A Note on Resources

Filling Up the AFFlictions

o F c h r i s t

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Other Books in

The Swans Are Not Silent Series

The Legacy of Sovereign Joy

The Hidden Smile of God

The Roots of Endurance

Contending for Our All

Other Books by John Piper

God’s Passion for His Glory

Sex and the Supremacy of Christ

The Pleasures of God

(with Justin Taylor)

Desiring God

Taste and See

The Dangerous Duty of Delight

Fifty Reasons Why Jesus Came

to Die

Future Grace

God Is the Gospel

A Hunger for God

What Jesus Demands from the

Let the Nations Be Glad!

World

A Godward Life

Amazing Grace in the Life of

Pierced by the Word

William Wilberforce

Seeing and Savoring Jesus Christ

Battling Unbelief

The Misery of Job and the Mercy

Suffering and the Sovereignty of God

of God

(with Justin Taylor)

The Innkeeper

50 Crucial Questions

The Prodigal’s Sister

When the Darkness Will Not Lift

Recovering Biblical Manhood

The Future of Justification

and Womanhood

The Supremacy of Christ in a

What’s the Difference?

Postmodern World

The Justification of God

(with Justin Taylor)

Counted Righteous in Christ

Spectacular Sins

Brothers, We Are Not Professionals

Finally Alive: What Happens When

The Supremacy of God in Preaching

We Are Born Again

Beyond the Bounds

John Calvin and His Passion for the

(with Justin Taylor)

Majesty of God

Don’t Waste Your Life

Rethinking Retirement

The Passion of Jesus Christ

This Momentary Marriage:

A Parable of Permanence

Life as a Vapor

Stand: A Call for the Endurance of

A God-Entranced Vision of All

the Saints (with Justin Taylor)

Things (with Justin Taylor)

Velvet Steel

When I Don’t Desire God

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e sw a n s a r e n o t si len

B O O K F I V E

Filling up the

AFFLICTIONS

of CHRIST

The Cost of Bringing the Gospel to the

Nations in the Lives of Wil iam Tyndale,

Adoniram Judson, and John Paton

J ohn P iPer

C R O S S W AY B O O K S

W H E A T O N , I L L I N O I S

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Filling Up the Afflictions of Christ

Published by Crossway Books

a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers

1300 Crescent Street

Wheaton, Illinois 60187

system or transmitted in any form by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopy,

recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher, except as pro-

vided for by USA copyright law.

Cover design: Amy Bristow

Cover photo: iStock

First printing, 2009

Printed in the United States of America

Scripture quotations are taken from the ESV® Bible ( The Holy Bible: English Standard

Hardcover ISBN: 978-1-4335-1046-5

ISBN PDF: 978-1-4335-1047-2

ISBN Mobipocket: 978-1-4335-1048-9

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Piper, John, 1946-

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 /

John Piper.

p. cm. — (The swans are not silent; bk. 5)

Includes bibliographical references and indexes.

ISBN 978-1-4335-1046-5 (hc)

1. Paton, John Gibson, 1824–1907. 2. Missionaries—Vanuatu—

Biography. 3. Missionaries—Scotland—Biography. 4. Judson, Adoniram,

1788–1850. 5. Missionaries—Burma—Biography. 6. Missionaries—

United States—Biography. 7. Tyndale, William, d. 1536. 8. Reformation—

England—Biography I. Title. II. Series.

BV3700.P56 2009

266.0092'2—dc22

2009001557

L B

1 8

1 7

1 6

1 5

1 4

1 3

1 2

1 1

1 0

0 9

1 4

1 3

1 2

1 1

1 0

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To those who suffer

to spread the gospel

“Remember those who are in prison,

as though in prison with them,

and those who are mistreated,

since you also are in the body.”

Hebrews 13:3

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C o n t e n t s

Preface

Acknowledgments

INTRODUCTION

Tears of Blood to Bless the World

CHAPTER ONE

William Tyndale

“Always Singing One Note”—A Vernacular Bible:

The Cost of Bringing the Bible to England

CHAPTER TWO

John G. Paton

“You Will Be Eaten by Cannibals!”:

Courage in the Face of Fierce Opposition

CHAPTER THREE

Adoniram Judson

“How Few There Are Who Die So Hard”:

The Cost of Bringing Christ to Burma

CONCLUSION

109

This Momentary Affliction for Eternal Glory

Index of Scriptures

119

Index of Persons

121

Index of Subjects

123

A NOTE ON RESOURCES

127

Desiring God Ministries

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A letter from John Calvin to five young Frenchmen about to be

martyred in 1553 for carrying the gospel into France:

We who are here shall do our duty in praying that He would

glorify Himself more and more by your constancy, and that He

may, by the comfort of His Spirit, sweeten and endear all that is

bitter to the flesh, and so absorb your spirits in Himself, that in

contemplating that heavenly crown, you may be ready without

regret to leave all that belongs to this world.

Now, at this present hour, necessity itself exhorts you more than

ever to turn your whole mind heavenward. As yet, we know not

what will be the event. But, since it appears as though God would

use your blood to seal His truth, there is nothing better for you

than to prepare yourselves for that end, beseeching Him so to

subdue you to His good pleasure, that nothing may hinder you

from following whithersoever He shall call. . . . Since it pleases

Him to employ you to the death in maintaining His quarrel,

He will strengthen your hands in the fight and will not suffer a

single drop of your blood to be shed in vain.

Your humble brother, John Calvin

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P r e f a c e

This is the fifth book in a collection called “The Swans Are Not

Silent.” By swans I mean the inspiring lives of faithful Christians

in history. They are not silent in the sense that their lives still

speak powerfully for our encouragement and guidance.

The terminology of swans not being silent comes from the

story of St. Augustine’s retirement as the Bishop of Hippo in

North Africa in a.d. 430. He was one of the greatest voices

for biblical truth in the history of the Christian church. When

Eraclius, his humble successor, preached at the retirement cel-

ebration, he said, “The cricket chirps, the swan is silent.”

When I first read that years ago, I said, No, Eraclius, the

swans are not silent. They go on speaking. That is, they continue

speaking, if someone tells their story and gives them a voice. That

is what I am trying to do with these stories—fifteen of them now

(three in each book).

One of the most sobering discoveries of my life is that God

spreads the life-giving news about Jesus Christ by means of suf-

fering and martyrdom. That’s what the lives of William Tyndale,

Adoniram Judson, and John Paton illustrate. They were living—

and dying—examples of Colossians 1:24: “I rejoice in my suf-

ferings for your sake, and in my flesh I am filling up what is

lacking in Christ’s afflictions for the sake of his body, that is, the

church.”

Afflictions are not merely the result of missionary fruitful-

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Filling Up the AFFlictions oF christ

ness, but also the means. God has appointed our pain to be part

of his powerful display of the glory of Christ. The worth of Jesus

in the world shines more brightly in the lives of those who say

by their sacrificial lives, “I have suffered the loss of all things

and count them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ”

(Philippians 3:8).

Few things inspire me to live radically for Christ more than

the story of those who did. I pray that this will be the effect on

you as well. The nations are in desperate need. And Christ is a

great Savior.

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A c k n o w l e d g m e n t s

I am thankful to Lane Dennis and the team at Crossway for the

beautiful work they have done in publishing this series of books

called “The Swans Are Not Silent.” This is Book Five, and the

fruit and fellowship of each volume has been pleasant.

My Executive Pastoral Assistant, David Mathis, encourages

and assists and frees me for this work in a way that not only

makes it possible but makes it joyful. I thank God for David’s

proactive thoughtfulness, his theological depth, his biblical faith-

fulness, his rigorous editing, and his personal friendship.

The elders and staff at Bethlehem Baptist Church continue to

support me in ways I don’t deserve, encouraging me and covering

for me in a hundred ways when I am away finishing a project like

this. The church is in good hands. One of these days I will go to

heaven instead of going back to the pulpit. They will do just fine.

They lean on the One who cannot fail.

Noël and Talitha give me the space and seclusion and prayer

I need to work at home. The bond we enjoy is deep. I am who

I am because of those I am bound to—especially Jesus and my

family. O how thankful I am that this bond is life-sustaining, not

life-destroying.

Finally, in this book especially, I thank God that he is “near to

the brokenhearted and saves the crushed in spirit.” Where would

we be if we could not say of him, “Many are the afflictions of

the righteous, but the Lord delivers him out of them all” (Psalm

34:18–19)?

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I n t r o d u c t i o n

Tears of Blood to Bless the World

The Lord Jesus said to us in very sobering words, “Truly, truly, I

say to you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies,

it remains alone; but if it dies, it bears much fruit” (John 12:24).

Then he added this: “Whoever loves his life loses it, and who-

ever hates his life in this world will keep it for eternal life” (John

12:25).

In other words, a fruitful life and an eternal life come from

dying like a seed and hating your life in this world. What over-

whelms me, as I ponder this and trace the lives of William

Tyndale, John Paton, and Adoniram Judson, is how strategic it

was that they died so many times and in so many ways before

their lives on earth ended. This is no rhetorical flourish. The Bible

speaks this way, and these followers of Christ knew it.

For example, when John Paton was celebrating the triumphs

of the gospel on the island of Tanna in the New Hebrides, after

long missionary labor and suffering, he traced this victory back

to the fact that “seeds of faith and hope were planted not only

in tears, but tears of blood.”1 Then to give biblical force to

what he had just said. he simply cited the amazing phrase from

2 Corinthians 11:23 where Paul described his sufferings with the

words “in deaths oft.” That is the old King James Version and is

exactly literal.

1John G. Paton , Missionary to the New Hebrides: An Autobiography Edited by His Brother (1889, 1891; reprint, Edinburgh: The Banner of Truth, 1965), p. 221.

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Filling Up the AFFlictions oF christ

Paul said in 1 Corinthians 15:31, “I die every day!” The

seed falls into the ground and dies not just once in martyrdom,

but over and over as we obey the command to take up our cross

“daily” and follow Jesus (Luke 9:23).

God’s Painful Path to Reach All Peoples

More and more I am persuaded from Scripture and from the his-

tory of missions that God’s design for the evangelization of the

world and the consummation of his purposes includes the suffer-

ing of his ministers and missionaries. To put it more plainly and

specifically, God designs that the suffering of his ambassadors is

one essential means in the triumphant spread of the Good News

among all the peoples of the world.

I am saying more than the obvious fact that suffering is a result

of faithful obedience in spreading the gospel. That is true. Jesus

said suffering will result from this faithfulness. “You will be hated

by all for my name’s sake” (Luke 21:17). “If they persecuted me,

they will also persecute you” (John 15:20). I am saying that this

suffering is part of God’s strategy for making known to the world

who Christ is, how he loves, and how much he is worth.

This is both frightening and encouraging. It frightens us

because we know that we may very likely be called to suffer in

some way in order to get the breakthrough we long to see in

a hard frontline missions situation. But it also encourages us

because we can know that our suffering is not in vain and that the

very pain that tends to dishearten us is the path to triumph, even

when we can’t see it. Many have gone before us on the Calvary

Road of suffering and proved by their perseverance that fruit fol-

lows the death of humble seeds.

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Introduction

Jesus came into the world to suffer and die for the salvation of

a countless number of believers from all the peoples of the world.

