Restoring Apostolic Faith

Before the Filters

For the first three centuries, Christians didn’t talk about “getting saved” the way most sermons do now. There was no sinner’s prayer, no courtroom where you were declared innocent and then sent home unchanged. The gospel was not a legal loophole—it was an invitation to be remade. Salvation meant being healed, adopted, trained, and made holy. Faith meant loyalty to a King. Grace meant God’s power actually doing something in you, not just ignoring your failures.

Most of what we now assume about “salvation by faith” passes through 1,600 years of Latin legal thought—Tertullian’s courtroom imagination, Augustine’s inherited guilt and irresistible grace, the Reformers’ courtroom drama of justification. None of that is where the story begins.

Go back to the writings of the Apostolic Fathers—men who sat at the feet of the apostles or their direct disciples—and the gospel sounds different: less like a court case, more like a rescue mission and a surgery.

Salvation – Rescue, Healing, and Union

The New Testament word for salvation, sōtēria, means rescue, healing, restoration. God doesn’t simply erase a record—He makes a new creation. “If anyone is in Christ, he is a new creature” (2 Cor 5:17). Salvation is participation in the life of Christ.

Irenaeus—writing around 180 AD—describes it this way: “The Word of God… became what we are, that He might bring us to be even what He is.” 1

How did someone enter this salvation? Not by whispering a prayer, but by dying and rising with Christ in baptism. Baptism was not a symbol—it was the moment your old self was buried, and you were enlisted into Christ’s body.  2

Ignatius of Antioch—on his way to martyrdom around 107 AD—called the Eucharist “the medicine of immortality, an antidote that we should not die but live forever in Jesus Christ.”  3

The final judgment, in this view, isn’t a courtroom where God evaluates paperwork. It’s the revealing of what we truly are—wheat or weeds, light or darkness, sheep or goats. God’s judgment confirms reality, it doesn’t fabricate it. 4

Faith – Allegiance, Not Opinion

Pistis—faith—is one of the most flattened words in modern preaching. In the ancient world, pistis was used for loyalty oaths soldiers swore to their commanders and subjects swore to their king. Faith meant binding yourself to Jesus as Lord—trusting Him, obeying Him, remaining loyal even if it cost your life. 5

This is why the apostles never separated faith and obedience. Paul—misquoted by moderns more than anyone—says salvation comes “through faith,” and in the same breath calls it “the obedience of faith.” 6

The early church preached faith that acts. Clement of Rome (c. 96 AD) writes, “We are not justified by ourselves… nor by works we have done in holiness of heart, but by faith.” And then immediately says, “What then shall we do, brothers? Shall we idly abstain from doing good…? Far be it from us!” 7

The Didache—the earliest Christian handbook outside the New Testament—puts it bluntly: “If you can bear the whole yoke of the Lord, you will be perfect; but if you cannot, then do what you can.” 9

Grace – God’s Power, Not a Legal Credit

Charis—grace—is not God pretending you’re better than you are. In the New Testament and the early church, grace is God’s free favor and God’s active power that enables transformation.

Paul never pits grace against effort. He says, “By the grace of God I am what I am… and His grace toward me did not prove vain, but I labored even more… yet not I, but the grace of God with me.” Grace works with you. It doesn’t replace you. 10

The early church called this synergia—co-working with God. God initiates. We respond. Irenaeus again: “Those who do not obey Him… deprive themselves of His continuing grace.” Grace can be resisted or received. It’s relationship, not magic. 11

Grace forgives—but it also trains. “The grace of God has appeared… instructing us to deny ungodliness and worldly desires and to live sensibly, righteously, and godly.” If grace doesn’t teach you how to live, it’s not the biblical kind. 12

How the Early Church Lived Salvation

Christianity wasn’t a belief system. It was a way—the Way. Converts went through a catechumenate, sometimes lasting years. They learned Scripture, memorized the Lord’s Prayer, practiced fasting, gave to the poor, confessed sins regularly. 13

Salvation began there, but discipleship sustained it. Clement tells the church in Corinth: “Let us run the race set before us… fix our eyes on Jesus… and strive to be found in the number of those who wait for Him in love.” 14

Church discipline was part of salvation. Sin wasn’t waved away with “grace.” It was confessed, wept over, and healed. The Shepherd of Hermas—an early second-century text—calls repentance “the great and glorious thing” because it restores the fallen tree to life. 15

Where It Drifted – The Latin Turn

No single man “ruined” Christianity, but something shifted.

