God at Work After Pentecost: When Faithfulness Cost Everything
The Early Church — A.D. 200–250
There is a difference between defending the Christian faith with words and defending it when the authorities demand that you deny Christ.
By the beginning of the third century, Christians had learned to explain what they believed. Justin had addressed the Roman world.
Irenaeus had challenged teachers who distorted the gospel.
Tertullian had argued that Christianity did not need to apologize for its existence.
But the question facing the Church was becoming more personal.
What would a Christian do when believing in Jesus meant losing everything?
Would the faith survive when its followers were threatened with imprisonment, torture, and death?
The answer would be written not only by great teachers but by men and women whose names might otherwise have disappeared from history.
One of the most remarkable stories comes from Carthage, in North Africa.
A Young Woman in Carthage
In A.D. 203, a young Christian woman named Perpetua was imprisoned under the Roman authorities.
She was about twenty-two years old. She had a young child, and her family was urging her to abandon her faith. The authorities wanted Christians to demonstrate their loyalty by participating in the religious ceremonies of the Roman state.
For Perpetua, the issue was not whether she loved her family or valued her life. She did.
The issue was whether she could deny the Lord Jesus Christ to whom she belonged.
An ancient account of her imprisonment preserves the anguish of her father's appeals. He came to her repeatedly, pleading with her to reconsider. He reminded her of her child and of the suffering her decision would bring upon the family.
Imagine the scene.
A father pleading with his daughter.
A young mother thinking of the child she might never see grow up.
A prison filled with people who knew that their refusal could lead to death.
And Perpetua remained a Christian.
She could not make the confession the authorities demanded of her.
Her faith was not a philosophical position she could modify under pressure. It was a commitment to Christ.
Felicity: Another Mother Faces the Same Choice
Perpetua was not alone.
Among her fellow prisoners was Felicity, a Christian woman who was pregnant.
The two women belonged to a small company of believers who had been arrested because of their Christian confession. Their companions included a man named Saturus and other Christians whose names have been preserved in the ancient account.
Felicity's situation was especially difficult. Roman law ordinarily prevented a pregnant woman from being executed until after she had given birth.
As the time approached, she feared that she might be separated from her companions and die later than they did.
She gave birth in prison, and her child was entrusted to others.
Now she, too, could face the death sentence.
We should pause here. These were not people who had no earthly attachments. Perpetua and Felicity were mothers. They had loved ones. They had every human reason to wish for more time.
Their courage did not mean that they felt no sorrow or fear.
It meant that they believed Christ was worthy of their faithfulness even when obedience brought a terrible cost.
What the Romans Demanded
The Roman Empire was not uniformly hostile to Christians in every place and at every moment. There were periods of relative peace, and the treatment of Christians varied from one region and governor to another.
But Christianity presented a problem for Roman authorities whenever believers refused to participate in the religious practices expected of loyal subjects.
The issue was not simply private belief. Roman civic and religious life were closely connected. Sacrifices to the gods could be understood as expressions of loyalty to the community and its rulers.
Christians worshiped the one true God and confessed Jesus Christ as Lord. They could not offer the worship demanded by the state.
To the authorities, this refusal could look like stubborn disloyalty.
To the Christians, compliance would mean betraying the God they served.
The conflict was profound.
And it was not resolved by argument.
Perpetua, Felicity, and their companions were condemned to die in the arena.
The Day of Their Death
The ancient account describes their final ordeal with a vividness that has kept their story alive for nearly eighteen centuries.
The condemned Christians were brought before the crowd. They were exposed to wild animals and subjected to violence in the arena. Those who survived the initial attacks were killed by the sword.
Perpetua and Felicity died with their fellow believers.
Their deaths were intended to demonstrate the power of Rome and the consequences of refusing its demands.
Yet the story was preserved by Christians who saw something else.
They saw people who had remained faithful to Christ when faithfulness demanded the highest possible price.
The empire could take their lives. It could not compel them to confess that Caesar was Lord in place of Jesus Christ.
Their deaths did not end Christianity in Carthage.
Their testimony became part of the Church's memory, passed from one generation to another.
The authorities had intended to silence them. Instead, Christians continued to tell their story.
The Church Was Growing, but the Danger Was Real
Perpetua and Felicity did not die during a single, uninterrupted empire-wide persecution of every Christian. The situation was more complicated than that.
Nevertheless, their story reveals the dangers that Christians could face in the early third century.
The Church was growing across the Roman world, but it remained vulnerable. A Christian congregation could flourish for years and then find itself exposed to the hostility of local authorities.
Believers had to make difficult choices.
Would they conceal their faith?
Would they comply with demands that violated their conscience?
Would they remain faithful if doing so endangered their families?
There were no easy answers to the suffering these questions produced.
Nor should we imagine that every Christian responded with equal courage. Some believers denied their faith under pressure. Others remained steadfast. The Church would later struggle with how to receive those who had failed and wanted to return.