“The Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give

his life as a ransom for many” (Mark 10:45). “By your blood

you ransomed people for God from every tribe and language and

people and nation” (Revelation 5:9).

Suffering and death in the place of sinners was the way that

Christ accomplished salvation. “Christ redeemed us from the curse

of the law by becoming a curse for us” (Galatians 3:13). “He was

wounded for our transgressions; he was crushed for our iniquities”

(Isaiah 53:5). We preach that. It is the heart of the gospel.

But this voluntary suffering and death to save others is not

only the content but it is also the method of our mission. We

proclaim the Good News of what he accomplished, and we join

him in the Calvary method. We embrace his sufferings for us, and

we spread the gospel by our suffering with him. As Joseph Tson

puts it in his own case: “I am an extension of Jesus Christ. When

I was beaten in Romania, He suffered in my body. It is not my

suffering: I only had the honor to share His sufferings.”2 Pastor

Tson goes on to say that Christ’s suffering is for propitiation; our

suffering is for propagation. In other words, when we suffer with

him in the cause of missions, we display the way Christ loved the

world and in our own sufferings extend his to the world. This is

what it means to fill up the afflictions of Christ (Colossians 1:24).

First Bible, Then Biography

The plan of this book is to focus first on some of the

Scriptures that support these claims (the Introduction) and

2Joseph Tson, “A Theology of Martyrdom” (an undated booklet of The Romanian Missionary

Society, Wheaton, IL), p. 4.

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Filling Up the AFFlictions oF christ

then to let the lives of Tyndale, Paton, and Judson give these

Scriptures a flesh-and-blood reality. Among thousands of

devoted and faithful missionaries in the history of world mis-

sions, Tyndale, Judson, and Paton are not the only ones who

display this truth.

In fact, we will, no doubt, find out in heaven that many of

the most faithful and fruitful missionaries are almost completely

unknown, except in the all-important books of heaven. But the

lives of some have been recorded on earth. I am thankful for this.

They are a source of great strength to me. That’s why I read about

their lives. Among those whose lives are recorded for us, few are

more heartbreakingly inspiring than the lives of Tyndale, Paton,

and Judson. With the thousands of others, these three show how

the advance of the gospel of Christ comes about not only through

the faithful proclamation of the truth, but also through filling up

the afflictions of Christ.

God’s Plan for the Nations of the World

The invincible purpose of God in history is that “the gospel of

the glory of Christ” (2 Corinthians 4:4) spread to all the peoples

of the world and take root in God-centered, Christ-exalting

churches. This was the promise of the Old Testament:

All the ends of the earth shall remember

and turn to the Lord,

and all the families of the nations shall worship

before you.

For kingship belongs to the Lord,

and he rules over the nations. (Psalm 22:27–28)

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Introduction

It was the promise of Jesus to his disciples:

And this gospel of the kingdom will be proclaimed through-

out the whole world as a testimony to all nations, and then

the end will come. (Matthew 24:14)

It was the design of God in the cross, as heaven’s worship pro-

claims:

You were slain, and by your blood you ransomed people for

God from every tribe and language and people and nation.

(Revelation 5:9)

It was the final command of the risen, all-authoritative Christ:

All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me.

Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing

them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the

Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have com-

manded you. And behold, I am with you always, to the end

of the age. (Matthew 28:18–20)

It was the divine aim of Paul’s apostleship:

Through [Christ] we have received grace and apostleship to

bring about the obedience of faith for the sake of his name

among all the nations. (Romans 1:5)

It was Paul’s holy ambition, rooted not just in a unique apos-

tolic call but also in the Old Testament promise that is still valid

today:

I make it my ambition to preach the gospel, not where Christ

has already been named, lest I build on someone else’s foun-

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Filling Up the AFFlictions oF christ

dation, but as it is written, “Those who have never been told

of him will see, and those who have never heard will under-

stand.” (Romans 15:20–21; cf. Isaiah 52:15)

So the Lord has commanded us, saying, “I have made you

a light for the Gentiles, that you may bring salvation to the

ends of the earth.” (Acts 13:47; cf. Isaiah 42:6)

It was the divine purpose of the sending and filling of the Holy

Spirit:

You will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come

upon you, and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem and

in all Judea and Samaria, and to the end of the earth.

(Acts 1:8)

The invincible purpose of God is that “the gospel of the glory of

Christ” spread to all the peoples of the world and take root in

God-centered, Christ-exalting churches. This great global vision

of the Christian movement becomes clear and powerful and com-

pelling in the church whenever there is a deep biblical awakening

in Christ’s people.

This was true in the time of William Tyndale (born 1494)

who was captivated by the fervor of the Reformation as God

awakened his church to the truth of justification by faith alone.

It was true of the generation later when John Paton (born 1824)

was part of great stirrings in Scotland that Iain Murray calls

“the missionary awakening.”3 And it was true of the time of

Adoniram Judson (born 1788) as the Second Great Awakening

stirred in America.

3Iain Murray, A Scottish Christian Heritage (Edinburgh: The Banner of Truth, 2006), p. 218.

In Chapters 6 and 7 Murray documents the relationship between true gospel awakening and

the missionary effect in Scotland.

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Introduction

Your Persecution Is “for a Witness”

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 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

day long; 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

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Filling Up the AFFlictions oF christ

governors and 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 on

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 mis-

sions than we often realize. When the martyrs cry out to Christ

from under the altar 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 of an appointment set in heaven for

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Introduction

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.

Filling Up the Afflictions of Christ4

We would be warranted at this point to be concerned that this

way of talking might connect our suffering and Christ’s suffering

too closely—as though we were fellow redeemers. There is only

one Redeemer. Only one death atones for sin—Christ’s death.

Only one act of voluntary suffering takes away sin. Jesus did this

“once for all when he offered up himself” (Hebrews 7:27). “He

has appeared once for all at the end of the ages to put away sin

by the sacrifice of himself” (Hebrews 9:26). “By a single offering

[Christ] has perfected for all time those who are being sancti-

fied” (Hebrews 10:14). When he shed his blood, he did it “once

for all,” having obtained “eternal redemption” (Hebrews 9:12).

“There is one God, and there is one mediator between God and

men, the man Christ Jesus” (1 Timothy 2:5). So there is no doubt

that our sufferings add nothing to the atoning worth and suffi-

ciency of Christ’s sufferings.

However, there is one verse in the Bible that sounds to many

people as if our sufferings are part of Christ’s redeeming suffer-

ings. As it turns out, that is not what it means. On the contrary,

it is one of the most important verses explaining the thesis of this

book—that missionary sufferings are a strategic part of God’s plan

to reach the nations. The text is Colossians 1:24 where Paul says,

4The following exposition of Colossians 1:24 depends heavily on the thought and words of

my book Desiring God: Meditations of a Christian Hedonist (Sisters, OR: Multnomah, 2003), pp. 267–270.

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Filling Up the AFFlictions oF christ

Now I rejoice in my sufferings for your sake, and in my flesh

I am filling up what is lacking in Christ’s afflictions for the

sake of his body, that is, the church.

In his sufferings Paul is “filling up what is lacking in Christ’s

afflictions for . . . the church.” What does that mean? It means

that Paul’s sufferings fill up Christ’s afflictions not by adding

anything to their worth, but by extending them to the people they

were meant to save.

What is lacking in the afflictions of Christ is not that they are

deficient in worth, as though they could not sufficiently cover the

sins of all who believe. What is lacking is that the infinite value of

Christ’s afflictions is not known and trusted in the world. These

afflictions and what they mean are still hidden to most peoples.

And God’s intention is that the mystery be revealed to all the

nations. So the afflictions of Christ are “lacking” in the sense

that they are not seen and known and loved among the nations.

They must be carried by missionaries. And those missionaries

“complete” what is lacking in the afflictions of Christ by extend-

ing them to others.

Epaphroditus Gives the Explanation

There is a strong confirmation of this interpretation in the use

of similar words in Philippians 2:30. There was a man named

Epaphroditus in the church at Philippi. When the church there

gathered support for Paul (perhaps money or supplies or books),

they decided to send them to Paul in Rome by the hand of

Epaphroditus. In his travels with this supply, Epaphroditus

almost lost his life. He was sick to the point of death, but God

spared him (Philippians 2:27).

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Introduction

So Paul tells the church in Philippi to honor Epaphroditus

when he comes back (v. 29), and he explains his reason with

words very similar to Colossians 1:24. He says, “For he nearly

died for the work of Christ, risking his life to complete [similar

word to the one in Colossians 1:24] what was lacking [same word

as in Colossians 1:24] in your service to me.” In the Greek origi-

nal, the phrase “complete what was lacking in your service to

me” is almost identical with “filling up what is lacking in Christ’s

afflictions” in Colossians 1:24.

In what sense, then, was the service of the Philippians to Paul

“lacking,” and in what sense did Epaphroditus “complete” or

“fill up” what was lacking in their service? A hundred years ago,

Marvin Vincent explained it like this:

The gift to Paul was a gift of the church as a body. It was

a sacrificial offering of love. What was lacking, and what

would have been grateful to Paul and to the church alike,

was the church’s presentation of this offering in person. This

was impossible, and Paul represents Epaphroditus as sup-

plying this lack by his affectionate and zealous ministry.5

I think that is exactly what the same words mean in Colossians

1:24. Christ has prepared a love offering for the world by suf-

fering and dying for sinners. It is full and lacking in nothing—

except one thing, a personal presentation by Christ himself to

the nations of the world. God’s answer to this lack is to call the

people of Christ (people like Paul) to make a personal presenta-

tion of the afflictions of Christ to the world.

In doing this, we “complete what is lacking in the afflictions

5Marvin Vincent, I.C.C., Epistle to the Philippians and to Philemon (Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1897), p. 78.

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Filling Up the AFFlictions oF christ

of Christ.” We finish what they were designed for, namely, a per-

sonal presentation to the people who do not know about their

infinite worth.

Filling Up His Afflictions with Our Afflictions

But the most amazing thing about Colossians 1:24 is how Paul

fills up Christ’s afflictions. He says that it is his own sufferings

that fill up Christ’s afflictions. “I rejoice in my sufferings for your

sake, and in my flesh I am filling up what is lacking in Christ’s

afflictions.” This means, then, that Paul exhibits the sufferings

of Christ by suffering himself for those he is trying to win. In his

sufferings they see Christ’s sufferings.

Here is the astounding upshot: God intends for the afflic-

tions of Christ to be presented to the world through the afflic-

tions of his people. God really means for the body of Christ, the

church, to experience some of the suffering he experienced so

that when we proclaim the cross as the way to life, people will

see the marks of the cross in us and feel the love of the cross

from us. Our calling is to make the afflictions of Christ real for

people by the afflictions we experience in bringing them the

message of salvation.

The Blood of the Martyrs Is Seed

This is why Paul spoke of his scars as “the marks of Jesus.” In his

wounds, people could see Christ’s wounds. “I bear on my body

the marks of Jesus” (Galatians 6:17). The point of bearing the

marks of Jesus is that Jesus might be seen and that his love might

work powerfully in those who see.

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Introduction

[We] always carr[y] in the body the death of Jesus, so that

the life of Jesus may also be manifested in our bodies. For

we who live are always being given over to death for Jesus’

sake, so that the life of Jesus also may be manifested in

our mortal flesh. So death is at work in us, but life in you.