Tertullian (c. 200 AD), trained as a Roman lawyer, began using legal frameworks for sin and salvation. Terms like satisfactio, culpa, poena—guilt, penalty, satisfaction—entered theology.

Augustine (354–430 AD) deepened it. He taught that all humans inherit Adam’s guilt, that grace is irresistible for the elect, that faith is primarily internal trust, and that salvation is a legal declaration of righteousness before God. The language of healing, training, and participation didn’t disappear, but it shrank. 16

Was Augustine malicious? No. But his categories were courtroom and inward psychology, not covenantal and communal like the apostles. Salvation became mostly about not going to hell, rather than becoming like Christ.

Recovering the Older Song

Step back before the arguments—before indulgences, legalism, altar calls—and the gospel sounds like this:

• Salvation is being rescued and remade—joined to Christ’s life.

• Faith is allegiance—loyal trust expressed in obedience.

• Grace is God’s power and favor—pardon and participation, energy and invitation.

• The question wasn’t “Are you saved?” but “Are you becoming like Him?”

This is not nostalgia. It’s recovery. The church doesn’t need a new gospel. It needs the old one—unfiltered.

The Way of Salvation – What It Looked Like Before Theology Became an Argument

Salvation Was a Path, Not a Moment

Before anyone debated justification or wrote catechisms, Christians described their faith with one simple word: The Way (Acts 9:2). Salvation wasn’t a status you claimed. It was a road you walked—publicly, bodily, in community, under a Lord who expected obedience, not just belief.

Every part of life bent around it: meals, money, work hours, sleep, speech, sex, friendships, even death. Today, most people try to fit God into their schedule. For the first generations, the schedule was built around God.

The Catechumenate – Salvation Began Before Baptism

You didn’t “get saved” by saying a prayer in private. You entered a training process that could last one to three years—called the catechumenate. It was not religious gatekeeping—it was spiritual rehab, moral preparation, and loyalty formation. 17

Catechumens had to:

– Renounce idols, sorcery, violence, and sexual immorality

– Attend Scripture readings and teaching three times a week

– Fast every Wednesday and Friday

– Learn to pray the Lord’s Prayer and forgive enemies

– Give alms regularly or they weren’t allowed to pray with the church 18

Only after they proved sincerity—by life change, not emotions—could they move toward baptism. Christianity was never for spectators. It was a road you chose to walk in plain sight.

Baptism – Death, Birth, Oath, and Warfare

Baptism was not a ceremony. It was crossing a border.

On the night before Easter, catechumens fasted, confessed sins, stood facing the west, and renounced Satan aloud. Then they turned east—toward the dawn—and declared loyalty to Christ. 19

Clothes were removed. They stepped into water. They were immersed three times—“in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.” 20

Hippolytus of Rome (c. 215 AD) describes what followed: anointing with oil like ancient kings and priests, the laying on of hands for the gift of the Spirit, first Eucharist, and a white robe symbolizing new birth. 21

Baptism was:

• Death and resurrection (“buried with Him… raised to walk in newness of life” – Romans 6:4)

• Adoption and enlistment into God’s household and army

• Exodus reenacted—leaving Pharaoh (sin) to follow a new Lord

• A legal oath of allegiance, binding as Roman military vows 22

If someone broke that allegiance after baptism? They weren’t “losing salvation paperwork.” They were breaking covenant loyalty and needed restoration.

 Eucharist – Medicine, Not Metaphor

After baptism, the new Christian entered the Eucharist—the beating heart of salvation’s ongoing life.

Ignatius called it “the medicine of immortality, the antidote that we should not die but live forever in Jesus Christ.” 23

Justin Martyr wrote, “This food is not common bread or common drink… the flesh and blood of that Jesus who became incarnate.” 24

Eucharist wasn’t a memorial service or snack. It was communion—koinonia—participation in Christ’s body and blood (1 Cor 10:16). It fed the new life implanted at baptism. To skip it repeatedly was to starve the soul.

Only the baptized were allowed to be present. Invitations said: “If anyone is holy, let him come; if anyone is not, let him repent.” 25

Confession & Church Discipline – Because Grace Wasn’t Cheap

Sin was not shrugged at or rebranded as “brokenness.” It was treated like a spiritual sickness that could kill if ignored.

