"The Price of Loyalty"

The early Christians were strange people—at least to the eyes of their heathen neighbors. They refused to go to pagan hospitals because the priests walked through the rooms among the sick people chanting to some heathen god. They refused to go to gladiatorial combats to see men kill each other or to the theater to watch the cruel, coarse plays.

But strangest of all was their zeal for telling others about Jesus. Missionaries walked long distances to tell people in faraway towns and villages that Jesus died for their sins. Men preached powerful sermons in market places and synagogues and wrote appealing letters to faraway friends. In every city where Christians lived, they told their neighbors about Jesus, the Son of God and the Savior of the world.

Soon people all over the world knew the good news, although many of them did not accept it.

Some who thought their ways were strange became their enemies. They persecuted the Christians for obeying Christ. They put some in prison; some they tied to stakes and burned to death; others they threw to the lions. In spite of this persecution, more and more people learned to love Jesus until there were Christians in Jerusalem and Rome, Spain and Africa.

The story of the Savior found its way to the little country of Numidia in Africa, where a young man named Maxi­milian heard it and became a Christian. He, too, read what Jesus said about loving and hating, doing good and forgiving.

“If I love God,” thought Maximilian, “then I will do what He says.”

In A.D. 295, when Maximilian was twenty-one, the recruiting officer in Numidia came looking for strong young men to fill in the ranks of the Roman army. He needed men who would become expert swordsmen and javelin throwers. Maximilian was one of those chosen to drill and train and serve in the Roman army for twenty years.

The young men were taken before the proconsul of Africa to be examined. Maximilian stood before the big official, Dion, and bravely told him he could not serve in the army nor wear a soldier’s badge. “I cannot do it because I am a Christian,” he explained.

Dion tried again and again to persuade him to serve, but Maximilian always replied, “I serve Christ.”

At last Dion said, “But in the armies of our lords who rule Rome there are Christian soldiers and they serve.”

“They know what is fitting for them; but I know what Christ wants me to do,” Maximilian said firmly.

When the proconsul saw that nothing could be done to sway Maximilian, he stopped trying to persuade him. Maximilian was condemned to die. At the age of twenty-one they cut off his head for refusing to serve in the Roman army. In Carthage they buried him.

The officers of the Roman army did not know that Maximilian was already serving One great leader, Jesus Christ, and that loyalty to Jesus was worth more than his own life.

“If you love Me, you will keep My commandments.”

–John 14:15

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