(2 Corinthians 4:10–12)

The history of the expansion of Christianity has proved that

“the blood of the martyrs is seed,” the seed of new life in Christ

spreading through the world. That famous quote comes from

Tertullian who lived from about a.d. 160 to a.d. 225. What he

actually wrote was: “The oftener we are mown down by you

[Romans], the more in number we [Christians] grow; the blood of

Christians is seed.”6 For almost three hundred years, Christianity

grew in soil that was wet with the blood of the martyrs. In his

History of Christian Missions, Stephen Neil mentions the suf-

ferings of the early Christians as one of the six main reasons the

church grew so rapidly.

Because of their dangerous situation vis-à-vis the law,

Christians were almost bound to meet in secret. . . . Every

Christian knew that sooner or later he might have to testify

to his faith at the cost of his life. . . . When persecution did

break out, martyrdom could be attended by the utmost

possible publicity. The Roman public was hard and cruel,

but it was not altogether without compassion; and there is

no doubt that the attitude of the martyrs, and particularly

of the young women who suffered along with the men,

made a deep impression. . . . In the earlier records what we

find is calm, dignified, decorous behaviour; cool courage

6Tertullian, The Apology, translated by Rev. S. Thelwell in Ante-Nicene Fathers, Volume 3, Latin Christianity: Its Founder, Tertullian. I. Apologetic; II. Anti-Marcion; III. Ethical, ed.

Alexander Roberts and James Donaldson (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson Publishers, 2004,

originally 1885), p. 55.

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in the face of torment, courtesy towards enemies, and a

joyful acceptance of suffering as the way appointed by the

Lord to lead to his heavenly kingdom. There are a number

of well-authenticated cases of conversion of pagans in the

very moment of witnessing the condemnation and death

of Christians; there must have been far more who received

impressions that in the course of time would be turned into

a living faith.7

May the Lord of the Nations Give Us His Passion

When Paul shares in Christ’s sufferings with joy and love, he

delivers, as it were, those very sufferings to the ones for whom

Christ died. Paul’s missionary suffering is God’s design to com-

plete the sufferings of Christ, by making them more visible and

personal and precious to those for whom he died.

So I say this very sobering word: God’s plan is that his sav-

ing purpose for the nations will triumph through the suffering of

his people, especially his frontline forces who break through the

darkness of Satan’s blinding hold on an unreached people. That

is what the lives of William Tyndale, John Paton, and Adoniram

Judson illustrate so dramatically. My prayer is that their stories

here will awaken in you a passion for Christ’s fame among the

nations and sympathy for those who will perish for their sin with-

out having heard the Good News of Christ.

7Stephen Neil, A History of Christian Missions (Harmondsworth, Middlesex, UK: Penguin Books Ltd., 1964), pp. 43–44.

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W i l l i a m T y n d a l e

“Always Singing One Note”—A Vernacular Bible:

The Cost of Bringing the Bible to England

Stephen Vaughan was an English merchant commissioned by

Thomas Cromwell, the king’s adviser, to find William Tyndale

and inform him that King Henry VIII desired him to come back

to England out of hiding on the continent. In a letter to Cromwell

from Vaughan dated June 19, 1531, Vaughan wrote about Tyndale

(1494–1536) these simple words: “I find him always singing one

note.”1 That one note was this: Will the King of England give his

official endorsement to a vernacular Bible for all his English sub-

jects? If not, Tyndale would not come. If so, Tyndale would give

himself up to the king and never write another book.

This was the driving passion of his life—to see the Bible trans-

lated from the Greek and Hebrew into ordinary English available

for every person in England to read.

Whatever It Costs

Henry VIII was angry with Tyndale for believing and promot-

ing Martin Luther’s Reformation teachings. In particular, he

was angry because of Tyndale’s book Answer to Sir Thomas

1David Daniell, William Tyndale: A Biography (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1994), p. 217.

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More. Thomas More (famous today for his book Utopia and

as portrayed in the movie A Man for All Seasons) was the Lord

Chancellor who helped Henry VIII write his repudiation of

Luther called Defense of the Seven Sacraments. Thomas More

was thoroughly Roman Catholic and radically anti-Reformation,

anti-Luther, and anti-Tyndale. So Tyndale had come under exco-

riating criticism by Thomas More.2 In fact, More had a “near-

rabid hatred”3 for Tyndale and published three long responses to

him totaling nearly three-quarters of a million words.4

But in spite of this high-court anger against Tyndale, the king’s

message to Tyndale, carried by Vaughan, was mercy: “The king’s

royal majesty is . . . inclined to mercy, pity, and compassion.”5

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 lan-

guages? Vaughan gives us Tyndale’s words from May 1531:

I assure you, if it would stand with the King’s most gra-

cious pleasure to grant only a bare text of the 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 of other Christian princes, 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,

2For example, in More’s 1529 book Dialogue Concerning Heresies.

3Daniell, Tyndale, p. 4.

4Thomas More wrote vastly more to condemn Tyndale than Tyndale wrote in defense. After

one book called An Answer unto Sir Thomas More’s Dialogue (1531), Tyndale was done. For Thomas More, however, there were “close on three quarters of a million words against Tyndale

. . . [compared to] Tyndale’s eighty thousand in his Answer.” Ibid., p. 277.

5Ibid., p. 216.

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William Tyndale

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.6

In other words, Tyndale would give himself up to the king on

one condition—that the king authorize an English Bible trans-

lated 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.

As I Live, the Plowboy Will Know His Bible

When he was twenty-eight years old in 1522, he was serv-

ing as a tutor in the home of John Walsh in Gloucestershire,

England, spending most of his time studying Erasmus’ Greek

New Testament that had been printed just six years before in

1516.

We should pause here and make clear what an incendiary

thing this Greek New Testament was in history. David Daniell

describes the magnitude of this event:

This was the first time that the Greek New Testament had

been printed. It is no exaggeration to say that it set fire to

Europe. Luther [1483–1546] translated it into his famous

6Ibid.

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German version of 1522. In a few years there appeared trans-

lations from the Greek into most European vernaculars. They

were the true basis of the popular reformation.7

Every day William Tyndale was seeing these Reformation

truths more clearly in the Greek New Testament as an ordained

Catholic priest. Increasingly, he was making himself suspect in

this Catholic house of John Walsh. Learned men would come for

dinner, and Tyndale would discuss the things he was seeing in the

New Testament. John Foxe tells us that one day an exasperated

Catholic scholar at dinner with Tyndale said, “We were better be

without God’s law than the pope’s.”

In response Tyndale spoke his famous words, “I defy the

Pope and all his laws. . . . If God spare my life ere many years,

I will cause a boy that driveth the plow, shall know more of the

Scripture than thou dost.”8

The One Note Crescendo

Four years later Tyndale finished the English translation of

the Greek New Testament in Worms, Germany, and began to

smuggle it into England in bales of cloth. He had grown up in

Gloucestershire, the cloth-working county, and now we see what

7William Tyndale, Selected Writings, edited with an introduction by David Daniell (New York: Routledge, 2003), p. ix. “Modern champions of the Catholic position like to support a view

of the Reformation, that it was entirely a political imposition by a ruthless minority in power against both the traditions and the wishes of the pious people of England. . . . The energy which affected every human life in northern Europe, however, came from a different place. It was not the result of political imposition. It came from the discovery of the Word of God as originally written . . . in the language of the people. Moreover, it could be read and understood, without censorship by the Church or mediation through the Church. . . . Such reading produced a

totally different view of everyday Christianity: the weekly, daily, even hourly ceremonies so lovingly catalogued by some Catholic revisionists are not there; purgatory is not there; there is no aural confession and penance. Two supports of the Church’s wealth and power collapsed.

Instead there was simply individual faith in Christ the Saviour, found in Scripture. That and only that ‘justified’ the sinner, whose root failings were now in the face of God, not the bishops or the pope.” Daniell, Tyndale, p. 58.

8Daniell, Tyndale, p. 79.

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William Tyndale

that turn of providence was about.9 By October 1526, the book

had been banned by Bishop Tunstall in London, but the print run

had been at least three thousand. And the books were getting to

the people. Over the next eight years, five pirated editions were

printed as well.10

In 1534, Tyndale published a revised New Testament, having

learned Hebrew in the meantime, probably in Germany, which

helped him better understand the connections between the Old

and New Testaments. Daniell calls this 1534 New Testament “the

glory of his life’s work.”11 If Tyndale was “always singing one

note,” this was the crescendo of the song of his life—the finished

and refined New Testament in English.

The Very First New Testament in English from the Greek

For the first time ever in history, the Greek New Testament was

translated into English. And for the first time ever, the New

Testament in English was available in a printed form. Before

Tyndale, there were only handwritten manuscripts of the Bible in

English. These manuscripts we owe to the work and inspiration

of John Wycliffe and the Lollards12 from a hundred and thirty

years earlier.13 For a thousand years, the only translation of the

Greek and Hebrew Bible was the Latin Vulgate, and few people

could understand it, even if they had access to it.

9“Not for nothing did William Tyndale, exiled in Cologne, Worms and Antwerp use the inter-

national trade routes of the cloth merchants to get his books into England, smuggled in bales of cloth.” Ibid., p. 15.

10Ibid., p. 188.

11Ibid., p. 316.

12“In the summer of 1382, Wyclif was attacked in a sermon preached at St. Mary’s, Oxford,

and his followers were for the first time denounced as ‘Lollards’—a loose and suitably mean-

ingless term of abuse (‘mutterers’) current in the Low Countries for Bible students, and thus heretics.” David Daniell, The Bible in English: Its History and Influence (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2003), p. 73.

13Gutenberg’s printing press came in 1450.

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Before he was martyred in 1536, Tyndale had translated into

clear, common English14 not only the New Testament15 but also

the Pentateuch, Joshua to 2 Chronicles, and Jonah.16 All this

material became the basis of the Great Bible issued by Miles

Coverdale in England in 153917 and the basis for the Geneva

Bible published in 1557—“the Bible of the nation,”18 which sold

over a million copies between 1560 and 1640.

Under God, Tyndale Gave Us Our English Bible

We do not get a clear sense of Tyndale’s achievement without

some comparisons. We think of the dominant King James Version

as giving us the pervasive language of the English Bible. But

Daniell clarifies the situation:

William Tyndale gave us our English Bible. The sages

assembled by King James to prepare the Authorized Version

of 1611, so often praised for unlikely corporate inspiration,

took over Tyndale’s work. Nine-tenths of the Authorized

Version’s New Testament is Tyndale’s. The same is true of

the first half of the Old Testament, which was as far as he

14“Tyndale transmitted an English strength which is the opposite of Latin, seen in the difference between ‘high’ and ‘elevated’, ‘gift’ and ‘donation’, ‘many’ and ‘multitudinous.’” Daniell, Tyndale, p. 3.

15Tyndale did not follow Luther in putting Hebrews, James, Jude, and Revelation in a special section of the New Testament set apart as inferior. “Tyndale, as shown later by his preface to James in his 1534 New Testament, is not only wiser and more generous—he is more true to

the New Testament.” Ibid., p. 120.