Confession was expected—sometimes privately to clergy, sometimes publicly. The Shepherd of Hermas (early 2nd century) says there is “one repentance for the servants of God,” meaning repentance must be real—but restoration is possible. 26

Grave sins—like murder, adultery, or denying Christ—required tears, fasting, sometimes standing outside the gathering in sackcloth until restored. 27

Tertullian mocked those who wanted a Christianity without repentance: “They flee from this work as if it were exposure to death.” 28

Discipline wasn’t punishment. It was surgery—painful, but meant to heal and save.

The Daily Pattern – Life Wrapped Around God

The ordinary rhythm of a Christian life looked nothing like modern “church on Sundays if nothing else is going on.” They lived on a different clock:

Practice — Frequency — Purpose

Morning & evening prayer — Daily — Psalm-based, anchored the day in God

Fasting — Wednesdays & Fridays — Preparation, imitation of Christ 29

Almsgiving — Before praying — “Let your alms sweat in your hand until you find who deserves it.” 30

Shared meals / love feasts — Weekly — Fellowship + Eucharist (before abuses forced separation; 1 Cor 11)

Scripture reading — Daily or in liturgy — Most believers heard it before they could read it

Greeting with a holy kiss — Every gathering — Embodied reconciliation

Faith was a craft, not a concept. Something you practiced until it shaped you.

What This Produced – A People Rome Couldn’t Break

Why did Christianity spread without marketing, buildings, or political influence? Because salvation made a different kind of human.

Pagans wrote about them in disbelief:

• They rescued abandoned infants.

• They nursed plague victims when families fled.

• They refused to kill, expose infants, cheat in business, or take revenge.

• They sang hymns while being executed.

• They forgave their executioners.

Tertullian said unbelievers would gasp: “See how they love one another… and how they are ready to die for each other.” 31

They didn’t argue the faith was true—they lived like it was.

The Drift—What Changed and Why

No one invented “easy-believism.” It happened slowly.

• When Christianity became legal (313 AD) and then mandatory (380 AD), baptism turned into cultural initiation instead of death-to-self.

• Wealth, politics, and power flooded in.

• Tertullian introduced courtroom language.

• Augustine added inherited guilt, predestination, and internalized grace.

• Over centuries, salvation moved from way of life to legal status.

• Faith shrank from loyalty to mental assent.

• Grace was debated more than practiced.

But the older way is still there—alive in Scripture, worship, and the earliest voices.

Why It Matters Now

Because when people say, “I believe in Jesus, why do I feel dead inside?”—this is why.

We traded a path for a prayer. A life for a moment. A covenant for a contract.

The earliest church didn’t ask, “Are you saved?”

They asked, “Are you following the Way?”

“Are you becoming like Him?”

That’s the question worth recovering.

Endnotes

1. Irenaeus, Against Heresies 5. Pref.

2. Romans 6:3–5; Justin Martyr, First Apology 61.

3. Ignatius, Ephesians 20.

4. Romans 2:6–8; Matthew 25:31–46.

5. On Roman sacramentum militiae, see oath usage in military contexts.

6. Romans 1:5; 16:26.

7. 1 Clement 32:4; 33:1–2.

8. 1 Clement 33:1–2.

9. Didache 6:2.

10. 1 Corinthians 15:10 (NASB ’95).

11. Irenaeus, Against Heresies 4.37.

12. Titus 2:11–12 (NASB ’95).

13. Hippolytus, Apostolic Tradition 17–22.

14. 1 Clement 33–36.

15. Shepherd of Hermas, Mandate 4.1.

16. Augustine, On Nature and Grace; Confessions; City of God.

17. Hippolytus, Apostolic Tradition 17–20.

18. Didache 1–4.

19. Apostolic Tradition 21.

20. Matthew 28:19; Romans 6:3–4.

21. Hippolytus, Apostolic Tradition 21–22.

22. Tacitus, Histories 1.55 (re: military oath).

23. Ignatius, Ephesians 20.

24. Justin Martyr, First Apology 66.

25. Didache 10.

26. Shepherd of Hermas, Mandate 4.

27. Apostolic Tradition 29.

28. Tertullian, On Repentance 10.

29. Didache 8.

30. Didache 1.6.

31. Tertullian, Apology 39.