"Sacred Roots: Practical Distinctives of the Early Church" by David Anderson

The one may be overpowered by another, two can withstand him, and a threefold cord is not quickly broken.

This is Strength to Strength, and a special welcome to all here on the call here this morning. It's always a blessing to see the ones that show up here faithfully and some of the new ones here. Special welcome, and also a welcome to our listeners as well.

The name of Strength to Strength is strategic, and those of you who've been listening to us for a long time know what it means. But just this week, I had the privilege of telling somebody that, well, it actually comes from the Bible, and I'm just going to read those several verses here this morning out of Psalm 84. Psalm 84, verse 5: "Happy are the people whose strength is in you, whose hearts are set on pilgrimage.

As they pass through the valley of Bekah, they make it a source of spring water; even the autumn rain will cover it with blessings. They go from strength to strength; each appears before God in Zion." And this whole psalm is a heart cry, a longing to be in God's house, a longing to be with our Heavenly Father, and a longing for His blessing. And God hears.

He hears our cry. He hears our prayer. He is drawn to those who have that sense of weakness. And like my father always says, he's attracted to weakness. And then He empowers those who have that humility to recognize our weakness. And so our prayer here is that through this work of this ministry, that myself and each one of you could press on, could grow in our faithfulness to Jesus and His kingdom. And so God bless you for getting up at 6 a.m. in the morning, or there's even some that are probably on here earlier than that as you're west of this. So God bless you for that. So this morning, we're excited to do talk number eight of our sacred roots.

And it's been just such a blessing to see this series developing. This whole idea was kind of kicked off a year ago here, and of like, what could we do to develop a series that really looks at the history of the church and draws from that, not just so we can grow on our historical knowledge, which is important, but that we can be faithful, that we can use that to inflame our imagination and inspire us to be faithful ambassadors in our day today. And so Brother David Anderson, who's going to be sharing here shortly, we pulled him in along with Steven Russell from Faith Builders, and we began to have some early morning calls and just kind of brainstorm and get to know each other.

And through that process and prayer, and it's still an ongoing process developing this series. And so this ongoing series called Sacred Roots, Rediscovering the Ancient Faith, is a review of church history, starting with its formative roots among the apostles, a review of the early church, and extending to the monastic period, the Radical Reformation, or the Anabaptists, which we'll get there after a while. All of us know that this is the 500th year anniversary of the Anabaptist movement. We're looking forward to getting to that point as well. And then, of course, beyond. So we want to, we'll come on up through history and then really think about how do we, in light of all that we've learned, how do we apply this to our day today?

And you know, there's, there's, I'm finding out through this series and just interaction with other people, there's people who just are concerned about, maybe are just not interested in learning from particularly the early church. Now, I really, that burdens me. A.W. Tozer said this. He said, "Beware of any man who claims to be wiser than the apostles or holier than the martyrs of the early church.

The best way to deal with him is to rise and leave his presence. You cannot help him, and surely he cannot help you." Wow. A.W. Tozer really stepping on toes there. So at Strength to Strength, we really are excited to be looking at the history of the church, particularly the early church, because we believe that we can, these men are commentary of the faith once for all delivered to the saints. And there's so much we can learn here.

And so we are really committed to this exercise of learning from them. And David, you've studied this a lot, Steven Russell and others. And thank you for being willing to come on here at 6 a.m. on a Saturday morning and share what you've learned. So we'll turn to your talk here. The description for your talk is the early church turned the world upside down, Acts 17:6, through their lives, teaching a witness. This talk explores the practical distinctives of the early church from the New Testament era to the fourth century, with a special focus on the nature of the church meeting, attitudes towards wealth, practical holiness, and involvement in the world.

And so let's just bow our heads and pray before we turn it over to you. Let's pray. Father, we come to you this morning in the name of Jesus. Father, we thank you that we have this privilege of living in this new covenant where through the holy scripture, we can see the life, the teachings, and the death and resurrection of your Son. And we have this now full-color picture of who you are through your Son, Jesus.

