When we picture the beginning of Christianity, we naturally think of Jesus calling his disciples, teaching in Galilee, dying under Pontius Pilate, and rising from the dead. Those events stand at the center of the Christian confession. Without them, we would be telling a different story.
But when the first Christians looked backward through Israel’s Scriptures, they saw something that can be easy for us to miss. They believed that the one revealed in Jesus had already been active in the lives of people who lived centuries before his birth.
Abraham, Moses, and the prophets belonged within his story. Their faith was part of the history that reached its fulfillment in him.
This helps explain a remarkable sentence from Ignatius of Antioch, writing early in the second century:
How could we live apart from him? Even the prophets were his disciples in the Spirit and waited for him as their teacher. Therefore, the one they rightly awaited came and raised them from the dead.
(Ignatius, Letter to the Magnesians 9.2, c. AD 110)
They were already his disciples, awaiting their teacher.
In our previous discussion, we considered Christ’s descent to the dead and his encounter with those who had died before his coming. Here we need to ask the question behind that encounter: What relationship did those people already have with him?
The answer opens up a much larger understanding of the people of God. It also challenges us to think carefully about what it means to belong to Christ today.
Abraham belongs inside the gospel
Our earliest Christian evidence comes from the first century. In his letter to the Galatians, written in the middle of that century to communities in Asia Minor, Paul places Abraham directly inside the gospel story:
Abraham “believed God, and it was counted to him as righteousness.” Understand, then, that those who belong to faith are Abraham’s children.
Scripture, foreseeing that God would justify the nations by faith, announced the good news beforehand to Abraham: “In you all the nations will be blessed.” So those who belong to faith share the blessing of Abraham, the man of faith.
(Paul, Galatians 3:6–9)
Paul calls the promise to Abraham an advance announcement of the gospel. The law given later cannot cancel that promise. Belonging to Christ makes believers Abraham’s heirs. The chronology matters: God’s promise and Abraham’s faithful response precede the Mosaic covenant.
In his letter to the Christians in Rome, Paul makes the implications particularly clear:
Is this blessing, then, only for the circumcised, or also for the uncircumcised? We say that faith was counted to Abraham as righteousness. How, then, was it counted? When he was circumcised or uncircumcised? It was while he was uncircumcised.
He received circumcision as a sign, a seal of the righteousness he had by faith while still uncircumcised. This was so that he might be the father of all who believe without being circumcised, so that righteousness might be counted to them also, and the father of the circumcised who do more than receive circumcision: they also walk in the footsteps of the faith our father Abraham had before he was circumcised.
(Paul, Romans 4:9–12)
Abraham becomes the father of a family defined by faith that crosses the boundary of circumcision. Paul calls his readers to walk in that faith, rather than merely claim its ancestry.
For Christians, this means that our spiritual family reaches much farther back than the first century. We enter a history of promise, trust, and obedience that was already unfolding long before us.
Christ was already present in their story
Paul goes beyond saying that the ancient Israelites offer useful examples. Writing to the church in Corinth, Greece, he identifies Christ with the spiritual provision they received in the wilderness:
I do not want you to be unaware, brothers and sisters, that our ancestors were all under the cloud and all passed through the sea. They were all baptized into Moses in the cloud and in the sea. They all ate the same spiritual food and drank the same spiritual drink. For they drank from the spiritual rock that followed them, and that rock was Christ.
Nevertheless, God was not pleased with most of them, and they were struck down in the wilderness.
(Paul, 1 Corinthians 10:1–5)
Christ belongs within the wilderness story. Yet receiving divine provision did not make the people immune to judgment. Paul tells the Corinthians this because their own participation in Christian worship must not become an excuse for unfaithfulness.
Another first-century writing, addressed to believers across Asia Minor, makes an equally striking claim about the prophets:
Concerning this salvation, the prophets who foretold the grace coming to you searched and investigated carefully. They sought to understand the person or time indicated by the Spirit of Christ within them when he testified beforehand to Christ’s sufferings and the glories that would follow.
