Many of us feel like large portions of our society are hostile to Christians and not willing to respect our beliefs. Christians are vilified in some media just for expressing moral standards. We are considered intolerant towards people, and irrelevant to society. We are misrepresented in order to make it easier to reject us.
The good news is that these are all attitudes that the citizens of the Roman Empire held towards Christians for over 250 years. But Christianity still steadily grew and by the end of the 4th century it was the dominant religion in the Empire.
Christians in the Roman Empire were considered antisocial because they did not join in the immoral pagan worship or in the violent and bloody spectacles that were popular at the time. Christians were considered atheists because they would not worship any of the Roman gods or worship the Emperor as a god. They were misrepresented as practicing rituals of sacrificing and eating infants! In certain times and places they would lose their jobs, have their possessions confiscated, or just simply be killed. Romans governors sometimes killed Christians bishops in order to demoralize the Christians without having to kill a whole lot of them.
And yet Christianity grew. Why did it grow? Because of the lives of the Christians. Truthful people who watched them had to admit that they were virtuous. They did not seek revenge but suffered with grace. They would not compromise in order to protect themselves. They demonstrated love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, and self-control. They loved each other dearly.
“Truthful people who watched them had to admit that they were virtuous.”
By their example they eventually won over much of the population. And yet, all along they were outcasts from society, rejected as hostile to the Roman way of life, labeled as antisocial and mislabeled as murderers.
That is why it is okay for Christians to be viewed as intolerant, non inclusive, and irrelevant: that is normal when Christians are being Christlike! We cannot avoid this nor should we think that we can. Instead, we should be thankful that we are viewed as different than the rest of the population. That is the path that led to widespread acceptance of Christianity in the Roman Empire. And as far as I can tell the same dynamic has been repeated several times in history.
And that is how scripture expects Christians to draw people to Jesus. He emphasizes this in Matthew 5 when he says “you are the salt of the earth” (v. 13), “you are the light of the world” (v.14), and “let your good deeds shine out for all to see, so that everyone will praise your heavenly Father” (v. 16). John 13:35 states “Your love for one another will prove to the world that you are my disciples.” I Pet. 3:1 teaches wives “even if some do not obey the word, they may be won without a word by the conduct of their wives.”
There is no passage in the New Testament that instructs all Christians to do evangelism, but we have just seen several passages about Christians being examples or lights for Christ. Lights are attractive and our light attracts people to Jesus. Our light is all the fruits of the Spirit that God works in our lives. So our responsibility is to be good lights; the rest is up to God and the hearts of the lost.
Part 2 of this post can be found here.