16This is available in print with all its original notes and introductions: Tyndale’s Old Testament, trans. William Tyndale (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1992). Also available is Tyndale’s New Testament, trans. William Tyndale (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1989).

17How could it be that Tyndale was martyred in 1536 for translating the Bible into English,

and that his New Testament could be burned in London by Bishop Tunstall, and yet an entire

printed Bible, essentially Tyndale’s, The Great Bible, could be published in England three years later officially endorsed by this Bible-burning bishop? Daniell explains: “Tunstall, whose name would shortly appear on the title pages approving two editions of the Great Bible, was playing politics, being a puppet of the Pope through Wolsey and the king, betraying his

Christian humanist learning at the direction of the church, needing to be receiving [Thomas]

Wolsey’s favor. . . . To burn God’s word for politics was to Tyndale barbarous.” Daniell, Tyndale, p. 93.

18Tyndale, Selected Writings, p. xi.

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William Tyndale

was able to get before he was executed outside Brussels in

1536.19

Here is a sampling of the English phrases we owe to

Tyndale:

“Let there be light.” (Genesis 1:3)

“Am I my brother’s keeper?” (Genesis 4:9)

“The Lord bless thee and keep thee. The Lord make his

face to shine upon thee and be merciful unto thee. The

Lord lift up his countenance upon thee, and give thee

peace.” (Numbers 6:24–26)

“There were shepherds abiding in the field.” (Luke 2:8)

“Blessed are they that mourn for they shall be comforted.”

(Matthew 5:4)

“Our Father, which art in heaven, hallowed be thy name.”

(Matthew 6:9)

“The signs of the times” (Matthew 16:3)

“The spirit is willing but the flesh is weak.” (Matthew

26:41)

19 Tyndale, p. 1. Daniell speaks with more precision elsewhere and says that the Authorized Version is 83 percent Tyndale’s (Tyndale, Selected Writings, p. vii). Brian Moynahan, God’s Bestseller: William Tyndale, Thomas More, and the Writing of the English Bible—A Story of Martyrdom and Betrayal (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2002), p. 1, confirms this with his estimates: Tyndale’s words “account for 84 percent of the [King James Version] New Testament and 75.8 percent of the Old Testament books that he translated.” Daniell also points out how remarkable the Old Testament translations were: “These opening chapters of Genesis

are the first translations—not just the first printed, but the first translations—from Hebrew into English. This needs to be emphasized. Not only was the Hebrew language only known in

England in 1529 and 1530 by, at the most, a tiny handful of scholars in Oxford and Cambridge, and quite possibly by none; that there was a language called Hebrew at all, or that it had any connection whatsoever with the Bible, would have been news to most of the ordinary population.” Tyndale, p. 287.

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“He went out . . . and wept bitterly.” (Matthew 26:75)20

“In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with

God and the Word was God.” (John 1:1)

“In him we live, move and have our being.” (Acts 17:28)

“A law unto themselves” (Romans 2:14)

“Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels”

(1 Corinthians 13:1)

“Fight the good fight.” (1 Timothy 6:12)

According to Daniell, “The list of such near-proverbial phrases is

endless.”21 Five hundred years after his great work, “newspaper

headlines still quote Tyndale, though unknowingly, and he has

reached more people than even Shakespeare.”22

He Gave Us New Prose—and a Reformation

Luther’s translation of 1522 is often praised for “having given

a language to the emerging German nation.” Daniell claims the

same for Tyndale in English:

In his Bible translations, Tyndale’s conscious use of every-

day words, without inversions, in a neutral word-order, and

his wonderful ear for rhythmic patterns, gave to English not

only a Bible language, but a new prose. England was blessed

as a nation in that the language of its principal book, as

20“Wept bitterly” is still used by almost all modern translations (NIV, NASB, ESV, NKJV). It has not been improved on for five hundred years in spite of weak efforts like one recent translation: “cried hard.” Unlike that phrase, “the rhythm of his two words carries the experience.”

Tyndale, Selected Writings, p. xv.

21Daniell, Tyndale, p. 142.

22Ibid., p. 2.

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William Tyndale

the Bible in English rapidly became, was the fountain from

which flowed the lucidity, suppleness and expressive range

of the greatest prose thereafter.23

His craftsmanship with the English language amounted to

genius.24

He translated two-thirds of the Bible so well that his trans-

lations endured until today.25

This was not merely a literary phenomenon; it was a spiritual

explosion. Tyndale’s Bible and writings were the kindling that set

the Reformation on fire in England.

Two Ways to Die to Bear Fruit for God

The question arises: How did William Tyndale accomplish this

historic achievement? We can answer this in Tyndale’s case by

remembering two ways that a pastor or any spiritual leader must

die in order to bear fruit for God (John 12:24; Romans 7:4). On

the one hand, we must die to the notion that we do not have to

think hard or work hard to achieve spiritual goals. On the other

hand, we must die to the notion that our thinking and our work-

ing is decisive in achieving spiritual goals.

Paul said in 2 Timothy 2:7, “Think over what I say, for the

Lord will give you understanding in everything.” First, think.

Work. Don’t bypass the hard work of thinking about apos-

tolic truth. But second, remember this: “The Lord will give

23Ibid., p. 116.

24Tyndale, Selected Writings, p. xv.

25Daniell, Tyndale, p. 121. “Tyndale gave the nation a Bible language that was English in words, word-order and lilt. He invented some words (for example, ‘scapegoat’) and the great

Oxford English Dictionary has mis-attributed, and thus also mis-dated a number of his first

uses.” Ibid., p. 3.

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you understanding.” You work. He gives. If he withholds, all

our working is in vain. But he ordains that we use our minds

and that we work in achieving spiritual ends. So Paul says in

1 Corinthians 15:10, “I worked harder than any of them,

though it was not I, but the grace of God that is with me.” The

key to spiritual achievement is to work hard, and to know and

believe and be happy that God’s sovereign grace is the decisive

cause of all the good that comes.

How Erasmus and Tyndale Were Alike

The way these two truths come together in Tyndale’s life

explains how he could accomplish what he did. And one of the

best ways to see it is to compare him with Erasmus, the Roman

Catholic humanist scholar who was famous for his books

Enchiridion and The Praise of Folly and for his printed Greek

New Testament.

Erasmus was twenty-eight years older than Tyndale, but they

both died in 1536—Tyndale martyred by the Roman Catholic

Church, Erasmus a respected member of that church. Erasmus

had spent time in Oxford and Cambridge, but we don’t know if

he and Tyndale ever met.

On the surface, one sees remarkable similarities between

Tyndale and Erasmus. Both were great linguists. Erasmus was

a Latin scholar and produced the first printed Greek New

Testament. Tyndale knew eight languages: Latin, Greek, German,

French, Hebrew, Spanish, Italian, and English. Both men loved

the natural power of language and were part of a rebirth of inter-

est in the way language works.

For example, Erasmus wrote a book called De copia that

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William Tyndale

Tyndale no doubt used as a student at Oxford.26 It helped stu-

dents increase their abilities to exploit the “copious” potential

of language. This was hugely influential in the early 1500s in

England and was used to train students in the infinite possibilities

of varied verbal expression. The aim was to keep language from

sinking down to mere jargon and worn-out slang and uncreative,

unimaginative, prosaic, colorless, boring speech.

One practice lesson for students from De copia was to give

“no fewer than one hundred fifty ways of saying ‘Your letter has

delighted me very much.’” The point was to force students to “use

of all the verbal muscles in order to avoid any hint of flabbiness.”27

It is not surprising that this is the kind of educational world

that gave rise to William Shakespeare (who was born in 1564).

Shakespeare is renowned for his unparalleled use of copiousness in

language. One critic wrote, “Without Erasmus, no Shakespeare.”28

So both Erasmus and Tyndale were educated in an atmo-

sphere of conscious craftsmanship.29 That is, they both believed

in hard work to say things clearly and creatively and compellingly

when they spoke for Christ.

Not only that, but they both believed the Bible should be

translated into the vernacular of every language. Erasmus wrote

in the preface to his Greek New Testament,

Christ wishes his mysteries to be published as widely as pos-

sible. I would wish even all women to read the gospel and

the epistles of St. Paul, and I wish that they were translated

26“Tyndale could hardly have missed De copia. ” Daniell, Tyndale, p. 43. This book went through 150 additions by 1572.

27Ibid., p. 42.

28Emrys Jones, The Origins of Shakespeare (New York: Oxford University Press, 1977), p. 13.

29“Tyndale as conscious craftsman has been not just neglected, but denied: yet the evidence

of the book that follows makes it beyond challenge that he used, as a master, the skill in the selection and arrangement of words which he partly learned at school and university, and partly developed from pioneering work by Erasmus.” Daniell, Tyndale, p. 2.

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into all languages of all Christian people, that they might be

read and known, not merely by the Scotch and the Irish, but

even by the Turks and the Saracens. I wish that the husband-

man may sing parts of them at his plow, that the weaver

may warble them at his shuttle, that the traveler may with

their narratives beguile the weariness of the way.30

Tyndale could not have said it better.

Both were concerned with the corruption and abuses in the

Catholic Church, and both wrote about Christ and the Christian

life. Tyndale even translated Erasmus’ Enchiridion, a kind of

spiritual handbook for the Christian life—what Erasmus called

philosophia Christi.

From a Lightning Bug to a Lightning Bolt

But there was a massive difference between these men, and it

had directly to do with the other half of the paradox mentioned

above, namely, that we must die not just to intellectual and

linguistic laziness, but also to human presumption—human

self-exaltation and self-sufficiency. Erasmus and Luther had

clashed in the 1520s over the freedom of the will—Erasmus

defending human self-determination and Luther arguing for the

depravity and bondage of the will.31 Tyndale was firmly with

Luther here.

Our will is locked and knit faster under the will of the devil

than could an hundred thousand chains bind a man unto

a post.32

30Ibid., p. 67.

31Erasmus’ book was titled On the Freedom of the Will, and Luther’s was The Bondage of the Will.

32Tyndale, Selected Writings, p. 39.

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Because . . . [by] nature we are evil, therefore we both think

and do evil, and are under vengeance under the law, convict

to eternal damnation by the law, and are contrary to the will

of God in all our will and in all things consent to the will

of the fiend.33

It is not possible for a natural man to consent to the law,

that it should be good, or that God should be righteous

which maketh the law.34

This view of human sinfulness set the stage for Tyndale’s grasp of

the glory of God’s sovereign grace in the gospel. Erasmus—and

Thomas More with him—did not see the depth of the human

condition (their own condition) and so did not see the glory

and explosive power of what the reformers saw in the New

Testament. What the reformers like Tyndale and Luther saw was

not a philosophia Christi but the massive work of God in the

death and resurrection of Christ to save hopelessly enslaved and

hell-bound sinners.

Erasmus does not live or write in this realm of horrible con-

dition and gracious blood-bought salvation. He has the appear-

ance of reform in the Enchiridion, but something is missing. To

walk from Erasmus into Tyndale is to move (to paraphrase Mark

Twain) from a lightning bug to a lightning bolt.

Daniell puts it like this:

Something in the Enchiridion is missing. . . . It is a master-

piece of humanist piety. . . . [But] the activity of Christ

in the Gospels, his special work of salvation so strongly

detailed there and in the epistles of Paul, is largely missing.