And so this morning, we come boldly to your throne in light of this amazing reality that Jesus was your Son. He was the Son of God, that he died and that he rose again, and that he was a perfect lamb, and that through his shed blood, we can have the remission, redemption of our lives, the cleansing of our sin, and be coming to your presence as your sons and become priests of yours. And so, Father, I pray, Lord, that through our time this morning here in this talk, looking at the early church and its practical distinctives, that we could be challenged, convicted to be more faithful ambassadors today for you. And so bless Brother David in a special way.

And we ask this in Jesus' name. Amen.

All right. Well, God bless you, David. It's all yours. Okay. So yeah, I am really excited to give this talk the practical distinctives of the early church for a variety of reasons, but especially in my testimony, and I know in many others, the early church played a really big role when myself, some others were looking for something different than we were familiar with. We had this spiritual longing and trying to figure out, you know, getting back to our sacred roots. What does living out the Christian faith look like?

And in the description, I talked about these are the people that turned the world upside down. This is a quote from Acts 17:6. And it's just kind of, you know, a quote in the middle of all of this, you know, exciting narrative that's going on. But it's a really important quote because it's really true that they turned the entire world upside down.

The whole world that the Romans were used to and the way that they did things, the way that they thought we should be human and relate to others, they had this whole system in place. And the early Christians really just turned that on its head.

And so this morning, I want to just look at, there's a lot of exciting theological developments, but just the practical distinctives of what did that actually look like? Some caveats, just because it's, I'm going to use these slides to list a lot of quotes so that people can have reference to them. If they go back and watch the video, they can be there. But just because something is quoted doesn't mean it's 100% right. Even if something is practiced, it doesn't mean it's 100% right. So just as that caveat. But I do believe that these are really helpful frameworks, and really they bring up really helpful conversations that we can still have in the church today as we think about our life and practice.

Also, one more caveat. We are just going to scratch the surface. I'm going to be throwing out a lot of stuff. There's a lot of work on each of these. Half of these things could be a talk on their own, but this is just kind of a primer of going from, I know that there was an early church, but what did they actually look like? To by the end, hopefully having a picture of, okay, I'm getting a feel for who these people were.

And I'm also going to be including limited quotes. For a lot of these topics, there's this plethora of quotes that I could just go on reading for minutes and minutes and sometimes a full hour of just quotes. I'm not going to do that. So, okay, so those caveats in mind, let's get started.

First, I want to talk about agape and the Eucharist or the Lord's Supper, sometimes it's called, or communion is sometimes it's called. I also have some artwork on the side. This is early Christian artwork in catacombs that by the second or third century they had put up there about some of their practices.

So with the agape and the Eucharist, there are two interesting things going on. The first thing is that they are two separate things. The agape was a meal, a feast that Christians would come together and eat. And we see this referenced in scripture in Jude verse 12, talking about false teachers and, you know, these people following the way of Cain. These are spots in your love feasts while they feast with you without fear, serving only themselves.

And embedded in here is the fact that these Christians, even in the apostolic time, are having love feasts, otherwise known as agape feast. It's a Greek word for love, where Christians are gathered around the table, eating food together and fellowshipping and communing in the sense of spending time with one another.

The biggest verse, not verse, the biggest section of the scripture we get about this is in First Corinthians 11, verses 20 through 25. Paul is writing, "Therefore, when you come together in one place, it's not to eat the Lord's Supper, for in eating, each one takes his own supper ahead of others. And one is hungry and another's drunk. What do you not have houses to eat and drink in, or do you despise the church of God and shame those who have nothing? What shall I say to you? Shall I praise you in this? I do not praise you." So here we see that they're not just taking a bread and, you know, the cup. They are actually eating such that some people are filling up their bellies.

Some people are ending up getting drunk. Wine was common back in the day because they didn't have safe drinking water often. So it was a way to preserve, you know, something to quench the thirst. But these people are eating a full meal.

