Early Church Ethics

Author: John Stonestreet and Timothy D. Padgett 

Critics often argue that much of what Christians think of as biblical truth and morality are inventions of late twentieth century American conservatism. So, Christian sexual ethics are products of 1990s “purity culture.” Claims about the exclusivity of Christ are remnants of Western ideological imperialism. And the pro-life movement was invented by Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson to get Ronald Reagan in office. 

However, the first Christians were known and often attacked for many of the same practices that Christians are today, just without the lions. In fact, just as the creeds of the Early Church clarified what Christians must believe, there are other writings from that time that clarify how Christians should live.  

For example, Justin Martyr’s beautiful description of the Christian worship service would fit what most of us still experience each Sunday: 

On the day called Sunday, all who live in cities or in the country gather together to one place, and the memoirs of the apostles or the writings of the prophets are read, as long as time permits; then when the reader has ceased, the president verbally  instructs, and exhorts to the imitation of these good things. Then we all rise together and pray, and, as we before said, when our prayer is ended, bread and wine and water are brought, and the president in like manner offers prayers and thanksgivings, according to his ability, and the people assent, saying Amen. 

The Epistle to Diognetus, written by a Christian to a non-believing friend in the second or third century, described the Christian’s way of life: 

[Christians] dwell in their own countries, but simply as sojourners. As citizens,  they share in all things with others, and yet endure all things as if foreigners.  Every foreign land is to them as their native country, and every land of their  birth as a land of strangers. They marry, as do all [others]; they beget children;  but they do not destroy their offspring. They have a common table, but not a  common bed. 

Probably the clearest example is The Didache, a second-century summary of Christian moral teaching. It commanded the church, among other things, to be pro-life: “you shall not murder a child by abortion nor kill that which is born.”  

A key reason for the explosive growth of the Early Church is that Christians lived by this ethical command. In the ancient Greco-Roman world, abortion and the killing of infants through a practice called “exposure” was considered legally and socially acceptable. Most of the babies left to die were little girls. 

In his book, The Rise of Christianity, Rodney Stark described how Christians would search out and save little girls who were left to die by their pagan families. After a few decades of this life and death dynamic, there was a shortage of women for pagan young men to marry. So many ended up going to church to find wives. Also, because Christian women did not have abortions at the same rates as pagan women, a particularly brutal practice at the time, they also had higher fertility rates.  

In the end, the explosive growth of Christianity across the empire was all about math. God used the obedience of early Christians to change the world. Of course, if we were to take a time machine back to speak to some of these baby rescuers, and ask if they realized how significant their obedience was going to be in the history of mankind, they’d be puzzled. “I don’t know anything about that,” they’d say. “I’m just hoping to help her.”  

This is why the Christian life could never be reduced to random acts of kindness. God orchestrates history, and among the things He uses is the obedience of His people. Critics will tell us to “get with the times,” but it was precisely by being counter-cultural that Christianity rocked the Roman Empire. Ordinary people living out extraordinary faith are what transformed the world.