Christologically, where Luther thunders, Erasmus makes a

33Ibid., p. 37.

34Ibid., p. 40.

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sweet sound: what to Tyndale was an impregnable strong-

hold feels in the Enchiridion like a summer pavilion.35

Where Luther and Tyndale were blood-earnest about our dread-

ful human condition and the glory of salvation in Christ, Erasmus

and Thomas More joked and bantered. When Luther published

his Ninety-Five Theses in 1517, Erasmus sent a copy of them

to More—along with a “jocular letter including the anti-papal

games, and witty satirical diatribes against abuses within the

church, which both of them loved to make.”36

The Difference: Clarity and Seriousness about the Gospel

I linger here with this difference between Tyndale and Erasmus

because I am trying to penetrate to how Tyndale accomplished

what he did through translating the New Testament. Explosive

reformation is what he accomplished in England. This was not

the effect of Erasmus’ highbrow, elitist, layered nuancing of

Christ and church tradition. Erasmus and Thomas More may

have satirized the monasteries and clerical abuses, but they were

always playing games compared to Tyndale.

And in this they were very much like notable Christian writ-

ers in our own day. Listen to this remarkable assessment from

Daniell, and see if you do not hear a description of certain writ-

ers in our day who belittle doctrine and extol ambiguity as the

humble and mature mind-set:

Not only is there no fully realized Christ or Devil in

Erasmus’s book . . . there is a touch of irony about it all,

35Daniell, Tyndale, pp. 68–69.

36Ibid., p. 254.

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with a feeling of the writer cultivating a faintly superior

ambiguity: as if to be dogmatic, for example about the full

theology of the work of Christ, was to be rather distaste-

ful, below the best, elite, humanist heights. . . . By contrast

Tyndale . . . is ferociously single-minded [“always singing

one note”]; the matter in hand, the immediate access of the

soul to God without intermediary, is far too important for

hints of faintly ironic superiority. . . . Tyndale is as four-

square as a carpenter’s tool. But in Erasmus’s account of the

origins of his book there is a touch of the sort of layering of

ironies found in the games with personae.37

It is ironic and sad that today supposedly avant-garde Christian

writers can strike this cool, evasive, imprecise, artistic, superfi-

cially reformist pose of Erasmus and call it “post modern” and

capture a generation of unwitting, historically naive people who

don’t know they are being duped by the same old verbal tactics

used by the elitist, humanist writers in past generations. We

see them in the controversies between the slippery Arians and

Athanasius,38 and we see them now in Tyndale’s day. It’s not

postmodern. It’s pre-modern—because it’s perpetual.

At Root: A Passion for Justification by Faith

What drove Tyndale to sing “one note” all his life was the rock-

solid conviction that all humans were in bondage to sin, blind,

dead, damned, and helpless, and that God had acted in Christ to

provide salvation by grace through faith. This is what lay hidden

in the Latin Scriptures and the church system of penance and

37Ibid., pp. 69–70.

38See, for example, John Piper, Contending for Our All: Defending the Truth and Treasuring Christ in the Lives of Athanasius, John Owen, and J. Gresham Machen (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Books, 2006), p. 45.

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merit. The Bible must be translated for the sake of the liberating,

life-giving gospel.39

There is only one hope for our liberation from the bonds of

sin and eternal condemnation, Tyndale said: “Neither can any

creature loose the bonds, save the blood of Christ only.”40

By grace . . . we are plucked out of Adam the ground of all evil

and graffed [sic] in Christ, the root of all goodness. In Christ

God loved us, his elect and chosen, before the world began

and reserved us unto the knowledge of his Son and of his holy

gospel: and when the gospel41 is preached to us [it] openeth

our hearts and giveth us grace to believe, and putteth the spirit

of Christ in us: and we know him as our Father most merciful,

and consent to the law and love it inwardly in our heart and

desire to fulfill it and sorrow because we do not.42

This massive dose of bondage to sin and deliverance by blood-

bought sovereign grace43 is missing in Erasmus. This is why there

is an elitist lightness to his religion—just like there is to so much

of evangelicalism today. Hell and sin and atonement and sovereign

grace were not weighty realities for Erasmus. But for Tyndale they

39“Central to Tyndale’s insistence on the need for the Scriptures in English was his grasp that Paul had to be understood in relation to each reader’s salvation, and he needed there, above all, to be clear.” Daniell, Tyndale, p. 139.

40Tyndale, Selected Writings, p. 40.

41Here is Tyndale’s definition of the “gospel” that rings with exuberant joy: “Evangelion (that we call the gospel) is a Greek word and signifieth good, merry, glad and joyful tidings, that maketh a man’s heart glad and maketh him sing, dance, and leap for joy. . . . [This gospel is]

all of Christ the right David, how that he hath fought with sin, with death, and the devil, and overcome them: whereby all men that were in bondage to sin, wounded with death, overcome

of the devil are without their own merits or deservings loosed, justified, restored to life and saved, brought to liberty and reconciled unto the favor of God and set at one with him again: which tidings as many as believe laud, praise and thank God, are glad, sing and dance for joy.”

Ibid., p. 33.

42Ibid., p. 37.

43“Tyndale was more than a mildly theological thinker. He is at last being understood as, theologically as well as linguistically, well ahead of his time. For him, as several decades later for Calvin (and in the 20th century Karl Barth) the overriding message of the New Testament

is the sovereignty of God. Everything is contained in that. It must never, as he wrote, be lost from sight. . . . Tyndale, we are now being shown, was original and new—except that he was

also old, demonstrating the understanding of God as revealed in the whole New Testament.

For Tyndale, God is, above all, sovereign, active in the individual and in history. He is the one as he put it, in whom alone is found salvation and flourishing.” Ibid., pp. viii-ix.

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were everything. And in the middle of these great realities was the

doctrine of justification by faith alone. This is why the Bible had

to be translated, and ultimately this is why Tyndale was martyred.

By faith are we saved only in believing the promises. And

though faith be never without love and good works, yet is

our saving imputed neither to love nor unto good works but

unto faith only.44

Faith the mother of all good works justifieth us, before we

can bring forth any good work: as the husband marryeth his

wife before he can have any lawful children by her.45

This is the answer to how William Tyndale accomplished what he

did in translating the New Testament and writing books that set

England on fire with the Reformed faith. He worked assiduously,

like the most skilled artist, in the craft of compelling translation,

and he was deeply passionate about the great doctrinal truths of

the gospel of sovereign grace.

Man is lost, spiritually dead, condemned. God is sovereign;

Christ is sufficient. Faith is all. Bible translation and Bible truth

were inseparable for Tyndale, and in the end it was the truth—

especially the truth of justification by faith alone—that ignited

Britain with Reformed fire and then brought the death sentence

to this Bible translator.

Blood-Serious Opposition to Bible Translation

It is almost incomprehensible to us today how viciously the

Roman Catholic Church opposed the translation of the Scriptures

44Ibid., p. 38.

45Daniell, Tyndale, pp. 156–157.

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into English. John Wycliffe and his followers called “Lollards”46

had spread written manuscripts of English translations from the

Latin in the late 1300s. In 1401, Parliament passed the law de

Haeretico Comburendo—“on the burning of heretics”—to make

heresy punishable by burning people alive at the stake. The Bible

translators were in view.

Then in 1408, the Archbishop of Canterbury, Thomas

Arundell, created the Constitutions of Oxford, which said,

It is a dangerous thing, as witnesseth blessed St. Jerome, to

translate the text of the Holy Scripture out of one tongue

into another, for in the translation the same sense is not

always easily kept. . . . We therefore decree and ordain, that

no man, hereafter, by his own authority translate any text of

the Scripture into English or any other tongue . . . and that

no man can read any such book . . . in part or in whole.47

Together these statutes meant that you could be burned alive by

the Catholic Church for simply reading the Bible in English. Let

that sink in. The dramatist John Bale (1495–1563) “as a boy of

11 watched the burning of a young man in Norwich for possess-

ing the Lord’s prayer in English. . . . John Foxe records . . . seven

Lollards burned at Coventry in 1519 for teaching their children

the Lord’s Prayer in English.”48

The Burning Fury of More

Tyndale hoped to escape this condemnation by getting official

authorization for his translation in 1524. But he found just the

46See note 12.

47Moynahan, God’s Bestseller, p. xxii.

48William Tyndale, The Obedience of A Christian Man, edited with an introduction by David Daniell (London: Penguin Books, 2000), p. 202.

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opposite and had to escape from London to the European con-

tinent where he did all his translating and writing for the next

twelve years. He lived as a fugitive the entire time until his death

near Brussels in 1536.

He watched a rising tide of persecution and felt the pain of

seeing young men burned alive who were converted by reading

his translation and his books. His closest friend, John Frith, was

arrested in London and tried by Thomas More and burned alive

July 4, 1531, at the age of twenty-eight. Richard Bayfield ran the

ships that took Tyndale’s books to England. He was betrayed and

arrested, and Thomas More wrote on December 4, 1531, that

Bayfield “the monk and apostate [was] well and worthily burned

in Smythfelde.”49

Three weeks later, the same end came to John Tewkesbury.

He was converted by reading Tyndale’s Parable of the Wicked

Mammon, which defended justification by faith alone. He was

whipped in Thomas More’s garden and had his brow squeezed

with small ropes until blood came out of his eyes. Then he was

sent to the Tower where he was racked till he was lame. Then

at last they burned him alive. Thomas More “rejoiced that his

victim was now in hell, where Tyndale ‘is like to find him when

they come together.’”50

Four months later, James Bainham followed in the flames in

April 1532. He had stood up during the mass at St. Augustine’s

Church in London and lifted a copy of Tyndale’s New Testament

and pleaded with the people to die rather than deny the word

of God. That virtually was to sign his own death warrant. Add

to these Thomas Bilney, Thomas Dusgate, John Bent, Thomas

49Moynahan, God’s Bestseller, p. 260.

50Ibid., p. 261.

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Harding, Andrew Hewet, Elizabeth Barton, and others, all

burned alive for sharing the views of William Tyndale about the

Scriptures and the Reformed faith.51

Why So Much Hatred?

Why this extraordinary hostility against the English New

Testament, especially from Thomas More who vilified Tyndale

repeatedly in his denunciation of the Reformers he burned?

Some would say that the New Testament in English was rejected

because it was accompanied with Reformation notes that the

church regarded as heretical. That was true of later versions, but

not of the first 1526 edition. It did not have notes, and this is the

edition that Bishop Tunstall burned in London.52 The church

burned the word of God. They burned the Bible in public. That

shocked Tyndale.

There were surface reasons and deeper reasons why the

church opposed an English Bible. The surface reasons were the

claims that the English language is rude and unworthy of the

exalted language of God’s word; and when one translates, errors

can creep in, so it is safer not to translate. Moreover, if the Bible

is in English, then each man will become his own interpreter, and

many will go astray into heresy and be condemned; and it was

church tradition that only priests are given the divine grace to

understand the Scriptures. What’s more, there is a special sacra-

mental value to the Latin service that people cannot understand

but through which grace is given. Such were the kinds of things

being said on the surface.

51The list and details are given in Daniell, Tyndale, pp. 183–184.

52Ibid., pp. 192–193.