And the very next verses, we see the Eucharist happen. "For I received from the Lord that which I also delivered to you, that the Lord Jesus, on the same night in which he is betrayed, took bread and when he was given thanks, broke it and said, 'Take, eat, this is my body.'" And it goes on. And this is what many of us are often familiar with when we come together and take communion. We have the bread, we have the cup. But even in First Corinthians and in Jude, we see that these two events were actually together. These early Christians were sharing an agape meal and the Eucharist in one event.

This is from a work called The Dedicate, and it's one of the earliest records we have on Christian practical life. And this is after they have eaten the, after they've partaken of the Eucharist, the writer says, "But after you are filled, thus give thanks." It's not after you have partaken, but after you are filled, thus, you know, indicating that this practice is still going on in the second century, that people are coming together to eat their fill of a communal meal together. So I'm going to talk about why that's important in a minute.

But it's also worth noting that eventually these two elements start to split apart from each other. The agape gets separated from the Eucharist. We have a letter from a Roman magistrate to the emperor. He's talking about Christians who he's taken into custody. And he says, "They asserted, however, that the sum and substance of their fault or error has been that they were accustomed to meet on a fixed day before dawn and sing responsibly a hymn to Christ as to a God, bind themselves by oath." That's an awkward translation.

Not to some crime, but not to commit fraud. Excuse me, not to commit fraud, theft, adultery, not to falsify their trust. When this was over, it was their custom to depart and assemble again to partake of food, but ordinary and innocent food. So we have two separate meetings going on. And Tertullian, he says, "Our dinner shows its idea in the name. It is called by the Greek name for love, agape. But the sacrament of the Eucharist, which the Lord commanded to be taken in the meal, we take even before daybreak." And so by the late second century, we see that these were separate and the churches would often take communion in the morning, but they would still come together in the evening and take of an agape meal.

Here's another quote. Tertullian is talking about wives with unbelieving husbands. Just another quote referencing that they're taking communion in the morning. So we see these two practices kind of split separately. And then this is one of the most important quotes for what an early Christian meeting looks like. But before I read it, notably, we've actually lost the agape meal.

So even in some areas in the second century moving on, we tend to lose the agape meal and we are left with the Eucharist. But this is a great quote for figuring out what an early Christian meeting looks like. This is from Justin Martyr. He was an early Christian apologist.

So he says, "And on the day called Sunday, all who live in cities or in the country gather together in 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." Tertullian makes note that the president was an elder.

"Then we all rise together and pray. And as we said before, when our prayer is ended, bread and wine with water, 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.'

And there's a distribution to each and a participation of that over which thanks has been given. And to those who are absent, a portion is sent by the deacons. And they who are well to do and willing, give what each thinks fit. And what is collected is deposited with the president who succors the orphans and widows, and those who through sickness or any other cause are in want, and those who are in bonds, and the strangers sojourning among us, and in a word takes care of all those who are in need."

So you can see there's several aspects of this that probably look familiar to many of us or many church meetings that we've been to. This is kind of the core of a Christian meeting that we see that they're gathering on Sunday. It's not actually, yeah, they're gathering on Sunday every week. So it's a weekly meeting. They're reading the scriptures with a special emphasis on the apostles and the prophets. There's a time of exhortation and teaching. Then there's a time of prayer.

And then there's a participation in communion or the Eucharist. Then afterwards, there's a collection to be taken voluntarily, and that collection is to be distributed to the poor or the needy. And so in that, that fits with a lot of Christian meetings I've been to in a lot of different congregations and a lot of different denominations, because that's kind of what's been passed since the apostles. And we see, let's see, pictures of that even going all the way back to Acts. So we say on the first day of the week, so on Sunday, when we were gathered together to break bread, Paul began talking to them, intending to leave the next day, and he prolonged his message until midnight.

This is a picture of a church meeting that I was going to say perhaps went too far, but it's the Apostle Paul preaching, so not far enough. I would want to listen there till midnight. When he had gone back up and had broken bread and eaten, he had talked with them for a long time until daybreak and then left. So even there in Acts, we see this gathering to break bread, but implicit in that is also the teaching and exhortations, and then a time of fellowship and afterwards.

