Conclusion

Looking unto Jesus the author and finisher of our faith; who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is set down at the right hand of the throne of God. HEBREWS 12:2

Eleven chapters may seem a great deal to draw from seven short letters, and in one sense they are. Ignatius did not set out to teach a system. He wrote in haste, to particular churches, about particular dangers, with the soldiers waiting. Yet out of those hurried pages a whole vision of the Christian life emerges, and it holds together around one centre.

That centre is the reality of Jesus Christ. He was truly born of Mary, truly crucified under Pontius Pilate, truly raised in the flesh. Everything Ignatius taught follows from this. Because Christ’s flesh is real, the bread of His table is the medicine of immortality, and those who deny His flesh keep away from it. Because Christ is one, His people must be one, gathered in each city around one table and one bishop, and throughout the world around Christ Himself, where the universal church is found. Because Christ is the charter of the faith, no old law or new teaching can be added to Him. Because the Word came out of the silence of God, His people must be before they speak. Because Christ was meek, gentleness is power. Because He died for all, we pray for all. Because He truly rose, a man can walk to the beasts calling it the beginning of life. And through it all, faith is the beginning and love is the end.

What must be read with care

This book has tried to be honest about the places where Ignatius needs careful reading, and they should be named once more.

His longing for martyrdom, especially in the letter to Rome, is intense and at times disturbing. It was the longing of a man already condemned, not a pattern for seeking death, and the church soon said so plainly. What we should take from him is readiness, not eagerness.

His teaching on the bishop is the strongest in the early church, and it has often been read as if he were describing the bishops of a much later age. He was speaking of the pastor of a city church, in a time of crisis, and his words should be neither dismissed nor stretched.

His language against those who wanted to keep Jewish practices is sharp, and one of his sentences is among the bluntest in early Christian writing. His quarrel was with a party inside the church, but his tone must not be repeated, and later centuries’ contempt for the Jewish people must be repented of, not excused.

And like every Christian writer, he spoke within the limits of his own world — on slavery, for instance — and does not always say the whole truth.

To the law and to the testimony: if they speak not according to this word, it is because there is no light in them. ISAIAH 8:20

None of this is said to diminish him. Ignatius himself would not have wanted to be read uncritically. He told the Ephesians he was not yet perfected, and he told the Trallians that praise was a whip to him.

What to carry away

If you carry nothing else from this book, carry three things.

First, carry his insistence on the reality of Christ. The gospel is not an idea or a feeling but news of what happened: a birth in a real family, a death under a named governor, a body raised from a real tomb. Hold to the facts, and let everything else rest on them.

That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked upon, and our hands have handled, of the Word of life. 1 JOHN 1:1

Second, carry his love for the whole church. He wrote to churches he had never seen, prayed for them, and asked them to pray for his. He could not bear division. In a church divided far beyond anything he could have imagined, his longing for unity around the one Christ is still a rebuke and a call.

Third, carry his refusal to be a Christian in name only. “It is better to keep silence and to be, than to talk and not to be.” He wanted to be found a Christian, not only called one, and he was.

A last word about the man

We do not know how Ignatius died, except that he died in Rome, as he had been sentenced, for the name of Christ. We do not know what he said at the end, or who stood by him. We have only what he wrote on the way, and what his friend Polycarp did afterwards: he gathered the letters, copied them, and sent them on to the church at Philippi, which had asked for them. That is how they came to us.

It is a fitting end to the story. Ignatius spent his last weeks strengthening churches, and a friend made sure his words went on strengthening them after he was gone. Nineteen centuries later they are still doing so. The man who called himself the God-bearer carried Christ across an empire, and his letters carry Him still.

Be thou faithful unto death, and I will give thee a crown of life. REVELATION 2:10

FOR REFLECTION AND ACTION

1. Return to the chapter of this book that unsettled you most, not the one you enjoyed most, and work through its application points again.

2. Read all seven of Ignatius’s letters this month, one a day for a week.

3. Write down one truth about Christ you are resolved never to let go of, and one area where you are resolved to be a Christian in deed and not only in name.

4. Choose one practice from this book — prayer for the world, gentleness towards opponents, regular coming to the Lord’s table, honour for your leaders — and keep it faithfully for a month.

5. Read Polycarp’s own short letter to the Philippians, and see the friendship that preserved Ignatius’s letters for us.

A PRAYER

Lord Jesus Christ, You were truly born, You truly died and You truly rose, and You are with Your church to the end.

Thank You for Your servant Ignatius, who carried You across the world and held to You to the last, and for the friends who kept his words.

Forgive us where we follow him too far, and keep us where he followed You: in faith and love, in unity and gentleness, in prayer for all.

Make us Christians in deed and not in name only, and bring us at last, with him and all Your saints, to the Father. Amen.