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But there were deeper reasons why the church opposed the

English Bible: one doctrinal (justification, which we will see in

the last months of Tyndale’s life) and the other ecclesiastical (the

papal, sacramental structure of the Roman Catholic Church).

The church realized that they would not be able to sustain certain

doctrines biblically because the people would see that they are not

in the Bible. And the church realized that their power and control

over the people, and even over the state, would be lost if certain

doctrines were exposed as unbiblical—especially the priesthood

and purgatory and penance.

The Bible Must Not Be Available for Interpretation

Thomas More’s criticism of Tyndale boils down mainly to the

way Tyndale translated five words. He translated presbuteros

as elder instead of priest. He translated ekklesia as congregation instead of church. He translated metanoeo as repent instead of

do penance. He translated exomologeo as acknowledge or admit

instead of confess. And he translated agape as love rather than

charity.

Daniell comments, “He cannot possibly have been unaware

that those words in particular undercut the entire sacramental

structure of the thousand year church throughout Europe, Asia

and North Africa. It was the Greek New Testament that was

doing the undercutting.”53 And with the doctrinal undermining

of these ecclesiastical pillars of priesthood and penance and con-

fession, the pervasive power and control of the church collapsed.

England would not be a Catholic nation. The Reformed faith

would flourish there in due time.

53Ibid., p. 149.

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The Sorrows and Sufferings of a Young Fugitive

What did it cost William Tyndale under these hostile circum-

stances to stay faithful to his calling as a translator of the Bible

and a writer of the Reformed faith?

He fled his homeland in 1524 and was burned at the stake in

1536. He gives us some glimpse of those twelve years as a fugitive

in Germany and the Netherlands in one of the very few personal

descriptions we have, from Stephen Vaughan’s letter in 1531. He

refers to

. . . my pains . . . my poverty . . . my exile out of mine natural

country, and bitter absence from my friends . . . my hunger,

my thirst, my cold, the great danger wherewith I am every-

where encompassed, and finally . . . innumerable other hard

and sharp fightings which I endure.54

All these sufferings came to a climax on May 21, 1535, in the

midst of Tyndale’s great Old Testament translation labors. We

can feel some of the ugliness of what happened in the words of

David Daniell: “Malice, self-pity, villainy and deceit were about

to destroy everything. These evils came to the English House

[in Antwerp], wholly uninvited, in the form of an egregious

Englishman, Henry Philips.”55 Philips had won Tyndale’s trust

over some months and then betrayed him. John Foxe tells how

it happened:

So when it was dinner-time, Master Tyndale went forth

with Philips, and at the going forth of Poyntz’s house, was

a long narrow entry, so that two could not go in a front.

Mr. Tyndale would have put Philips before him, but Philips

54Ibid., p. 213.

55Ibid., p. 361.

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would in no wise, but put Master Tyndale before, for that

he pretended to show great humanity. So Master Tyndale,

being a man of no great stature, went before, and Philips, a

tall comely person, followed behind him: who had set offi-

cers on either side of the door upon two seats, who, being

there, might see who came in the entry: and coming through

the same entry, Philips pointed with his finger over Master

Tyndale’s head down to him, that the officers who sat at the

door might see that it was he whom they should take. . . .

Then they took him, and brought him to the emperor’s

attorney, or procurer-general, where he dined. Then came

the procurer-general to the house of Poyntz, and sent away

all that was there of Master Tyndale’s, as well his books as

other things: and from thence Tyndale was had to the castle

of Filford, eighteen English miles from Antwerp, and there

he remained until he was put to death.56

The Cold and Final Castle

Vilvorde Castle is six miles north of Brussels and about the same

distance from Louvain. Here Tyndale stayed for eighteen months.

“The charge was heresy, with not agreeing with the holy Roman

Emperor—in a nutshell, being Lutheran.”57 A four-man com-

mission from the Catholic center of Louvain was authorized to

prove that Tyndale was a heretic. One of them named Latomus

filled three books with his interactions with Tyndale and said

that Tyndale himself wrote a “book” in prison to defend his chief

doctrinal standard: Sola fides justificat apud Deum— Faith Alone

Justifies Before God. This was the key issue in the end. The evil

of translating the Bible came down to this: Are we justified by

faith alone?

56Ibid., p. 364.

57Ibid., p. 365.

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These months in prison were not easy. They were a long dying,

leading to death. We get one glimpse into the prison to see Tyndale’s

condition and his passion. He wrote a letter in September 1535,

when there seems to have been a lull in the examinations. It was

addressed to an unnamed officer of the castle. Here is a condensed

version of Mozley’s translation of the Latin:

I beg your lordship, and that of the Lord Jesus, that if I am

to remain here through the winter, you will request the com-

missary to have the kindness to send me, from the goods of

mine which he has, a warmer cap; for I suffer greatly from

cold in the head, and am afflicted by a perpetual catarrh,

which is much increased in this cell; a warmer coat also, for

this which I have is very thin; a piece of cloth too to patch

my leggings. My overcoat is worn out; my shirts are also

worn out. He has a woolen shirt, if he will be good enough

to send it. I have also with him leggings of thicker cloth to

put on above; he has also warmer night-caps. And I ask to be

allowed to have a lamp in the evening; it is indeed wearisome

sitting alone in the dark. But most of all I beg and beseech

your clemency to be urgent with the commissary, that he will

kindly permit me to have the Hebrew Bible, Hebrew gram-

mar, and Hebrew dictionary, that I may pass the time in that

study. In return may you obtain what you most desire, so

only that it be for the salvation of your soul. But if any other

decision has been taken concerning me, to be carried out

before winter, I will be patient, abiding the will of God, to

the glory of the grace of my Lord Jesus Christ: whose spirit

(I pray) may ever direct your heart. Amen W. Tindalus58

We don’t know if his requests were granted. He did stay in that

prison through the winter. His verdict was sealed in August 1536.

He was formally condemned as a heretic and degraded from the

58Ibid., p. 379.

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priesthood. Then in early October (traditionally October 6), he

was tied to the stake and then strangled by the executioner, then

afterward consumed in the fire. Foxe reports that his last words

were, “Lord! Open the King of England’s eyes!”59 He was forty-

two years old, never married, and never buried.

He Will Ease Your Pain or Shorten It

His closing words to us are clear from his life and from his writ-

ings. Following God’s call in accomplishing the spread of his

saving gospel is often very costly. I will let him speak in his own

words from his book The Obedience of a Christian Man:

If God promise riches, the way thereto is poverty. Whom he

loveth he chasteneth, whom he exalteth, he casteth down,

whom he saveth he damneth first, he bringeth no man to

heaven except he send him to hell first. If he promise life he

slayeth it first, when he buildeth, he casteth all down first.

He is no patcher, he cannot build on another man’s founda-

tion. He will not work until all be past remedy and brought

unto such a case, that men may see how that his hand, his

power, his mercy, his goodness and truth hath wrought all

together. He will let no man be partaker with him of his

praise and glory.60

Let us therefore look diligently whereunto we are called,

that we deceive not ourselves. We are called, not to dispute

as the pope’s disciples do, but to die with Christ that we

may live with him, and to suffer with him that we may reign

with him.61

59Ibid., pp. 382–383. “Contemporaries noted no such words, however, only that the strangling was bungled and that he suffered terribly.” Moynahan, God’s Bestseller, p. 377.

60Tyndale, The Obedience of a Christian Man, p. 6.

61Ibid., p. 8.

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For if God be on our side: what matter maketh it who be

against us, be they bishops, cardinals, popes or whatsoever

names they will.62

So let Tyndale’s very last word to us be the last word he sent

to his best friend, John Frith, in a letter just before Frith was

burned alive for believing and speaking the truth of Scripture:

Your cause is Christ’s gospel, a light that must be fed with

the blood of faith. . . . If when we be buffeted for well-doing,

we suffer patiently and endure, that is acceptable to God;

for to that end we are called. For Christ also suffered for us,

leaving us an example, that we should follow his steps, who

did no sin.

Hereby have we perceived love, that he had lain down

his life for us; therefore we ought also to lay down our

lives for the brethren. . . . Let not your body faint. . . . If

the pain be above your strength, remember, Whatsoever ye

shall ask in my name, I will give it you. And pray to our

Father in that name, and he will ease your pain, or shorten

it. . . . Amen.63

62Ibid., p. 6.

63From Foxe’s Book of Martyrs.

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J o h n G . P aT o n

“You Will Be Eaten by Cannibals!”:

Courage in the Face of Fierce Opposition

In 1606, a chain of eighty islands in the South Pacific was discov-

ered by Fernandez de Quiros of Spain. In 1773, the islands were

explored by Captain James Cook and named the New Hebrides

because of the similarities with the Hebrides Islands off the north-

west coast of Scotland. In 1980, the New Hebrides gained its

independence from Britain and France and was named Vanuatu.

The chain of islands is about 450 miles long. If you draw a line

straight from Honolulu to Sydney, it will cut through Port Vila,

the capital of Vanuatu, two-thirds of the way between Hawaii

and Australia. The population today is about 215,000.

Baptized with the Blood of Martyrs

To the best of our knowledge, the New Hebrides had no Christian

influence before John Williams and James Harris from the

London Missionary Society landed in 1839. Both of these mis-

sionaries were killed and eaten by cannibals on the island of

Erromanga on November 20 of that year, only minutes after

going ashore. Forty-eight years later, John Paton wrote, “Thus

were the New Hebrides baptized with the blood of martyrs; and

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Christ thereby told the whole Christian world that he claimed

these islands as His own.”1

The London Missionary Society sent another team to the island

of Tanna in 1842, and these missionaries were driven off within

seven months. But on the island of Aneityum, John Geddie from

the Presbyterian Church in Nova Scotia (coming in 1848) and John

Inglis from the Reformed Presbyterian Church in Scotland (coming

in 1852) saw amazing fruit, so that by 1854 “about 3,500 savages

[more than half the population2] threw away their idols, renounc-

ing their heathen customs and avowing themselves to be worship-

pers of the true Jehovah God.”3 When Geddie died in 1872, all the

population of Aneityum was said to be Christian.4

The Dangerous and Hope-filled Setting of Paton’s Mission

This is part of a great work God was doing in the South Sea

Islands in those days. In 1887, the sixty-three-year-old John

Paton recorded the wider triumphs of the gospel. When certain

people argued that the Aborigines of Australia were subhuman

and incapable of conversion or civilization, Paton responded with

mission facts as well as biblical truth.

Recall . . . what the Gospel has done for the near kindred

of these same Aborigines. On our own Aneityum, 3,500

Cannibals have been lead to renounce their heathenism. . . .

In Fiji, 79,000 Cannibals have been brought under the influ-

1 John G. Paton, Missionary to the New Hebrides: An Autobiography Edited by His Brother (1889, 1891; reprint, Edinburgh: The Banner of Truth, 1965), p. 75.

2Kenneth Scott Latourette, A History of the Expansion of Christianity, The Great Century: The Americas, Australasia and Africa, 1800 AD to 1914 AD (1943; reprint, Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 1970), p. 228.

3 Autobiography, p. 77.

4George Patterson, Missionary Life among the Cannibals: Being the Life of the Rev. John Geddie, D.D., First Missionary to the New Hebrides; with the History of the Nova Scotia

Presbyterian Mission on That Group (Toronto: James Campbell and Son, 1882), p. 508.