Okay. But it's also noteworthy that we do end up losing the agape meal by the time of Justin Martyr, sometimes a bit later in different areas. And this is for a variety of reasons. It was legislated against by the Romans. So in that letter that we saw from Pliny, he's trying to stamp out the Christians, and he's saying, "No more meetings. These banquets, they're subversive. We should get rid of them." But there are also abuses of the meal. We see that in First Corinthians, where Paul is saying some people are getting drunk, some people are eating their fill. And it's less tangible than the sacrament of the Eucharist. And so over time, eventually, it does fall away.

But going back to the New Testament and those earliest Christians, agape was a central part of their worship. And I want to stop on that and focus on the importance of that, because that was something unfamiliar to me until I came to these writings and came to a different church network that was able to practice the agape meal as a central part of our worship and fellowship.

Let's see. Okay. So I have this agape as koinonia. These are two Greek words. Agape means love. That's our love feast. Koinonia means fellowship. So here is a quote. "And they continued steadfastly in the apostles' doctrine and fellowship," here's our koinonia, "in the breaking of bread and in prayers."

And so there's this idea that fellowship is tied with the apostles' doctrine in the breaking of bread. So that refers to both agape and the Eucharist and also in the idea of praying together. And so what does koinonia mean? We hear the word fellowship a lot, potentially. I heard the word fellowship a lot growing up. And when I was growing up, fellowship meant like time spent together equals fellowship.

And that's okay. That's a good start. But what it turned into was that fellowship was reduced to, you know, coffee hour. And we all get together, we have a sip of coffee, and then go about our days. And the rest of our week is very detached from what we just did. And so it's almost like a social meeting. We see each other's faces, we say hi. We have this equation of time spent together equals fellowship, and then we move on with our lives. But this word, koinonia, is way more in depth than that and way more beautiful.

It's fellowship, not just in the sense of time spent together, but fellowship that brings about a common identity or fellowship that involves participation and union. And so some people even go so far as to use it in marital imagery. Some people use it in philosophical imagery of like, what makes every single human being a person? It's because they have fellowship with humanity. They have participation. And that's way more of an intimate and deeper expression. And that's what the early Christians were trying to capture with this idea of koinonia, and especially relating it to the agape meal, that the table of fellowship, koinonia, was the place where people participated in one another's lives and where they identified themselves with each other.

This is where the new humanity is really being fleshed out. Here's a quote from a man named Armada Robinson. It says, "Koinonia is used in a relation to the Christian society to express the idea of the fellowship in which it is united and the acts of fellowship in which the idea is realized by the idea." It's like the Christian idea. Here's another one. These meals, these agape meals, I'm sorry, this is from another man named Ferdinand Probst. These agape meals became the koinonia or manifestation of the Christian community. So it's if you want to know what the Christian community is or see it in action, oftentimes you could look at these agape meals. No longer the ordinary meal to sustain the physical life, but a meal at which was manifested the Christian koinonia.

And so this was important because the table, the eating, the dining table was extremely important in ancient society. It still is today, a bit less so, but still is important. The people that you eat with kind of implicate your identity. And you can see that in large fellowships of people. People gravitate towards certain people. You can see different people kind of casting their identity with one another. And it was really common in Roman culture for people to be very intentional about who they are eating with because that impacts who I'm participating in. And so the Christian agape was notable in that it completely leveled the social order.

Roman society was very stratified. You had slaves and nobles, poor and rich, women and men, Greeks and barbarians, all these groups of people that would often stay away from each other. And in Christ, there is no slave or free. In Christ, there is no man or woman. In Christ, there is no Greek or barbarian. And so these tables were the place where everyone in that fellowship came together and participated in each other.

And so at these tables, we see that it was a multicultural place where people were fellowshipping. It's actually interesting. The first time that Christians are ever called Christians, Acts tells us in Acts 11:26, it's when they are moving from just being a Jewish church to starting to be a Jewish and Gentile church. This is in the church of Antioch. And that is the first time that they're called Christians. And so even in the name itself is this idea of different types of people coming together. And that's what the new humanity is all about. And this is why Paul is so grieved in First Corinthians when he's seeing that sects are starting to form. You can imagine in a big fellowship where the table is so important to my identity that I'm going to start identifying myself with Brother Joe over here because I think he's really neat.

