For one thing, the early church was EXCLUSIVE. It meant some thing, everything, to be a Chris tian. It meant a new birth, deny ing self, taking up one’s cross and following Jesus Christ without reservation. Superficial souls were afraid to join the church (Acts 5 :13). The bars were not lowered and the price of discipleship marked down to fill the member ship with every Tom, Dick and Harry who was looking for a status symbol. Not many rich, wise, mighty and noble were called anyway and the early Christians did not court the upper brackets of society to add prestige. Today we major on inclusivism, taking in members right and left with or without a genuine experience of saving faith. Smitten with the American disease of statisticitis, we pad our rolls with thousands o f names that mean nothing. This began after Constantine opened the doors of the church to every body and the pagans flocked in. The world joined the church and Christianity became a popular, prosperous, “ progressive” state religion, a form of godliness with out power. We have never recov ered from that disaster. The church ceased transforming the world and the world dominated the church. Persecution gave way to popularity and that sad state still prevails. Today ninety-six percent of all Americans over fourteen claim some sort o f church connection. The governor of a southern state recently said that sixty-five per cent of the inmates o f the state prison were members o f well-re spected denom ina tions . What started out as a sheepfold has become a menagerie. Everybody belongs to church and the greatest mission field is within her mem bership. The early church was not hos pitable to the gods o f that age. All over the Roman Empire stood temples and images of hundreds- o f different gods. One emperor wanted to put a statue of Christ in the Pantheon among all the
WHY THE EARLY CHURCH WAS persecuted persecution as Christians9 there must be something wrong with our living .
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W h y w a s the early church per secuted? I speak now not of the church of the Acts of the Apostles alone but of the first three centuries of Christianity in the Roman Empire before 313 A.D. when the Edict of Constan tine put the church under the sanction and protection of the state, that sad day when the church started down another road to her tragic undoing. Many good things could be said of the Roman Empire. It estab lished law and order, sought jus tice and the well-being of its citi zens. Why then did it persecute a people as desirable, as peaceful and as law-abiding as the Chris tians? Why did Rome not respect and take pride in the integrity and high moral character of the very best men and women within her borders? Why, instead of that, did they imprison and kill the Chris tians as though they were indeed
the scum of the earth, and crimi nals and the dregs o f society? When we discover what it was about the early church that brought on persecution, we make another discovery. We find that the church today seeks to develop the very opposite of all the char acteristics of the first Christians that got them into trouble. Now of course we are not to court per secution and seek martyrdom but our Lord promised adversity and tribulation to all who would follow Him and pronounced a blessing on all who suffer for His Name (Matt. 5:10,11; John 15:20) and Paul writes that all who will live godly in Christ Jesus shall suffer persecution (II Tim. 3:12). He did not say “ some” or “many” or “most” but “ all,” so we may con clude that if we are not suffering persecution as Christians, there must be something wrong with our living.
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