Acts 1: Witnessing unto death

In the first chapter of the Acts of the Apostles, Luke's history of the early church, we see the apostles preparing for the coming of the Holy Spirit and the start of their ministry.

In the wake of Judas' betrayal of Jesus and subsequent suicide, Peter cites Psalm 109, which says, "Let another take his office" (1:20). He continues:

"So one of the men who have accompanied us during all the time that the Lord Jesus went in and out among us, beginning from the baptism of John until the day when he was taken up from us -- one of these men must become with us a witness to his resurrection." (1:21-22)

Lots are cast and Matthias is enrolled with the other eleven apostles, restoring the symbolic number of 12. He joins Peter and John and James and Andrew, Philip and Thomas, Bartholomew and Matthew, James the son of Alphaeus and Simon the Zealot and Judas the son of James in fulfilling the commission Jesus gave before his ascension: "you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the end of the earth" (1:8).

This is a weighty charge. The Greek word translated "witness" is the same word from which we get the English "martyr."

And according to tradition, nearly all the apostles bore faithful witness to Christ even unto their grisly deaths, whether they were beheaded or crucified or flayed or beaten to death. Only John got off easy -- he was just thrown in boiling oil and then exiled to an island.

(Caravaggio, "Crucifixion of Peter," 1600-1601)