And Brother Mark over here is a bit sketchy and I don't really like him. So I'm going to go sit with my people. Brother Mark's going to have his people. Brother Paul is going to have his people. And Paul's looking at this and saying, "You guys have missed the entire point. This isn't the Lord's Supper anymore."

And so this actually was probably the central part of the earliest of Christian practices, was the agape leading into the Eucharist, this kind of bundle event tied together. And this is probably potentially one of the most unfamiliar. And so that's why I wanted to spend some time on it, because this was really where a lot of the new humanity was fleshed out. Like it's good and nice to talk about us all being made new, but if this just happens in my individual life detached from everyone, and then I show up on Sunday to eat the piece of bread, listen to a teaching, and then go home, it's just not quite the fullness of this new humanity, this body knit together.

And that can really happen around the table. Okay. So going back to the overall meeting, what does a Christian meeting look like in the earliest of the churches? It's a weekly meeting. So meeting every week, sometimes even more frequently, but meeting at the minimum of every week. And then every week, you're actually also partaking of the agape meal, and you are partaking of the Eucharist, so the bread and the cup. And that's happening on a weekly basis. And so when Paul is telling the Corinthians to judge themselves and come to the Eucharist soberly and with consideration of the body, that judgment is happening on a weekly basis where every week you're having to figure out, "Am I right with my brother?

Am I right with my sister? Am I right with God?" And wrestling with that every week, coming, remembering, and participating. So there's also reading that is very prevalent, sometimes even more prevalent than the actual teaching in the earliest of writings is the readings that they were a people that read the scriptures, and they read it a lot. And so sometimes they would be reading, they generally would read entire epistles because the epistles are a single letter written to people. And so here, let me read the letter to the Colossians. And so they were people that were used to long stretches of public reading, and they very highly prioritized that.

There was prayer that happened at these meetings.

And then as far as where the church met, they often actually almost entirely met in houses at this time over the first few centuries. Sometimes those would be small houses. Oftentimes, if there was somebody who was wealthy and had a larger house, they would generally host the church. And we see this even in the scriptures, the church that meets at X sister's house, the church that meets at this house.

And we actually have evidence of the types of houses that these Christians would meet. And some of them were actually quite large, approaching a church building. But in the earliest of these communities, everyone is meeting in houses. Okay. And then finally, I've already said it, but it becomes it's important that for these early Christians, the primary place where they interacted with Christ was the agape and Eucharist put together. So oftentimes, especially since the Reformation, there's a priority, and it's a response to, it's an understandable response. There's a priority of the place that we interact with Christ is the proclamation of the word, the proclamation of the scriptures. Amen. That is the place where we interact with Christ.

And they're responding to the Catholic mass, and you just kind of hear some Latin, take a wafer, and then leave. And so they're saying, "No, there's so much more than that." But over the centuries, there was kind of a loss of the importance of the Eucharist, and especially a loss of the importance of the agape as the primary place where we are meeting Christ, because who is Christ if not his body, whether in the elements or whether in the faces of your brothers and sisters around the table? And so a lot of the service would build up to this moment as kind of the place that ties all of us together. So that is the early Christian meeting, so to say.

If you have any questions, keep it, write it down. We're going to have a question and answer at the end. I want to move to another aspect of early Christian life.

Excuse me. Sorry. And this is one of the most striking features of the early Christians. This is just their practical holiness.

I'm going to go through several aspects of Christian practical holiness in the early church. This was actually one of the most important tools in their evangelism. And so early Christians, some of them did go out and do the door knocking. There's actually a quote from Origen, an early writer, of some of our brothers even take it upon themselves to go out into the countryside to every house they can find and share the good news. And so there is that aspect of very intentional evangelism. But the texts often indicate that one of the biggest tools for evangelism was their practical holiness, the fact that these Christians were living a different type of life than the society around them.

