HOW DOES ONE BE “IN THE WORLD BUT NOT OF THE WORLD”?

In 1565, a group of slightly over 200 French Huguenots who were attempting to colonize at Fort Caroline (near present-day Jacksonville), fled south after the Spanish located at St. Augustine destroyed the fort. They shipwrecked and were stranded near the inlet where the Matanzas River meets the Atlantic. Pedro Menéndez de Avilés captured the survivors, marching them north towards the fort at St. Augustine, Upon coming to a place where they had to cross the river, Menéndez gave the Huguenots the option of converting to Catholicism or die. All but a handful opted for death. The Spanish slit their throats and the river ran red with their blood, flowing north past St. Augustine. The site of these executions became known as “Las Matanzas” (“The Slaughters”), and the river and Matanzas Inlet have borne that name ever since.

If anyone says, “I love God,” and hates his brother, he is a liar; for he who does not love his brother whom he has seen cannot love God whom he has not seen. And this commandment we have from him: whoever loves God must also love his brother. 1 John 4:20-21

But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his own possession, that you may proclaim the excellencies of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light. Once you were not a people, but now you are God's people; once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy. 1 Peter 2:9-10

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In the first centuries of the church, long before Constantine aligned Christianity with the state, believers understood themselves as sojourners, i.e. resident aliens—present within the Roman world but belonging to another kingdom. The Apostle Peter put it bluntly when he called Christians “sojourners (i.e. immigrants) and exiles” (paroikoi kai parepidēmoi) who must “abstain from the passions of the flesh, which wage war against the soul” (1 Peter 2:11). This identity as foreigners meant that while they lived in the empire, their true citizenship was elsewhere. Paul expressed this clearly: “Our citizenship is in heaven, and it is from there that we are expecting a Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ” (Philippians 3:20).

Because their loyalty was first and foremost to Christ as Lord, early Christians could not pledge allegiance to Caesar. To say “Jesus is Lord” (Romans 10:9; 1 Corinthians 12:3) was to refuse the imperial creed “Caesar is Lord.” This refusal was not mere wordplay; it placed believers at odds with Roman expectations of emperor worship and civic loyalty. As Tertullian would later write, Christians prayed for the emperor but did not sacrifice to him, because worship belonged to God alone (cf. Exodus 20:3; Acts 5:29).

This loyalty to Christ’s peaceable kingdom also shaped Christian attitudes toward violence. Jesus’ words in the Sermon on the Mount - “Do not resist an evildoer… if anyone strikes you on the right cheek, turn the other also” (Matthew 5:39), and “Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you” (Matthew 5:44) - were taken literally as the Way of the Lord (pattern of discipleship). Many early Christian writers, echoing these texts, taught that followers of Christ could not shed blood, whether in personal quarrels or in the service of the empire. Origen argued that Christians supported the empire not with swords but with prayers, in obedience to Paul’s call to intercede for rulers (1 Timothy 2:1–2). Lactantius declared unequivocally: “For when God forbids killing, He not only prohibits violence in general, but He warns us against the commission of a crime, even when it is sanctioned by public authority” (Divine Institutes 6.20).

This stance also affected their view of political office and public service. Roman magistrates oversaw trials, executions, and sacrifices—activities Christians believed contradicted the command, “You shall not kill” (Exodus 20:13) and “Flee from idolatry” (1 Corinthians 10:14). Oath-taking (like our pledge of allegiance), too, was widely rejected, in keeping with Jesus’ teaching, “Do not swear at all… Let your word be ‘Yes, Yes’ or ‘No, No’; anything more than this comes from the evil one” (Matthew 5:34–37). To bind oneself by oath to Caesar or to pagan gods was seen as a compromise of Christian integrity.

The result of these convictions was that the early church functioned as a counter-society. They formed communities where wealth was shared (Acts 2:44–45), where divisions of ethnicity and class were overcome in baptism (Galatians 3:28), and where allegiance to the Way of Christ redefined family and loyalty (Mark 3:33–35). Their gatherings were not secretive merely out of fear but also because they embodied a new order that stood in stark contrast to the hierarchies and coercion of Rome.

Thus, the ethic of the ante-Nicene church could be summed up in Jesus’ own words: “They are not of the world, just as I am not of the world” (John 17:16). The church existed within the empire but did not belong to it. Its members prayed for rulers but refused to kill for them, lived under Roman law but would not sacrifice to Roman gods, and honored authority but confessed a higher loyalty. In short, they saw themselves as immigrants whose lives bore witness to a peaceable kingdom not built by coercion or violence, but by the self-giving love of Christ.