The City of God and City of Man — Augustine

Today's Scripture

Hold these verses together: one written for a shaken people, two written for travelers.

Psalm 46:1-2 — "God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble. Therefore we will not fear though the earth gives way, though the mountains be moved into the heart of the sea."

Hebrews 13:14 — "For here we have no lasting city, but we seek the city that is to come."

Philippians 3:20 — "But our citizenship is in heaven, and from it we await a Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ."

The Big Idea

When Rome fell, Christians discovered they had quietly confused the empire with the kingdom of God. Augustine wrote The City of God to untangle them. Every human being lives in one of two cities — one built on love of self, one built on love of God — and only one of them lasts. You can love your earthly home well precisely because it is not your final one.

Reflection

The day the unthinkable happened

On August 24, AD 410, an army of Visigoths under their king Alaric broke through the walls of Rome and sacked the city for three days. Rome had not fallen to a foreign enemy in eight hundred years. People called it the Eternal City, the way we say "too big to fail." Now smoke rose over the Forum, and refugees crammed onto ships heading for North Africa.

The shock is hard for us to imagine. Far away in Bethlehem, the great scholar Jerome heard the news and wrote that his voice failed him and sobs choked his words. It felt, he said, as if the light of the whole world had been put out. When something that has always been there suddenly isn't — a parent's job, a school, a friendship, a nation's confidence — the ground itself seems to tilt. That was Rome in 410, multiplied across an empire.

Everyone needed someone to blame. Pagans blamed the Christians: Rome abandoned the old gods, and the old gods abandoned Rome. But many Christians were just as shaken, for an embarrassing reason. After Constantine, they had slowly come to assume that God's plans and Rome's fortunes were the same thing. If Rome could burn, what about the promises of God?

Across the sea in the town of Hippo, the bishop — a North African named Augustine, probably the most influential Christian thinker outside the Bible — began writing an answer. It took him about thirteen years and became The City of God. His argument starts with a sorting question. Not "which empire do you live in?" but "what do you love most?"

"Two loves built two cities: the love of self, carried even to the contempt of God, built the earthly city; the love of God, carried even to the contempt of self, built the heavenly city." — Augustine, The City of God

Every kingdom, every institution, every heart, said Augustine, is organized around a supreme love. Love yourself supremely and you get the earthly city — Babylon, Rome, every empire that grabs and gilds and falls. Love God supremely and you belong to another city altogether, one that no army can touch. The fall of Rome was a catastrophe. It was not the fall of God's city. That city, as Psalm 46:1-2 sings, does not fear "though the earth gives way."

Two cities, two loves

Be careful here. Augustine is not saying the world splits neatly into bad people "out there" and good people "in church." The two cities are tangled together until the end of history — in every nation, every congregation, every human heart. The real border runs through what you love.

Tim Keller turned Augustine's idea into a question you can use on yourself. He starts with the old word idol — which does not mean a statue so much as a substitute god:

"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

That is the earthly city in pocket size. Rome was simply an idol with an army. And notice: idols are almost always good things — safety, success, romance, country — promoted to ultimate things. The Roman Christians had not loved Rome too little. They had loved it almost like a god, which is why its fall felt like the end of the world.

Here is a quick way to find your own version. Finish this sentence: "As long as I have ______, I'm okay." Whatever fills the blank — grades, a relationship, a reputation, a savings account — that is where your earthly citizenship is strongest. Augustine would not tell you to stop caring about it. He would tell you to stop building your safety on it, because everything in the earthly city is, sooner or later, sackable.

Jesus had named the problem long before. Matthew 6:19-21 — "Do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy and where thieves break in and steal, but lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven... For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also." Thieves broke into Rome itself. Moth and rust eat empires as happily as sweaters. Jesus is not anti-treasure; he is anti-vault-that-fails.

Against all of that, hear the psalmist describe the other city. Psalm 46:4 — "There is a river whose streams make glad the city of God, the holy habitation of the Most High." Rome was ringed with walls; the city of God is fed by a river. One city defends what it fears to lose. The other overflows with what cannot run out.