So what did that look like?

So they were a people of prayer and fasting. They took Jesus seriously when Jesus says, "When you fast, be not like the hypocrites, X, Y, and Z." It's not saying, "If you fast, if you choose to partake of this discipline," Jesus is assuming that they're fasting.

And the early Christians were assuming that too. So this is from, these are two quotes. One of them is from that early writing called the teaching or the Dedicate. And it's telling the Christians, "But fast on the fourth day and the preparation.

Neither pray as the hypocrites, but as the Lord commanded in his gospel. Thus pray," and he reads the Lord's Prayer, "thrice in the day, thus pray." And so even there, you get a glimpse of people are going through these motions of the spiritual life in a way that is communal, that it's not just, "I'm going to figure things out just entirely by myself," but they are all fasting on the same day as a body. Actually, two days per week are fasting. So on the fourth day, I think that's the Wednesday and Fridays. They're also praying the Lord's Prayer three times a day. And that might strike some of us as odd, like, "Okay, are they just saying the words?

Is this just turning into the form of godliness without power? Are we just..." But what they were trying to get at was what we do on a regular basis shapes who we are. So if I'm surrounding myself with work all day, my attention is given to that work. And where my attention is, that's who I become. We see this in the scriptures that as we behold Christ, we're transformed into his glory degree by degree. If our attention is on Christ, then we are transformed. And so these early Christians would make sure that on a daily basis, their attention was fixed on Christ, his teachings, and prayer. And so they would pray morning, noon, and evening, three times the Lord's Prayer every single day.

And they would fast twice a week. Just as a practical note, you can see the picture of this early Christian raising her hands up to the heavens.

In the Stromata, another work, he says, "We raise the head and lift the hands to heaven." And so it's just a very practical picture. As you can see, they would pray in this. They would lift holy hands, a reference to scriptures, and they would raise their eyes to heaven and to pray. So practically, if you want to know what early Christian prayer even looked like, that's what it looked like. We even have one writing where someone is trying to temper some of the more excited brothers in the community of waving their hands up in the air. And we have an early writing saying, "Okay, some of these people are being a bit extreme. That's kind of drawing attention to yourself.

Maybe we should chill out a bit." But we do see this picture of raising holy hands, lifting our eyes to heaven. And even in that, there's a confidence that a lot of ancient cultures, when they were praying, even they would put their eyes down. They would cast their eyes to the ground. And there's a sense of reverence, humility. Some of the early Christians did have times where they would do that. They would bow in their prayer. But the common posture was as children to their father and this intimacy with God, with a God who hears us and loves us.

So they were a people of prayer and fasting.

Number two, they were a people of hospitality, oftentimes radical hospitality that was noteworthy. And their neighbors would keep note of it. So another quote, "But let everyone that comes in the name of the Lord be received. And afterward, you shall prove and know him." He's not just going to stay at your house forever. You should get to know him if he stays too long, like there's instructions of what to do.

You shall have understanding right and left. But then it says, "If he who is a traveler, who comes as a traveler, assist him as far as you are able." The default is hospitality. Someone's coming in the name of the Lord, then amen. We will be hospitable. If you're a traveler, we'll help you in any way we can. So there's this default of hospitality that the early Christians were embodying towards each other and then often towards outsiders as well.

Simplicity. The early Christians were notable in their simple living, such that an early writer, Clement of Alexandria, straight up says, "It is a sin to live luxuriously and licentiously." That it is against the teachings of Christ. Even for as much as we talk about certain aspects of modesty, which is great, a lot of times in the scripture, when they're talking about modesty, they're actually warning against the extreme of too much, too much gold, too much ornate clothes. This isn't modest. We should have a more simple attire.

And so this was in marked difference to the culture around them, where people would try to identify themselves with their possessions, where they would try to make a name for themselves. The early Christians knew who they were in Christ. And so, sorry, I lost my train of thought. They knew who they were in Christ. And as such, they advocated for simplicity in outward living and outward dress. And then oftentimes, this would translate to giving to the poor as well, which we will return to.

