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Stories About Faithfulness: Polycarp's 86 Years of Serving Christ

Stories About Faithfulness: Polycarp's 86 Years of Serving Christ

The best stories about faithfulness are rarely about one dramatic moment. They are about a long obedience that finally gets tested, and holds. Few stories show that better than the death of Polycarp, the elderly bishop of Smyrna, who was given every chance to save his life with a few words and refused because he had spent 86 years finding Christ faithful to him. Jesus promised, "Be faithful, even to the point of death, and I will give you life as your victor's crown" (Revelation 2:10), and that promise was written to the very church Polycarp would later lead.

This post retells Polycarp's martyrdom in full in our own words, followed by a takeaway you can use for preaching, teaching or quiet reflection.

Story in this post:

  1. "Eighty-Six Years Have I Served Him": Polycarp's Martyrdom
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"Eighty-Six Years Have I Served Him": Polycarp's Martyrdom

An elderly bishop in a plain robe standing calmly before a Roman official in an ancient stadium at dusk

Sometime in the middle of the second century, traditionally dated to around AD 155 or 156, an old man of 86 was brought before a Roman official in the city of Smyrna and ordered to renounce his atheism.

By our standards he was no atheist at all. He was Polycarp, the devout Christian bishop of Smyrna, a man said to have learned the faith from people who had known the apostles. But to the Romans he was an atheist, plain and simple, because he refused to worship the emperor as a god alongside the other gods of Rome. In their eyes, a man who would not honour the gods of the city was a danger to it.

Polycarp knew exactly what a refusal would cost him. Denying the emperor's divinity meant a painful death, either thrown to a wild animal in the arena or burned alive on a pyre. The crowd in the stadium was already shouting for blood.

So the official tried to give the old man a way out. Three times Polycarp was questioned. Three times he was invited to renounce his "atheism." And three times he refused to say a word against Christ.

The official pressed him one last time. "Swear," he urged, "and I will release you. Curse Christ."

Polycarp's answer has travelled down the centuries: "Eighty-six years have I served him, and he has done me no wrong. How then can I blaspheme my King who saved me?"

He was not spared. A pyre was built, and the old bishop was put to death. The ancient account of his death, the Martyrdom of Polycarp, even records that the flames seemed to curve around him like a sail filled with wind, until an executioner was ordered to finish him with a blade. Whatever you make of those details, the heart of the story is not in doubt. An old man, offered his life in exchange for a single sentence, chose to stay faithful to the One who had stayed faithful to him.

His words still echo down to us across nearly nineteen hundred years: "Eighty-six years have I served him, and he has done me no wrong. How then can I blaspheme my King who saved me?"

Takeaway: Polycarp's courage did not appear out of nowhere in the stadium. It was the fruit of 86 ordinary years in which he had tested God's faithfulness and found it true. That is how faithfulness usually works: it is built in small daily choices long before it is ever tested in a crisis. Scripture puts it simply: "If we are faithless, he remains faithful, for he cannot disown himself" (2 Timothy 2:13). Polycarp's loyalty was a response to a loyalty he had already received. What would your own record of God's faithfulness say if someone asked you to give it up?

Source: based on a text from J. B. Lightfoot, The Apostolic Fathers, cited in A New Eusebius: Documents Illustrating the History of the Church to AD 337.

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Final thoughts

We tend to think of faithfulness as a quiet, almost boring virtue. Polycarp shows you it is anything but. Faithfulness is what keeps you standing when everything around you demands that you bend. And notice what fed it: not a strong personality or a love of danger, but a long memory of God's goodness. "He has done me no wrong" is the testimony of a man who had been paying attention for a lifetime.

If you want to think further about what it means to long for God above everything else, Sopranu's reflection on C. S. Lewis's The Weight of Glory is a good companion read. Which part of your own story shows you that God has done you no wrong?

More stories you may like:

This story is retold in our own words for teaching and reflection. The source is credited under the story.

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