It was revealed to them that they were serving you rather than themselves in these things, which have now been announced to you through those who preached the good news by the Holy Spirit sent from heaven. Even angels long to look into these things.
(1 Peter 1:10–12)
The prophets possessed the Spirit of Christ while still searching for understanding. Their participation was real; their knowledge remained incomplete.
That distinction matters. Someone can respond faithfully to God without already understanding everything God intends to reveal.
Moses stands among the faithful
The anonymous author of Hebrews, writing in the first century, includes Moses in this same history:
By faith Moses, when he had grown up, refused to be called the son of Pharaoh’s daughter. He chose to suffer with God’s people rather than enjoy the temporary pleasure of sin. He considered the reproach of Christ greater wealth than Egypt’s treasures, because he was looking toward the reward.
By faith he left Egypt without fearing the king’s anger, for he persevered as though seeing the one who is invisible.
(Hebrews 11:24–27)
Moses’ costly identification with God’s people is interpreted in relation to Christ. At the chapter’s conclusion, the author gathers the faithful into a shared future:
All these were commended through their faith, yet they did not receive the promise, because God had provided something better for us, so that they would not be brought to completion apart from us.
(Hebrews 11:39–40)
Their completion is bound together with ours. The distance between their lifetime and ours does not divide God’s saving purpose into unrelated stories.
Where does that leave the law?
We should distinguish the Mosaic law’s role from the relationship faithful people had with God. A person could live within that covenant and also live by faith. Moses himself is an obvious example.
Paul can speak sharply about the law’s inability to give life, yet he also writes:
So the law is holy, and the commandment is holy, righteous, and good.
(Paul, Romans 7:12)
It would therefore be misleading to divide the story into a good Christ opposed to an evil God who gave Israel its law. Nor does Paul’s reference to the law being mediated through angels establish that those angels were wicked.
The question is what the law could accomplish, and how its role relates to the promise fulfilled in Christ. Faith was already present among people who lived before the law and among people who lived under it.
This is a Christian reading of Israel’s Scriptures. It draws its testimony about faithful trust from those Scriptures themselves. We misread the argument if we turn it into a claim that Jewish people knew only external rules while Christians discovered the possibility of loving God.
Ignatius: disciples awaiting their teacher
Now return to Ignatius, the bishop of Antioch in Syria. His letter to Magnesia was written from Smyrna in Asia Minor, conventionally dated around AD 110. Already, the geography connects Christian communities across the eastern Mediterranean.
His words about the prophets occur in an argument against Christians adopting Jewish observance. They are part of an early dispute about Christian identity, rather than a neutral description of Judaism.
Within that argument, his image is extraordinary: the prophets’ discipleship preceded their teacher’s coming in the flesh.
We should not turn this into a claim that they possessed a complete Christian creed. Ignatius locates their relationship in the Spirit. The Christian claim is that the teacher they awaited was already at work in them.
Read this alongside the New Testament passages, and the continuity becomes visible. The gospel’s fulfillment discloses the identity and purpose of the one toward whom their history was moving.
Justin: could this reach beyond Israel?
Around the middle of the second century, Justin addressed a further question. He came from Flavia Neapolis in Samaria and taught in Rome. In his defense of Christianity to the Roman authorities, he considered people who lived before Jesus’ birth, including people outside Israel:
We have been taught that Christ is God’s firstborn, and we have already explained that he is the Word in whom every race of humanity has shared. Those who lived in accordance with the Word are Christians, even if they were regarded as atheists. Among the Greeks were Socrates, Heraclitus, and others like them. Among the non-Greeks were Abraham, Ananias, Azarias, Misael, Elijah, and many others whose deeds and names would take too long to recount.