Okay, their sexual ethics. This was in marked contrast to the society around them. And again, one of my overarching things that really excites me about the early church is that their society is very similar to our society today. You can see even today, sexual ethics are all over the place, just like they were in the Roman Empire. But Christians stood out as a light in the world. So here's just one example in the Epistle to Diagnetus and early writing. They, Christians, marry like everyone else and have children, but they do not destroy their offspring. They share their table, but not their bed. There are lots of quotes. I tried to pick one that encapsulated a lot of it.

There are lots of quotes that this was of utmost importance to the early Christians. You couldn't be a Christian and keep on sinning in this way, according to Paul even. And so what this involved was that Christians were opposed to any sort of fornication, any sort of intimacy outside of marriage, which was in marked contrast to the society around them. They were opposed to abortion, which again was in marked contrast to the society around them. And they were opposed to infanticide. This was this practice where women would have children, and either due to the father or both of them, they did not take pleasure in this child. Maybe it was deformed. Maybe they just didn't want it.

They would leave these infants out in the wilderness to die. It was called exposing the infants. The early Christians were horrified at this. They knew that every single person was knit together fearfully in their mother's womb by God. And so not only was it forbidden, but Christians would often make a practice of going out to these commonplace of leaving infants and taking them in and adopting them. And so they weren't just talking the talk. They were walking the walk and saying that if we're going to value life, we have to live this out. And so you saw that even adopting and fostering were a part of the early Christian attitude towards sexual ethics and towards life.

Public confession of sin. Here's one. In the church, you shall acknowledge your transgressions, and you shall not come near for your prayer with an evil conscience. Again, this is this idea, especially if you tie it to weekly agape, weekly Eucharist, that you can't go for long periods with an evil conscience. Like, let's say you do, I don't know, let's say you only did communion once every 10 years. That's a long time that you could go before you had to figure stuff out. In these early communities, it was every single week. And this intimate fellowship, you would actually confess your sins to one another in public. And that's a very daunting proposition. I've been in places where we do that.

I've been in places where we don't do that. But there is something it obviously can be. Yeah, how it's actually worked out, I'll just leave that up to everybody. But there is something that can be very beautiful about this public confession of sin, because it shouldn't just be a public confession, but a public confession of repentance, which is a public confession of hope and excitement about how God can turn lives around.

Here's another one, vengeance.

A quote from Tertullian. "If, as we have said above, we are bidden to love our enemies, whom have we to hate? Again, if, when a man injures us, we are forbidden to retaliate, that the action may not make us alike, whom then can we injure?" And this was really important in Roman culture because it was a very honor-based culture. Your honor in society meant everything. And so if somebody slighted you, it was almost a duty to be able to avenge yourself. And the early Christians were saying emphatically, "No. Jesus taught us to live another way."

So all of these and more made up what is called the Christian habitus. Habitus. You can see that in the top of the page. And you can see that's where we get our word habit from. And it's more than a habit, though. It's the sum total of their way of life, their dispositions, their practices, their moral ethos shaped by their theology, their communal identity. So it's their way of life. And this was one of the most important features of early Christians. If you want to learn more about this, there was a discussion on what's it called? The Patient Ferment of the Early Church. It's a great work, and that's a central part of his thesis.

And that this was actually one of the prime tools of evangelism, was this way of life that attracted people. People saw them, and they were drawn to it.

Where's that going to go with that? Okay. Sorry, lost my train of thought.

And I want to actually, I'm not going to go through these quotes just in the interest of time, but if you want to go back and watch this later, I'm going to switch to a page with a very long excerpt. You can pause the video. This is from the Dedicate, and it's so beautiful. This is one of the most impactful texts in my early Christian life, was it just straight up lays out there's a way of life and a way of death. And so this really encapsulated a lot of the early Christian habitus. So the way of life is first do this, this, this. It's almost like a grocery list of all the things early Christians do, and then all the things that early Christians don't do.

