By Peter Amsterdam
Download Audio (8.4MB)
Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection has had an incalculable effect on humanity in the two thousand years since He conquered death by rising from the grave to bring salvation to the world. When Jesus laid down His life so that those who believe in Him can enter into an eternal relationship with God, He changed the lives and eternal destinies of billions of people. Through the lives of those who believed in and followed Him, He brought great change to the whole world, and Christianity has made the world a better place in many ways.1
Jesus was born at a time in history when the Roman Empire ruled much of the known world. Thus, the moral standards of Rome permeated much of society. The Romans held a low view of human life. A person was regarded as having value only if he contributed to the political fabric of society. This is seen in several ways in the Roman world, such as the practices of infanticide, gladiatorial games, and suicide.
The early Christians, on the other hand, held a view that human life is sacred, as they believed what Scripture teaches about the value of life and that human beings are created in the image of God (Genesis 1:27). The book of Psalms says, “You have made him a little lower than the heavenly beings and crowned him with glory and honor” (Psalm 8:5).
They understood that God honored human life by sending His Son to become a human being: “And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth” (John 1:14).
Because God values human life, the early Christians understood that life was to be honored and protected. This truth stood in opposition to the culture and practices of their day, and history shows how Christians brought about change in the practices that follow.
Infanticide and child abandonment: The killing of newborn children soon after birth was common in the Greco-Roman world. Infants were killed for a variety of reasons, such as due to being born deformed or frail, unwanted, or because the parents felt they couldn’t afford to care for the child. Often the means of killing an unwanted child was through exposure, the abandoning of newborn children on the side of the road or on dung heaps or in garbage dumps.
To Christians, infanticide was murder, and early Christian writings condemned it. The Didache (written between 85 and 110 AD) stated, “Thou shalt not … commit infanticide.” Christians throughout the first four centuries AD did not have the political power to put a stop to the infanticide commonly practiced in Roman times, and were themselves suffering persecution and martyrdom. However, during that period Christians often took abandoned babies into their own homes or placed them with other believers, who cared for them and often adopted them.
In 374 AD, the Emperor Valentinian formally outlawed infanticide due to the influence of a Christian bishop. While infanticide was never fully eradicated in the Roman Empire, Christians continued to condemn it. After the fall of Rome, when separate countries developed in Europe over the centuries, infanticide was no longer a common or legal practice.
Gladiatorial games: Another example of the low view of human life in ancient times is the gladiatorial games in which gladiators fought, often to death, as a form of entertainment. These popular events were held in arenas throughout the empire from 105 BC to 404 AD, the largest of which was the Roman Colosseum. It is estimated that 500,000 people were killed in the Colosseum alone. The Emperor Trajan (98–117 AD) held gladiatorial games which lasted four months, during which ten thousand gladiators fought, resulting in thousands of them being killed—all for entertainment. (Eventually, persecuted Christian martyrs were killed for their faith in the Colosseum.)
Christians of the time were appalled by the heinous disregard for human life. Church leaders condemned these games because they shed human blood, and they admonished Christians not to attend. As Christianity grew, it was eventually recognized as an official religion, when the Emperor Constantine I issued the Edict of Milan in 313 AD. Christian emperors such as Theodosius the Great and Honorius eventually banned gladiatorial games throughout the Roman Empire.
Human sacrifice: Throughout Old Testament times, we read of societies which practiced human sacrifice. Child sacrifice was common among the followers of Baal in Canaan. While human sacrifice was outlawed throughout the Roman Empire by Jesus’ time, Christians encountered it centuries later in pagan lands. For example, before the gospel was brought to them by St. Patrick, the Irish people sacrificed prisoners of war to war gods and newborns to the harvest gods.2 Human sacrifice was common among pagan Prussians and Lithuanians until the thirteenth century. This came to an end because of Christian influence.
Suicide: In Roman times, the taking of one’s life was often considered an act of self-glory, and suicide was widely practiced. Many well-known Roman philosophers and writers, as well as some Roman emperors, committed suicide. It was also used as a punishment, as emperors sometimes ordered people they were displeased with to “open your veins.” While there was no prohibition on Roman citizens taking their lives, it wasn’t allowed for slaves, as they were considered property; nor for soldiers, unless they were surrounded by adversaries on the battlefield.
Christians preached that since God is the giver and creator of life, it is His prerogative only to end a person’s life. Christian leaders in the third and fourth centuries, such as Clement of Alexandria, Gregory of Nazianzus, and Eusebius, opposed suicide. Church councils from the fourth through the fourteenth centuries also opposed it. Thomas Aquinas wrote that taking one’s life was morally wrong because it was a sin against nature: “Everyone naturally loves himself; suicide also injured the community of which man is an integral part; it was a sin against God’s gift of life.”3
In the Roman world of Jesus’ day, the value placed on human life was very low. The killing or abandoning of newborn children didn’t to our knowledge evoke moral outrage. Taking one’s own life was not generally understood to be morally wrong. Watching gladiators killing one another for the purpose of entertainment was considered normal. (Of course, today there are many movies and television shows which egregiously portray violence, death, and murder; a difference is that while they may not be spiritually healthy to view, the death portrayed in them is acting, and not actual death.)
Life was cheap in ancient times. However, as Christianity started to spread throughout the Roman Empire, the value placed on life began to increase. The message that human life was sacred and the understanding that taking the life of an innocent human being was morally wrong took root. The impact of the Christian message over the centuries brought about a moral understanding regarding human life which has spread throughout the world, and has helped to change the world.
Originally published April 2019. Adapted and republished September 2025. Read by Reuben Ruchevsky.
1 Points from this article were taken from How Christianity Changed the World by Alvin J. Schmidt (Zondervan, 2004).
2 Thomas Cahill, “Ending Human Sacrifice,” Christian History 60 (1998): 16.
3 Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica, trans. Fathers of the English Dominican Province (Christian Classics, 1948), 2:1463.
