Revelation 2:10 NKJV

Do not fear any of those things which you are about to suffer. Indeed, the devil is about to throw some of you into prison, that you may be tested, and you will have tribulation ten days. Be faithful until death, and I will give you the crown of life.

Believers, young and old, were confronted with the choice of denying Christ and living or affirming Christ and dying. To be faithful under those conditions was to die.Sometimes the choice was not as clear-cut: Simply acknowledge Caesar and keep your religion, and we won’t bother you so long as you show your patriotism in your submission to the authorities. To be faithful in those days was to refuse to bow to Caesar as lord, lest it should reflect on the conviction Christ alone is Lord.This was treason in the eyes of the law, and the faithful were faithful unto death.

Those days and issues may appear far removed from our contemporary situations, but the appearance is deceptive. Not many years ago Korean believers laid their commitments on the line and their blood in the sand. Ugandan believers took a stand against anything that might compromise their position. Central American countries in the ferment of revolution have lost many of their sons and daughters out of solid, unflinching commitment, and Ethiopian Christians in great numbers have refused  to bow to Marxist demands that contravene Christian conviction. Their sufferings have shown faithfulness in its most glowing colors. Living, as many of us do, in less hostile and more amenable circumstances, faithfulness unto death may seem an extreme possibility, but faithfulness unto life faces us all in a dozen choices.

Doctrinal purity was another concern of the early believers, and to them faithfulness meant a tenacious treasuring of the truth.

3 John 3-4 NKJV

For I rejoiced greatly when brethren came and testified of the truth that is in you, just as you walk in the truth. I have no greater joy than to hear that my children walk in truth.

Twenty centuries after Christ we have become accustomed to the broad sweep of Christian theology, modern criticisms, and attempted revisions of it and what we regard as the fundamentals of the faith. But in the formative years of the church, many issues concerning the nature and diety of Christ, the means of grace, and Christian ethics were being fiercely debated. People from a Jewish background clearly struggled with the concept of a suffering Messiah instead of a charismatic, popular hero-deliverer. Others from a Greek background, which stressed the evilness of matter, were appalled at the suggestion that God should assume bodily form. Numerous theological differences arose. Judaism on the one hand was making powerful attacks on the infant church, while Gnosticism attacked on a different, but no less powerful, front. And in the middle stood believers committed to the truth delivered to them through the apostles. These men were not intimidated by their opponents and waged serious war against every threat to their gospel. Paul showed the strength of their feelings when he told the Galatians: “As we have already said, so now I say again: If anybody is preaching to you a gospel other than what you accepted, let him be eternally condemned!” (Galatians 1:9 NIV)

The apostles were playing hardball when it came to their proclamation and defense of the truth, and they expected the believers to be able to recognize truth from error and embrace the one and shun the other. To them this was the essence of faithfulness.

 ~just a note: for ease of writing out this excerpt I c&p’d NKJV scriptures but the author used the NIV.