And he promised her with an oath, “Whatever you ask I will give you, up to half my kingdom.” She went out and said to her mother, “What shall I ask for?” “The head of John the Baptist,” she answered. At once the girl hurried in to the king with the request: “I want you to give me right now the head of John the Baptist on a platter.”
Mark 6:23-25
I have always found it difficult to read the story of John the Baptist's death in Scripture. It seemed to me that so great a man deserved a better death than this. To be murdered so contemptibly not because he had done anything wrong but because of the wounded pride of a powerful woman and because of the pretentious pride of a king who wasn't really a king at all (Herod Antipas was actually a tetrarch not a king) felt like too much to me. I wondered why. Why did God allow His faithful a servant to meet such a disgraceful end?
But this week, as I read this story again, God reminded me of a passage from Romans 8:35-37.
Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall trouble or hardship or persecution or famine or nakedness or danger or sword? As it is written: “For your sake we face death all day long; we are considered as sheep to be slaughtered.” No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us.
This passage says that God has left all believers like sheep to be slaughtered. We need to know that. We need to accept the fact that God allowed John the Baptist to be killed this way. He allowed His Son to be publicly disgraced and killed. And He has allowed many other faithful servants to seal their testimony with their blood as well. We need to understand that God's children are often left at the mercy of this world. There is no sugar-coating that.
BUT...God turns our suffering and even our death into victory! The passage says that "in all these things we are more than conquerors!" When we suffer or even die for the truth of God's Word or the gospel of His Son, we show the world and the Enemy who rules over it that we will not be moved. There is a certain type of victory for the Christian in staying true to the end and refusing to give way to the Enemy.
So, what I learned was that while John's death was a tragedy, it was also a victory. In a way it was the most fitting end to John's powerful life on earth. He was put to death for speaking the truth of God's Word. He told Herod that it was against God's law for him to marry his brother's ex-wife (Mark 6:18-19). He died because he wouldn't back down from the truth. What could be a more fitting end for John the Baptist than that?
The Enemy, and the world that follows him, still hate truth just as much today as they did then. What price are you willing to pay to speak the truth in the face of opposition? Will you back down, or will you stand your ground to the end?
For further reading...
- Mark 6:14-29- Read the whole story.
- Romans 8:31-39- A little more context.
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