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ence of the Gospel; and 13,000 members of the Churches

are professing to live and work for Jesus. In Samoa, 34,000

Cannibals have professed Christianity; and in nineteen

years, its College has sent forth 206 Native teachers and

evangelists. On our New Hebrides, more than 12,000

Cannibals have been brought to sit at the feet of Christ,

though I mean not to say that they are all model Christians;

and 133 of the Natives have been trained and sent forth as

teachers and preachers of the Gospel.5

This is the remarkable missionary context for the life and minis-

try of John G. Paton, who was born near Dumfries, Scotland, on

May 24, 1824. He sailed for the New Hebrides (via Australia)

with his wife Mary on April 16, 1858, at the age of thirty-three.

They reached their appointed island of Tanna on November 5,

and in March the next year both his wife and his newborn son

died of the fever. He served alone on the island for the next four

years under incredible circumstances of constant danger until he

was driven off the island in February 1862.

For the next four years, he did extraordinarily effective mobi-

lization work for the Presbyterian mission to the New Hebrides,

traveling around Australia and Great Britain. He married again

in 1864 and took his wife Margaret back this time to the smaller

island of Aniwa (“It measures scarcely seven miles by two”6).

They labored together for forty-one years until Margaret died in

1905 when John Paton was eighty-one.

When they came to Aniwa in November 1866, they saw the

destitution of the islanders. It will help us appreciate the magni-

tude of their labors and the wonders of their fruitfulness if we see

some of what they faced.

5 Autobiography, p. 265.

6Ibid., p. 312.

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The native people were cannibals and occasionally ate the

flesh of their defeated foes. They practiced infanticide and widow

sacrifice, killing the widows of deceased men so they could serve

their husbands in the next world.7

Their worship was entirely a service of fear, its aim being to

propitiate this or that evil spirit, to prevent calamity or to

secure revenge. They deified their chiefs . . . so that almost

every village or tribe had its own Sacred Man. . . . They

exercised an extraordinary influence for evil, these village or

tribal priests, and were believed to have the disposal of life

and death through their sacred ceremonies. . . . They also

worshipped the spirits of departed ancestors and heroes,

through their material idols of wood and stone. . . . They

feared the spirits and sought their aid; especially seeking to

propitiate those who presided over war and peace, famine

and plenty, health and sickness, destruction and prosperity,

life and death. Their whole worship was one of slavish fear;

and, so far as ever I could learn, they had no idea of a God

of mercy or grace.8

Paton admitted that at times his heart wavered as he wondered

whether these people could be brought to the point of weaving

Christian ideas into the spiritual consciousness of their lives.9

But he took heart from the power of the gospel and from the fact

that thousands on Aneityum had come to Christ.

So he learned the language and reduced it to writing.10

He built orphanages (“We trained these young people for

Jesus”11). “Mrs. Paton taught a class of about fifty women and

7Ibid., pp. 69, 334.

8Ibid., p. 72. This description was made of the natives on the island of Tanna but applies equally well to the conditions on the nearby island of Aniwa.

9Ibid., p. 74.

10Ibid., p. 319.

11Ibid., p. 317.

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girls. They became experts at sewing, singing and plaiting hats,

and reading.”12 They “trained the Teachers . . . translated and

printed and expounded the Scriptures . . . ministered to the sick

and dying . . . dispensed medicines every day . . . taught them

the use of tools . . .” and more.13 They held worship services

every Lord’s Day and sent native teachers to all the villages to

preach the gospel.

In the next fifteen years, John and Margaret Paton saw the

entire island of Aniwa turn to Christ. Years later he wrote, “I

claimed Aniwa for Jesus, and by the grace of God Aniwa now

worships at the Savior’s feet.”14 When he was seventy-three years

old and traveling around the world trumpeting the cause of mis-

sions in the South Seas, he was still ministering to his beloved

Aniwan people and “published the New Testament in the Aniwan

Language” in 1897.15 Even to his death, he was translating

hymns and catechisms16 and creating a dictionary for his people

even when he couldn’t be with them anymore.17

During his years of labor on the islands, Paton kept a journal

and notebooks and letters from which he wrote his Autobiography

in three parts from 1887 to 1898. Almost all we know of his work

comes from that book, which is still in print in one volume from

the Banner of Truth Trust.

Paton outlived his wife by two years and died in Australia on

January 28, 1907, at the age of eighty-two. Today, over a hun-

dred years after the death of John Paton, about 91 percent of the

population of Vanuatu identifies itself as Christian, perhaps 14

12Ibid., p. 377.

13Ibid., p. 378.

14Ibid., p. 312.

15Ralph Bell, John G. Paton: Missionary to the New Hebrides (Butler, IN: The Highley Press, 1957), p. 238.

16Ibid.

17 Autobiography, p. 451.

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percent of the population being evangelical.18 The sacrifices and

the legacy of the missionaries to the New Hebrides are stunning,

and John G. Paton stands out as one of the great ones. In telling

his story, we will focus on one of the most inspiring aspects of his

character: his courage.

Overcoming Criticism

Paton had courage to overcome the criticism he received from

respected elders for going to the New Hebrides. A certain Mr.

Dickson exploded, “The cannibals! You will be eaten by can-

nibals!” The memory of Williams and Harris on Erromanga was

only nineteen years old. But to this Paton responded:

Mr. Dickson, you are advanced in years now, and your own

prospect is soon to be laid in the grave, there to be eaten by

worms; I confess to you, that if I can but live and die serv-

ing and honoring the Lord Jesus, it will make no difference

to me whether I am eaten by Cannibals or by worms; and

in the Great Day my Resurrection body will rise as fair as

yours in the likeness of our risen Redeemer.19

This is the kind of in-your-face spiritual moxie that would mark

Paton’s whole life. It’s a big part of what makes reading his story

so invigorating.

Another kind of criticism for his going was that he would

be leaving a very fruitful ministry. Paton had served for ten years

as a city missionary in urban Glasgow among lower-income

people with tremendous success, and hundreds of unchurched

18See the Joshua Project, http://www.joshuaproject.net/peopctry.php?rop3=110511&rog3=NH; accessed 05-06-08.

19 Autobiography, p. 56.

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people were attending his classes and services during the week.

One of his loved professors of divinity and minister of the con-

gregation where he had served as an elder tried to persuade him

to stay in that ministry. He reported that the professor made his

case as follows:

Green Street Church was doubtless the sphere for which

God had given me peculiar qualifications, and in which He

had so largely blessed my labors; that if I left those now

attending my Classes and Meetings, they might be scattered,

and many of them would probably fall away; that I was

leaving certainty for uncertainty—work in which God had

made me greatly useful, for work in which I might fail to be

useful, and only throw away my life amongst Cannibals.20

Paton said the opposition to his going was deeply troubling:

The opposition was so strong from nearly all, and many

of them warm Christian friends, that I was sorely tempted

to question whether I was carrying out the Divine will, or

only some headstrong wish of my own. This also caused me

much anxiety, and drove me close to God in prayer.21

We will see shortly how he rose above these temptations to turn

away from his missionary calling.

Courage in the Face of Possible and Real Loss

He and his wife arrived on the island of Tanna on November 5,

1858, and Mary was pregnant. The baby was born February 12,

1859. “Our island-exile thrilled with joy! But the greatest of sor-

20Ibid., p. 55.

21Ibid., p. 56.

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rows was treading hard upon the heels of that great joy!”22 Mary

had repeated attacks of ague, fever, pneumonia, and diarrhea

with delirium for two weeks.

Then in a moment, altogether unexpectedly, she died on

March third. To crown my sorrows, and complete my lone-

liness, the dear baby-boy, whom we had named after her

father, Peter Robert Robson, was taken from me after one

week’s sickness, on the 20th of March. Let those who have

ever passed through any similar darkness as of midnight feel

for me; as for all others, it would be more than vain to try

to paint my sorrows!23

He dug the two graves with his own hands and buried them by

the house he had built.

Stunned by that dreadful loss, in entering upon this field of

labor to which the Lord had Himself so evidently led me,

my reason seemed for a time almost to give way. The ever-

merciful Lord sustained me . . . and that spot became my

sacred and much-frequented shrine, during all the following

months and years when I labored on for the salvation of the

savage Islanders amidst difficulties, dangers, and deaths. . . .

But for Jesus, and the fellowship he vouchsafed to me there,

I must have gone mad and died beside the lonely grave!24

The courage to risk the loss was remarkable. But the courage to

experience the loss and press on alone was supernatural.

I felt her loss beyond all conception or description, in that

dark land. It was very difficult to be resigned, left alone, and

in sorrowful circumstances; but feeling immovably assured

22Ibid., p. 79.

23Ibid.

24Ibid., p. 80.

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that my God and father was too wise and loving to err in

anything that He does or permits, I looked up to the Lord

for help, and struggled on in His work.25

Here we get a glimpse of the theology that we will see underneath

this man’s massive courage and toil.

I do not pretend to see through the mystery of such visita-

tions—wherein God calls away the young, the promising,

and those sorely needed for his service here; but this I do

know and feel, that, in the light of such dispensations, it

becomes us all to love and serve our blessed Lord Jesus so

that we may be ready at his call for death and eternity.26

Courage to Risk His Own Sickness with No Doctors

and No Escape

“Fever and ague had attacked me fourteen times severely.”27 In

view of his wife’s death, he never knew when any one of these

attacks would mean his own death. Imagine struggling with a life-

and-death sickness over and over with only one Christian native

friend named Abraham who had come with him to the island to

help him.

For example, as he was building a new house to get to higher,

healthier ground, he collapsed with the fever on his way up the

steep hill from the coast:

When about two-thirds up the hill I became so faint that I

concluded I was dying. Lying down on the ground, sloped

against the root of a tree to keep me from rolling to the

25Ibid., p. 85.

26Ibid.

27Ibid., p. 105.

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bottom, I took farewell of old Abraham, of my mission

work, and of everything around! In this weak state I lay,

watched over by my faithful companion, and fell into a

quiet sleep.28

He revived and was restored. But only great courage could press

on month after month, year after year, knowing that the fever that

took his wife and son lay at the door.

And it’s not as if these dangers were only during one season

at the beginning of his missionary life. Fifteen years later with

another wife and another child on another island, he records,

“During the hurricanes, from January to April, 1873, when the

Dayspring [the mission ship] was wrecked, we lost a darling child

by death, my dear wife had a protracted illness, and I was brought

very low with severe rheumatic fever . . . and was reported as

dying.”29

Courage to Face Mortal Enemies

The most common demand for courage was the almost constant

threat to his life from the hostilities of the natives. This is what

makes his Autobiography read like a thriller. In his first four years

on Tanna, when he was all alone, he moved from one savage crisis

to the next. One wonders how his mind kept from snapping, as

he never knew when his house would be surrounded with angry

natives or whether he would be ambushed along the way. How

do you survive when there is no time or place for leisure? No

unwinding? No sure refuge on earth?

28Ibid., p. 106.

29Ibid., p. 384.

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Our continuous danger caused me now oftentimes to sleep

with my clothes on, that I might start at a moment’s warn-

ing. My faithful dog Clutha would give a sharp bark and

awake me. . . . God made them fear this precious creature,

and often used her in saving our lives.30

My enemies seldom slackened their hateful designs against

my life, however calmed or baffled for the moment. . . .