That, too, was part of its history: courage, weakness, repentance, forgiveness, and the continuing need for grace.
The Church was not made up of heroes who never faltered. It was made up of sinners who needed the Savior—and some who, when tested, were given extraordinary courage to stand.
A Greater Storm Was Coming
Perpetua and Felicity died in A.D. 203, during the reign of Septimius Severus.
The decades that followed would bring further challenges. Christian teachers would continue to debate questions of doctrine and authority. The Church would spread into new regions. And eventually, the Roman government would launch more systematic attempts to compel Christians to demonstrate their religious loyalty.
In A.D. 250, under the emperor Decius, an empire-wide requirement to sacrifice to the traditional gods would create a crisis for Christian communities throughout the empire.
That crisis lies just beyond the immediate horizon of our story.
But the courage of Perpetua and Felicity helps us understand what was at stake when it arrived.
The issue was not simply whether Christianity could survive as an institution.
It was whether Christians would remain faithful to Christ when the cost of doing so became painfully real.
What Does It Mean to Be Faithful?
We should be careful about drawing easy comparisons between the early Church and our own circumstances. Most Christians today will never be asked to face the arena as Perpetua and Felicity did.
But their story asks a question that crosses the centuries.
Is our faith merely something we profess when it is convenient?
Or does our allegiance to Christ govern our lives when obedience costs us something?
The cost may be less dramatic than imprisonment or death. It may involve standing for biblical truth when it is unpopular, refusing dishonesty when dishonesty would be profitable, or accepting a personal loss rather than violating conscience.
The circumstances differ. The question of faithfulness remains.
Paul wrote to Timothy:
“Yea, and all that will live godly in Christ Jesus shall suffer persecution.” — 2 Timothy 3:12, KJV
Those words were not a promise that every believer would suffer in the same way. They were a sober recognition that faithful Christian living would sometimes bring opposition.
The early Church learned this lesson through experience.
God Was Still at Work
What should we remember about Perpetua and Felicity?
Not that suffering is good in itself.
Not that Christians should seek persecution.
Not that courage comes naturally to every believer.
We should remember that the Christian faith was carried forward by people who believed Jesus Christ was worth more than their safety, their reputation, or even their lives.
The apostles had gone.
The next generation had defended the faith with words.
Now other believers were bearing witness through their lives and deaths.
They were not building the Church by their own strength. They were bearing witness to the One who had promised to build it.
Their courage did not depend upon knowing how the story would end. They could not see Constantine. They could not foresee a time when emperors would favor the faith they now condemned.
They knew only the Christ in whom they had believed.
And they remained faithful.
The Church would continue to face opposition. Some Christians would stand firm; others would stumble. New controversies would arise, and the challenges of the third century would become more severe.
But the gospel continued to pass from one generation to another.
The story of Perpetua and Felicity reminds us that God was at work not only through great teachers and influential leaders, but through ordinary believers whose names might otherwise have been forgotten.
They could not see the future.
They could not know what their testimony would mean to Christians centuries later.
They could only be faithful in the place where God had put them.
And they were.
The Church was learning to defend the faith.
Now it was learning what it could cost to keep it.
A Faith Worth Keeping
The story of the early Church is not merely a record of ancient persecution. It is a testimony to the enduring worth of Jesus Christ.
The Roman Empire would change. Its emperors would rise and fall. Its laws and institutions would pass into history.
But the confession of those early Christians would remain:
Jesus Christ is Lord.
And the promise of Christ would remain as well:
“...I will build my church; and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.” — Matthew 16:18, KJV
God was still at work after Pentecost.
And the story was far from over.
For further reflection: Revelation 2:10 — “be thou faithful unto death, and I will give thee a crown of life.”
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FAITH IS THE VICTORY
Encamped along the hills of light,
Ye Christian soldiers, rise.
And press the battle ere the night
Shall veil the glowing skies.
Against the foe in vales below
Let all our strength be hurled.
Faith is the victory, we know,
That overcomes the world.
Refrain
Faith is the victory! Faith is the victory!
O glorious victory, that overcomes the world.
His banner over us is love,
Our sword the Word of God.
We tread the road the saints above
With shouts of triumph trod.
By faith, they like a whirlwind’s breath,
Swept on o’er every field.
The faith by which they conquered death
Is still our shining shield. Refrain
On every hand the foe we find
Drawn up in dread array.
Let tents of ease be left behind,
And onward to the fray.
Salvation’s helmet on each head,
With truth all girt about,
The earth shall tremble ’neath our tread,
And echo with our shout. Refrain
To him that overcomes the foe,
White raiment shall be giv’n.
Before the angels he shall know
His name confessed in Heav’n.
Then onward from the hill of light,
Our hearts with love aflame,
We’ll vanquish all the hosts of night,
In Jesus’ conqu’ring name. Refrain
John H. Yates, 1891
This is the victory that overcometh
the world, even our faith. 1 John 5:4
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