When the Empire Bowed — Constantine

Today's Scripture

As the church steps from the catacombs into the emperor's favor, three texts frame the question of God and political power.

Romans 13:1 — "Let every person be subject to the governing authorities. For there is no authority except from God, and those that exist have been instituted by God."

Proverbs 21:1 — "The king's heart is a stream of water in the hand of the LORD; he turns it wherever he will."

John 18:36 — "Jesus answered, 'My kingdom is not of this world. If my kingdom were of this world, my servants would have been fighting, that I might not be delivered over to the Jews. But my kingdom is not from the world.'"

The Big Idea

In AD 312, the persecuted church suddenly gained the most powerful friend on earth: the emperor himself. It was a real mercy and a real danger at the same time. God can steer kings like streams of water — but the moment the church starts needing Caesar's favor, it has started forgetting whose kingdom it belongs to.

Reflection

The sign in the sky

On the eve of battle at the Milvian Bridge outside Rome, the general Constantine reportedly saw a sign in the sky — a cross of light and the words "In this sign, conquer." He had his soldiers mark Christ's initials on their shields. He won. And within a year, he and his co-emperor issued the Edict of Milan (AD 313), making Christianity legal across the empire.

Was the vision real? Was the conversion sincere? Historians still argue — Constantine kept pagan titles for years and was baptized only on his deathbed. We cannot inspect his heart, and we do not have to. What we can watch is what his favor did to the church.

The reversal was dizzying. Ten years earlier, Diocletian's soldiers were burning Scriptures. Now imperial money was rebuilding the churches Diocletian had demolished. Bishops who bore scars from the torturers were seated as honored guests at the emperor's table. The faith moved from the catacombs — the underground burial tunnels where believers had met and buried their martyrs — into gleaming new basilicas.

Think about what happens to a small band when it suddenly goes mainstream. The early fans loved it when loving it cost something. Then it becomes the soundtrack of every store, and soon people wear the shirt who have never really heard the music. After Constantine, joining the church slowly shifted from a path to the arena into a path to a career. Crowds came. Not all of them came for Jesus.

Within a few decades the changes piled up. Sunday became a legal day of rest. Bishops were given authority to judge court cases. The emperor's mother toured the Holy Land building churches over the sacred sites. Church membership began to help an ambitious man's résumé instead of ending his life. Some of this was genuinely wonderful. All of it was disorienting. The church had survived three centuries of Rome's hatred; now it had to survive Rome's hug.

Did God do this?

So was Constantine's rise God's work? Scripture will not let us say no. Paul — writing under Nero, of all emperors — insisted that "there is no authority except from God" (Romans 13:1). Centuries earlier, God had named the pagan emperor Cyrus "his anointed" (Isaiah 45:1), a king who did not know God but served God's rescue plan anyway. And Proverbs 21:1 says the king's heart is "a stream of water in the hand of the LORD; he turns it wherever he will." A God who can steer Cyrus can steer Constantine. Real relief came to real people: no more informers, no more bonfires, no more arenas.

Daniel had watched the same lesson humble Nebuchadnezzar: "the Most High rules the kingdom of men and gives it to whom he will" (Daniel 4:17). Empires do not change hands without God's say-so. The church calls this providence — God's quiet, unhurried steering of history. If believers could trust providence under Diocletian's edicts, they could trust it under Constantine's favor. The harder question was whether they could stay faithful in the sunshine.

But here is the irony the church would soon forget. A century before Constantine, when Christians had no power at all, Tertullian had told a Roman governor:

"It is a fundamental human right, a privilege of nature, that every man should worship according to his own convictions... It is assuredly no part of religion to compel religion." — Tertullian, To Scapula

Faith cannot be forced — that was the persecuted church's own argument. Within a few generations of Constantine, parts of the now-favored church began using state power against pagans and heretics, picking up the very sword that had been used on them. The historian Lord Acton, surveying centuries of this, wrote the famous warning:

"Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely." — Lord Acton, letter to Bishop Mandell Creighton

God's providence and the church's temptation arrived in the same package.

