatsoever shall come, and endure my life in as many pains as it is able to bear and suffer.

In other words, Tyndale would give himself up to the king on one condition—that the king authorize an English Bible translated from the Greek and Hebrew in the common language of the people.
   The king refused. And Tyndale never went to his homeland again. Instead, if the king and the Roman Catholic Church would not provide a printed Bible in English for the common man to read, Tyndale would, even if it cost him his life—which it did five years later.

—John Piper, Filling Up on the Afflictions of Christ: The Cost of Bringing the Gospel to the Nations in the Lives of William Tyndale, Adoniram Judson, and John Paton (Crossway, 2009), 28–29.

Tyndale was forced to do all of his translating and writing as an exiled fugitive. Multitudes were tortured and killed for smuggling his books into England, or for simply possessing them. In 1535, he was befriended by an Englishman named Henry Philips. Philips, over several months, won Tyndale’s trust with the intention of betraying him. On October 6, 1536, at the age of forty-two, Tyndale was strangled and burned at the stake.