(Justin Martyr, First Apology 46, c. AD 155)
Justin’s term “Word,” or Logos, also carries the sense of reason. He interprets faithful response to truth as participation in Christ, including among certain Greek thinkers.
But he does not endorse everything those thinkers taught:
Whatever lawgivers or philosophers expressed well, they worked out by discovering and contemplating some part of the Word. But because they did not know the whole Word, who is Christ, they often contradicted themselves.
(Justin Martyr, Second Apology 10, c. AD 155–160)
For Justin, partial insight and the revelation in Christ are distinguishable. His generosity toward earlier thinkers rests on his conviction that Christ was already active beyond the boundaries of Israel.
This raises a valuable question for our encounters with others: Can we recognize a truthful insight or an act of moral courage without demanding that its author already understand everything we confess?
We can welcome what is true while continuing to examine what is false. Such openness need not weaken our commitment to Christ. It can express our confidence that truth belongs to him.
Irenaeus: God’s care reaches across the generations
Around AD 180, Irenaeus, bishop of Lyons in Roman Gaul, wrote about the same continuity. His own background connected him with Asia Minor, while his ministry placed him in what is now France.
Here is his account of the reach of Christ’s work:
Christ did not come only for those who believed in him during the time of Tiberius Caesar. Nor did the Father care only for those alive today. His care extended to all who, from the beginning, according to their capacity and in their own generation, feared and loved God, practiced justice and devotion toward their neighbors, and earnestly desired to see Christ and hear his voice.
At his second coming, he will awaken such people from their sleep, raise them along with the others who will be judged, and give them a place in his kingdom.
For the same God guided the patriarchs in his purposes and justified the circumcised by faith and the uncircumcised through faith. As we were foreshadowed in them, so they are represented in us, that is, in the church, and receive the reward for what they did.
(Irenaeus, Against Heresies 4.22.2, c. AD 180)
Notice his emphasis on people’s capacity, historical circumstances, and conduct toward their neighbors.
Elsewhere he explains what he believes characterized the righteous before the Mosaic covenant:
Why, then, did the Lord not establish this covenant with the fathers? Because “the law was not laid down for the righteous.” The righteous fathers already had the meaning of the Ten Commandments written in their hearts and souls: they loved the God who made them and did no harm to their neighbor. There was therefore no need to warn them through prohibitory commands, because they had the righteousness of the law within themselves.
(Irenaeus, Against Heresies 4.16.3, c. AD 180)
For Irenaeus, their righteousness had recognizable content: love of God and just treatment of other people. Freedom from the Mosaic covenant did not mean freedom from moral responsibility.
This is also a searching challenge for us. If we want to claim continuity with the faithful, our lives should bear the family resemblance. A detailed statement of belief cannot substitute for honesty, mercy, fidelity, and the willingness to do right when it costs us something.
Clement: preparation among the Greeks
Near the end of the second century, Clement of Alexandria, in Egypt, considered how Greek philosophy might have prepared people for Christ:
Before the Lord’s coming, philosophy was necessary for the Greeks for righteousness. Now it helps toward godliness, serving as preliminary training for those who come to faith through demonstration.
God is the cause of all good things, of some directly, as with the Old and New Testaments, and of others indirectly, as with philosophy. Perhaps philosophy too was given directly to the Greeks, until the Lord should call them. It trained the Greek mind as the law trained the Hebrews for Christ. Philosophy was therefore a preparation, making a way for the person who is brought to completion by Christ.
(Clement of Alexandria, Stromata 1.5, c. AD 195–205)
Clement proposes a preparatory role for philosophy. He does not identify it with the gospel. His “perhaps” also matters: part of this account is an exploration of how providence might have worked.
The comparison brings us back to a question already raised by Justin. If Christ is God’s Word, should we expect his activity to have been absent everywhere outside the communities that could name him?
These writers encourage us to take that question seriously. They do not supply an automatic verdict on every religion, philosopher, or individual. They give us a way of recognizing preparation without confusing preparation with fulfillment.