Citizens of a country we've never seen

So where does that leave Christians living in an earthly city — then in Rome, now in your zip code? Scripture's answer is a strange, wonderful word: we are resident foreigners. Philippians 3:20 — "But our citizenship is in heaven, and from it we await a Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ." Paul wrote that to Philippi, a proud Roman colony full of citizens who never saw Rome but lived by its laws. He flips the picture: church, you are a colony of heaven.

The writer of Hebrews says this has always been the shape of faith. Abraham lived in tents his whole believing life, because Hebrews 11:10 — "he was looking forward to the city that has foundations, whose designer and builder is God." A tent is honest architecture. It admits you are not home yet. And Hebrews 13:14 makes it a rule for all of us: "here we have no lasting city, but we seek the city that is to come."

Augustine loved this theme — and he refused to let it turn into escapism or tribalism. Look at how wide his vision of the heavenly city is:

"This heavenly city, then, while it sojourns on earth, calls citizens out of all nations, and gathers together a society of pilgrims of all languages." — Augustine, The City of God

A "sojourner" is someone living somewhere temporarily — an exchange student, a traveler. The church is a society of them, recruited from every nation, bigger than every nation. That is why the church could survive Rome's fall: its citizenship was never filed in Rome.

Maybe you have felt the tug of that other country without knowing its name. The vacation that was wonderful but not quite enough. The achievement that thrilled you for a week. C.S. Lewis put his finger on that ache:

"If I find in myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world." — C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity

Augustine had said the same thing in prayer form, in the most famous sentence he ever wrote:

"You have made us for yourself, O Lord, and our hearts are restless until they rest in you." — Augustine, Confessions

The restlessness you feel is not a malfunction. It is homesickness — your heart agreeing with Hebrews that no earthly city is the lasting one.

The city that comes down

Now for the surprise at the end of the story — and the gospel inside it.

If the heavenly city is our home, you might expect the Bible to end with us climbing up to it: be good enough, spiritual enough, detached enough, and you ascend. That is how every religion of the earthly city works. But watch the last pages of Scripture. Revelation 21:2 — "And I saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband." The city of God comes down. We do not climb to it; it descends to us, the way grace always travels.

And it comes down because its King came down first. Jesus is the only person who ever truly belonged to the city of God, and he was crucified outside the walls of the earthly one — rejected by Rome and Jerusalem together — so that exiles like us could be made citizens. Your place in that city is not a wage you earn. It is, as 1 Peter 1:4 puts it, "an inheritance that is imperishable, undefiled, and unfading, kept in heaven for you." Rome kept its treasury behind walls, and thieves got in anyway. God keeps yours himself.

Does all this heaven-talk make people useless on earth? Jonathan Edwards, who preached a famous sermon picturing life as a pilgrimage, thought the opposite — knowing your destination is the only way to walk well:

"It becomes us to spend this life only as a journey toward heaven, to which we should subordinate all other concerns of life." — Jonathan Edwards, "The Christian Pilgrim"

And Lewis, watching history, noticed which Christians actually improved the world — the heavenly minded ones:

"Aim at Heaven and you will get earth 'thrown in': aim at earth and you will get neither." — C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity

Augustine's readers buried the empire and built schools, hospitals, and churches across a broken Europe. They could give themselves away to their earthly cities precisely because their hopes were stored in a better one. That is the freedom of dual citizenship: hold your city with open hands, because your real home cannot be sacked.

Going Deeper

Try a "headline test" tonight. Open the news, notice the story that spikes your anxiety the most — about the economy, an election, a war, your team, your school. That spike is a map to where some of your citizenship papers are filed. Then pray Psalm 46:1-2 over that exact headline, slowly: "God is our refuge and strength... therefore we will not fear though the earth gives way." You are not pretending the news doesn't matter. You are filing your deepest hope in the city with foundations.