Christians in Rome: "Proclaiming the Gospel Without Fear"

     When the apostle Paul arrived in Rome in the spring of 60AD, after his shipwreck and his winter on Malta, he had already been in communication with the believers through his letter (“Romans”, dated 56AD). When Paul wrote later on, blessing the Roman believers for “proclaiming the gospel without fear” (Phil.1:14, from Rome in 61AD), even he couldn’t foresee the torment that was coming. After two years under house arrest, he was released in 62AD. He continued his missionary work away from Rome but in July, 64AD a tragic fire destroyed   two-thirds of Rome (with a population at that time of two million) and Nero blamed the Christians for causing it.

     When my wife and I were in Rome in 2012, we toured St. Peter’s. One of the most poignant stories our young Italian guide told us was of Nero’s “garden parties” not far from where we stood. She described how he “lit his garden parties with the burning carcasses of Christian human torches.”  Christians were tied to poles around his garden, covered in tar and pitch, and set alight! She told the story so well that I could feel the shock of it. Were some of them the believers whom Paul commended in his letter? We know Priscilla and Aquila escaped because Paul mentioned them in his second letter to Timothy at Ephesus in about 66/67AD. But was Phoebe in the group? How about Andronicus and Junia? Tryphena and Tryphosa and Persis? Were Nereus and his sister made into human torches? (See Romans 16).

     The letter to the Romans is full of gospel verses like 3:23, 6:23, 10:9, but after this brutality probably the key quotation is 8:18—“I consider that our present sufferings are not worth comparing with the glory that will be revealed in us.” Paul, himself, came to his earthly end on the beheading block of Nero in Rome in 67/68AD.

     Maybe some of these very names are people whom the apostle John saw under the altar, in Revelation 6:9-11:— “the souls of those who had been slain because of the word of God and the testimony they had maintained.” Terrible things have been done!

     Let us, therefore, pray for Christians around the world who face martyrdom even today. May they, like Paul, even though writing in his final days from the Mamertine dungeon in Rome still say, “Fight the good fight, finish the race, and keep the faith!” (2 Tim.4:7).

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