And some of them are very interesting. I wouldn't have necessarily thought to put those on the list. Some of them are just a straight retelling of the Sermon on the Mount. So I encourage you to be able to go and read through that. I think I find it highly, highly edifying.

Okay. Moving on. Attitudes towards wealth really defined the early Christians in a lot of ways. They had a very distinctive attitude towards wealth. And you can see that already in the scriptures where Jesus in Luke says, "Blessed are the poor. Actually, woe to the rich."

James has a whole passage about the rich who abuse their servants. And so you can see the kind of attitude being laid out in the scriptures, and the early church takes this in stride, and it really forms a lot of their ethos.

This is one of the big kind of takeaways of their attitude. And this goes back to the scriptures. Teach those who are rich in this world not to be proud and not to trust in their money, which is so unreliable.

And so we see this reflected in a lot of early Christian texts that you are definitely not supposed to trust in your riches, but you should even be, if you are someone who has means and has riches, you should be skeptical of them and hesitant of them, that they are a weight that one has to carry and appropriately use. It's not just default a blessing, like it would be a lot of times in our world or the Roman world of you see someone with tons of money, tons of stuff, and you say, "Wow, God has really blessed them." The early Christians would actually say the opposite and say, "Wow, God has given that person a burden of responsibility."

That's a difficult place to be in. Because for them, the purposes of riches was to take care of others. So we see here in a very early writing from 96, so this is around the time that the Gospel of John is probably being written, "Let the strong care for the weak, and let the weak respect the strong. Let the rich provide for the needs of the poor." And so, as in Romans, when it talks about spiritual giftings, one of them is giving, there are people that do have wealth and do have means, but with that comes the responsibility of taking care of those around you and positive stewardship. And what I mean by positive stewardship is not just piling it all up in storehouses, as Jesus would say, but distributing it and giving it to others.

Here's a passage that exemplifies this especially. It's talking about the rich man and the poor man. Both accordingly accomplish their work. The poor man makes intercession, a work in which he is rich, which he received from the Lord, and with which he recompenses the master who helps him. And the rich man, in like manner, unhesitatingly bestows upon the poor man the riches which he received from the Lord. And this is a great work and acceptable before God because he understands the object of his wealth and has given to the poor of the gifts of the Lord and rightly discharged his service to him. So there's a lot there, but you can see it's like this idea of that's his service, that's his duty to discharge.

I'm going to start moving quicker in the interest of time, but attitudes towards wealth to the poor, this is actually one really important passage to consider. It's something I think of many a lot very frequently. It's from Galatians.

This is Paul writing. "And when James, Cephas, and John, who seemed to be pillars, perceived the grace that had been given to me, they gave me and Barnabas the right hand of fellowship that we should go to the Gentiles and they to the circumcised.

They desired only that we should remember the poor, the very thing which I was eager to do." So imagine Paul, he's laying out, "Is my ministry valid? I'm preaching the gospel. I'm doing all of these things. Is this a valid ministry?" And the apostles say, "Yes, yes, yes, you're good to go. Doctrine's fine, but make sure you remember this one thing. Make sure you remember the poor." It was of utmost importance. And we see this reflected in lots of early quotes. I'll read the last one because it's from a pagan emperor. He said, "It is for disgraceful that when no Jew ever has to beg and the impious Galileans, the Christians, support not only their own poor, but ours as well.

All men see that our people lack aid from us." And so this pagan emperor is saying, "Man, these Christians are making it hard to keep Rome pagan because they're taking care of not only their own poor, but ours as well. They're giving us a bad name." And so you can see a picture of Christian attitudes towards the poor.

Here's a quote. "During a plague, Christians went out of their way when everyone else was shutting their doors and hiding. Christians went out of their way to tend to the sick, and many Christians died because of this, but they thought it their duty to help those who were dying and impoverished and poor in spirit."

And here's a quote about the building of potentially the first hospital in history. It's debated, but definitely one of the early ones where a bishop, this was a later time, but a bishop decided to build a hospital specifically to take care of the poor and those who couldn't afford it. And that's where we start to get a picture of our hospital systems today.