Eusebius: the name was new, but the life was ancient
By the early fourth century, Eusebius, bishop of Caesarea in Palestine, stated the idea explicitly in his account of Christian history:
Although we are evidently a new people, and the name “Christians” has only recently become known among the nations, our way of life, our conduct, and our religious teaching were not recently invented. From the beginning of humanity, so to speak, they were established through the understanding of godly people of old.
(Eusebius, Church History 1.4.4, c. AD 313–325)
He then writes:
If someone were to say that all those commended for righteousness, from Abraham back to the first human being, were Christians in reality, though not in name, that person would not depart from the truth.
(Eusebius, Church History 1.4.6, c. AD 313–325)
Eusebius offers a later Christian interpretation of the past. His wording makes explicit the distinction between bearing the Christian name and participating in the life Christians traced to Christ.
We have now encountered related ideas in writings connected with Syria, Asia Minor, Rome, Gaul, Egypt, and Palestine. This does not prove that every ancient Christian agreed on every detail. It does show that the interpretation traveled widely and endured across generations.
What are these sources actually establishing?
For a Christian reader, these passages invite us to see the faithful before Jesus as members of the same great history of salvation. Their trust, their suffering, and their hope belong to the story we confess.
For a reader examining Christianity from the outside, they establish something more limited but still important: this understanding has roots in first-century Christian writings and appears repeatedly in subsequent Christian thought. It is not simply a modern attempt to make Christianity more inclusive.
The passages do not independently prove that Abraham consciously knew Jesus of Nazareth, or that Socrates would have accepted Justin’s description of him. They show how Christian authors interpreted earlier lives in light of their convictions about Jesus.
The historical evidence and the theological claim are related, but they are not identical. Whether that interpretation is true depends ultimately on the larger question of who Jesus is and whether the Christian witness to him is trustworthy.
The claim itself is substantial: the one who appeared within history had already been at work throughout history.
A family larger than our own moment
There is something humbling about entering a story this large.
We did not invent faithfulness. We did not discover the need to trust God, refuse evil, care for our neighbors, or endure suffering for what is right. When Christians confess Jesus, we understand ourselves to be joining a family whose history stretches far beyond our own congregation, nation, or century.
That should affect how we treat one another.
If we can recognize kinship with believers separated from us by thousands of years and enormous differences in understanding, we should be willing to work patiently toward unity with Christians who share our central confession today. We will still have disagreements that deserve serious attention. But those disagreements should be approached with the desire to recognize and serve the people Christ is gathering.
This is a practical responsibility. We can pray together, care for people in need, speak honestly about our differences, and refuse to make contempt part of our religious identity.
Our shared confession should become shared work.
Are we living as his disciples?
The phrase “Christians before Christ” can be fascinating enough that we forget its personal challenge. We may spend our energy asking how far the name can reach backward, while giving too little attention to what it asks of those who bear it now.
Paul gives us a concise expression of the life that matters:
In Christ Jesus, neither circumcision nor uncircumcision has any force, but faith working through love.
(Paul, Galatians 5:6)
For us, that means asking more than whether we can defend a position. Are we becoming truthful? Are we willing to repent? Does our faith make us more attentive to people who are lonely, hungry, vulnerable, or difficult to love?
We have received a confession about Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection that earlier generations could only anticipate. That gives us reason for gratitude and a responsibility to respond. The clarity of what we profess should deepen the faithfulness of how we live.
The image of the prophets awaiting their teacher remains powerful because it holds together belonging and expectation. They could be his while still awaiting what they had not yet seen.
We too live between what has been revealed and what remains ahead. We confess the risen Jesus, seek to follow him now, and await the completion of his work in us and in the world.
We join the faithful who came before us by trusting the God they trusted and learning to love the people he places before us. Across all those generations, the Christian hope is that the teacher knows his disciples, and that the story he began will reach its fulfillment in him.