The third temptation

Here is the unsettling part: the church had seen this offer before — in the wilderness. The devil took Jesus to a high mountain "and showed him all the kingdoms of the world and their glory. And he said to him, 'All these I will give you, if you will fall down and worship me'" (Matthew 4:8-9). All the kingdoms, no cross. Jesus answered, "Be gone, Satan!" (Matthew 4:10). Standing before a different kind of power — a Roman governor with execution authority — he explained why: "My kingdom is not of this world" (John 18:36). His kingdom does not run on the world's fuel, so it cannot be bought with the world's currency.

The church after Constantine had to face the same offer, and C.S. Lewis shows us how the temptation usually dresses itself. In The Screwtape Letters, a senior demon coaches a junior one:

"What we want, if men become Christians at all, is to keep them in the state of mind I call 'Christianity And.'" — C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters

Christianity and the empire. Christianity and my political team. Christianity and social status. The "and" always starts as a partner and ends as the boss. Tim Keller gives the diagnostic:

"What is an idol? It is anything more important to you than God, anything that absorbs your heart and imagination more than God, anything you seek to give you what only God can give." — Tim Keller, Counterfeit Gods

By that test, political power may be the most religious-looking idol there is — because you can chase it while quoting Scripture the whole time. The psalmist posts the warning sign: "Put not your trust in princes, in a son of man, in whom there is no salvation" (Psalm 146:3). Princes can legalize the church. No prince can save a single soul. And Jesus's question hangs over every church tempted to trade worship for influence: "For what does it profit a man to gain the whole world and forfeit his soul?" (Mark 8:36). It is possible to win the empire and lose the plot.

The centuries after Constantine showed how subtle the losing can be. When everyone is officially a Christian, almost no one has to actually follow Christ. G.K. Chesterton's famous quip fits the whole era:

"The Christian ideal has not been tried and found wanting. It has been found difficult; and left untried." — G.K. Chesterton, What's Wrong with the World

An empire full of baptized people who had never counted the cost — that became the church's strange new mission field.

The King who refused the shortcut

When faith became fashionable, something predictable happened to its price tag. Dietrich Bonhoeffer, writing under a regime that wanted a tame state church, named the product that gets sold whenever Christianity becomes culturally convenient:

"Cheap grace is grace without discipleship, grace without the cross, grace without Jesus Christ, living and incarnate." — Dietrich Bonhoeffer, The Cost of Discipleship

Cheap grace — forgiveness as a formality, faith as a membership card. It is no accident that right after Constantine, thousands of serious believers headed for the desert to pray and fast as monks. They sensed that when the world stops testing your faith, you had better test it yourself. Their instinct was right even where their methods went too far: a faith that costs nothing soon means nothing, and the gospel deserves better than to become an empire's decoration.

But the deepest answer to the Constantinian temptation is not a warning. It is a person. Look once more at the ladder of Philippians 2:5-8: Christ Jesus, "though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, by taking the form of a servant... he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross." The devil offered him the world's kingdoms for one bowed knee, and he chose the cross instead — for us. Our King did not grasp power; he bled to bring us under his gentle rule. A church that remembers this can use influence without worshiping it, because it already has the only treasure that matters.

This is the test for every age, not just the fourth century. Most of us will never face lions; our temptations arrive as flattery, funding, and platforms. The question Constantine forces on us is not "Would I die for Jesus?" but "Can I hold comfort and influence without needing them?" Only people whose treasure is already secure in Christ can honestly answer yes.

Augustine, writing as Rome itself was collapsing, lifted the church's eyes to the city no emperor can build and no barbarian can sack:

"There, instead of victory, is truth; instead of high rank, holiness; instead of peace, felicity; instead of life, eternity." — Augustine, The City of God

Constantine gave the church a place in his empire. Christ gives the church a place in that city. One of those gifts expired with the empire that gave it. The other was purchased at a cross, sealed by an empty tomb, and is forever.

Going Deeper

Try a small experiment in self-honesty today. Finish this sentence on paper: "I would feel more secure as a Christian if only ________ were in power / on my side / impressed with me." Whatever fills the blank is your Constantine — the human favor you are tempted to trust instead of Christ. Pray Psalm 146:3 over it ("Put not your trust in princes"), and then thank Jesus that his kingdom needed no election, no emperor, and no vision in the sky — only a cross and an empty tomb.