A wild chief followed me around for four hours with

his loaded musket, and, though often directed towards

me, God restrained his hand. I spoke kindly to him, and

attended to my work as if he had not been there, fully

persuaded that my God had placed me there, and would

protect me till my allotted task was finished. Looking up

in unceasing prayer to our dear Lord Jesus, I left all in his

hands, and felt immortal till my work was done. Trials and

hairbreadth escapes strengthened my faith, and seemed only

to nerve me for more to follow; and they did tread swiftly

upon each other’s heels.31

One of the most remarkable things about Paton’s dealing with

danger is the gutsy forthrightness with which he spoke to his

assailants. He often rebuked them to their faces and scolded them

for their bad behavior even as they held the axe over his head.

One morning at daybreak I found my house surrounded by

armed men, and a chief intimated that they had assembled

to take my life. Seeing that I was entirely in their hands,

I knelt down and gave myself away body and soul to the

Lord Jesus, for what seemed the last time on earth. Rising,

I went out to them, and began calmly talking about their

unkind treatment of me and contrasting it with all my

conduct towards them. . . . At last some of the Chiefs, who

30Ibid., p. 178.

31Ibid., p. 117.

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had attended the Worship, rose and said, “Our conduct has

been bad; but now we will fight for you, and kill all those

who hate you.”32

[Once] when natives in large numbers were assembled at

my house, a man furiously rushed on me with his axe but

a Kaserumini Chief snatched a spade with which I had

been working, and dexterously defended me from instant

death. Life in such circumstances led me to cling very near

to the Lord Jesus; I knew not, for one brief hour, when or

how attack might be made; and yet, with my trembling

hand clasped in the hand once nailed on Calvary, and now

swaying the scepter of the universe, calmness and peace and

resignation abode in my soul.33

As his courage increased and his deliverances were multiplied, he

would make it his aim to keep warring factions separated, and he

would throw himself between them and argue for peace. “Going

amongst them every day, I did my utmost to stop hostilities, set-

ting the evils of war before them, and pleading with the leading

men to renounce it.”34 He would go to visit his enemies when

they were sick and wanted his help, never knowing what was an

ambush and what was not.

Once a native named Ian called Paton to his sickbed, and as

Paton leaned over him, he pulled a dagger and held it to Paton’s

heart.

I durst neither move nor speak, except that my heart kept

praying to the Lord to spare me, or if my time was come,

to take me home to Glory with Himself. There passed a

few moments of awful suspense. My sight went and came.

32Ibid., p. 115.

33Ibid., p. 117.

34Ibid., p. 139.

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Not a word had been spoken, except to Jesus; and then Ian

wheeled the knife around, thrust it into the sugar cane leaf.

And [he] cried to me, “Go, go quickly!” . . . I ran for my life

a weary four miles till I reached the Mission House, faint,

yet praising God for such a deliverance.35

Courage to Die?

A final kind of courage I will mention is the courage in the face of

accusations that he was a coward. After four years, the entire island

population rose against Paton, blaming him for an epidemic, and

made siege against him and his little band of Christians. There were

spectacularly close calls and a miraculous deliverance from fire by

wind and rain,36 and finally a wonderful answer to prayer as a

ship arrived just in time to take him off the island.

In response to this, and after four years of risking his life hun-

dreds of times and losing his wife and child, he recounts,

Conscious that I had, to the last inch of life, tried to do my

duty, I left all results in the hands of my only Lord, and

all criticisms to His unerring judgment. Hard things also

were occasionally spoken to my face. One dear friend, for

instance, said, “You should not have left. You should have

stood at the post of duty till you fell. It would have been

to your honor, and better for the cause of the Mission, had

you been killed at the post of duty like the Gordons and

others.37

Oh, how easy it would have been for him to respond by walking

away from the mission at a moment like that. But courage pressed

35Ibid., p. 191.

36Ibid., p. 215.

37Ibid., p. 223.

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on for another four decades of fruitful ministry on the island of

Aniwa and around the world.

And so the next question I ask of Paton’s life is, What did this

courage achieve?

The Outcome of His Courage?

We have already seen one main answer to this question—namely,

the entire island of Aniwa turned to Christ. Four years of seem-

ingly fruitless and costly labor on Tanna could have meant the

end of Paton’s missionary life. He could have remembered that

in Glasgow for ten years he had had unprecedented success as an

urban missionary. Now for four years he seemed to have accom-

plished nothing, and he lost his wife and child in the process. But

instead of going home, he turned his missionary heart to Aniwa.

And this time the story was different. “I claimed Aniwa for Jesus,

and by the grace of God, Aniwa now worships at the Savior’s

feet.”38

Awakening at Home

The courageous endurance on Tanna resulted in a story that

awakened thousands to the call of missions and strengthened the

home church. The reason Paton wrote the second volume of his

Autobiography, he says, was to record God’s “marvelous good-

ness in using my humble voice and pen, and the story of my life,

for interesting thousands and tens of thousands in the work of

Missions.”39 And the influence goes on today—even, I pray, in

this book.

38Ibid., p. 312.

39Ibid., p. 220.

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Oftentimes, while passing through the perils and defeats of

my first four years in the Mission-field on Tanna, I wondered

. . . why God permitted such things. But on looking back

now, I already clearly perceive . . . that the Lord was thereby

preparing me for doing, and providing me materials where-

with to accomplish, the best work of all my life, namely the

kindling of the heart of Australian Presbyterianism with a

living affection for these Islanders of their own Southern

Seas . . . and in being the instrument under God of sending

out Missionary after Missionary to the New Hebrides, to

claim another island and still another for Jesus. That work,

and all that may spring from it in Time and Eternity, never

could have been accomplished by me but for first the suffer-

ings and then the story of my Tanna enterprise!40

And the awakening was not just in Australia, but in Scotland

and around the world. For example, he tells us what the effect

of his home tour was on his own small Reformed Presbyterian

Church after his four years of pain and seeming fruitlessness on

Tanna. “I was . . . filled with a high passion of gratitude to be able

to proclaim, at the close of my tour . . . that of all her ordained

Ministers, one in every six was a Missionary of the Cross!”41

Indeed the effects at home were far more widespread than that,

and here is a lesson for all churches today.

Nor did the dear old Church thus cripple herself; on the

contrary, her zeal for Missions accompanied, if not caused,

unwonted prosperity at home. New waves of liberality passed

over the heart of her people. Debts that had burdened many

of the Churches and Manses were swept away. Additional

Congregations were organized. And in May, 1876, the

Reformed Presbyterian Church entered into an honorable

40Ibid., pp. 222–223.

41Ibid., p. 280.

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and independent Union with her larger, wealthier, and more

progressive sister, the Free Church of Scotland.42

In other words, the courageous perseverance of John Paton on

Tanna, in spite of apparent fruitlessness, bore fruit for the mis-

sion field and for the church at home in ways he could have never

dreamed in the midst of his dangers.

Silencing Skeptics

Another one of those good effects was to vindicate the power of

the gospel to convert the hardest people. Paton had an eye to the

sophisticated European despisers of the gospel as he wrote the

story of his life. He wanted to give evidence to skeptical modern

men that the gospel can and does transform the most unlikely

people and their societies.

So in his Autobiography he tells stories of particular converts

like Kowia, a chief on Tanna. When he was dying, he came to say

farewell to Paton.

“Farewell, Missi, I am very near death now; we will meet

again in Jesus and with Jesus!” . . . Abraham sustained him,

tottering to the place of graves; there he lay down . . . and

slept in Jesus; and there the faithful Abraham buried him

beside his wife and children. Thus died a man who had

been a cannibal chief, but by the grace of God and the love

of Jesus changed, transfigured into a character of light and

beauty. What think ye of this, ye skeptics as to the reality of

conversion? . . . I knew that day, and I know now, that there

is one soul at least from Tanna to sing the glories of Jesus

in Heaven—and, oh, the rapture when I meet him there!43

42Ibid.

43Ibid., p. 160.

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And then, of course, there was old Abraham himself. He was not

one of Paton’s converts, but he was a converted cannibal from

Aneityum and Paton’s absolutely trustworthy helper on Tanna

during all his time there. So Paton writes again as a witness to

European skeptics:

When I have read or heard the shallow objections of irreli-

gious scribblers and talkers, hinting that there was no real-

ity in conversions, and that mission effort was but waste,

oh, how my heart has yearned to plant them just one week

on Tanna, with the “natural” man all around in the person

of Cannibal and Heathen, and only the one “spiritual” man

in the person of the converted Abraham, nursing them,

feeding them, saving them “for the love of Jesus”—that I

might just learn how many hours it took to convince them

that Christ in man was a reality after all! All the skepti-

cism of Europe would hide its head in foolish shame; and

all its doubts would dissolve under one glance of the new

light that Jesus, and Jesus alone, pours from the converted

Cannibal’s eye.44

The list could go on as to what Paton’s courage achieved. But we

turn to the question, Where did this courage come from? But the

two questions overlap, because what the courage achieved was

the vindication of its source.

Where Did This Courage Come From?

The answer Paton would want us to give is that it came from

God. But he would also want us to see what precious means God

used and, if possible, apply them to ourselves and our situations.

44Ibid., p. 107.

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What was it then that God used to awaken in John Paton such

remarkable courage?

His Courage Came from His Father

The tribute Paton pays to his godly father is worth the price of his

Autobiography, even if you don’t read anything else. Maybe it’s

because I have a daughter and four sons, but I wept as I read this

section. It filled me with such longing to be a father like this.

There was a small room, the “closet” where his father would

go for prayer, as a rule, after each meal. The eleven children knew

it, and they reverenced the spot and learned something profound

about God from their father’s devotion to prayer. The impact on

John Paton was immense.

Though everything else in religion were by some unthink-

able catastrophe to be swept out of memory, were blotted

from my understanding, my soul would wander back to

those early scenes, and shut itself up once again in that

Sanctuary Closet, and, hearing still the echoes of those

cries to God, would hurl back all doubt with the victorious

appeal, “He walked with God, why may not I?”45

How much my father’s prayers at this time impressed me

I can never explain, nor could any stranger understand.

When, on his knees and all of us kneeling around him in

Family Worship, he poured out his whole soul with tears for

the conversion of the Heathen world to the service of Jesus,

and for every personal and domestic need, we all felt as if in

the presence of the living Savior, and learned to know and

love him as our Divine friend.46

45Ibid., p. 8.

46Ibid., p. 21.

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One scene best captures the depth of love between John and his

father and the power of the impact on John’s life of uncompro-

mising courage and purity. The time came for the young Paton

to leave home and go to Glasgow to attend divinity school and

become a city missionary in his early twenties. From his home-

town of Torthorwald to the train station at Kilmarnock was a

forty-mile walk. Forty years later Paton wrote:

My dear father walked with me the first six miles of the

way. His counsels and tears and heavenly conversation on

that parting journey are fresh in my heart as if it had been

but yesterday; and tears are on my cheeks as freely now as

then, whenever memory steals me away to the scene. For the

last half mile or so we walked on together in almost unbro-

ken silence—my father, as was often his custom, carrying

hat in hand, while his long flowing yellow hair (then yellow,

but in later years white as snow) streamed like a girl’s down

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