The City of God Among the City of Man / Jeremiah 29:1-7
The Two Cities and the Tension of Exile
In the fifth century, the unthinkable occurred: the Roman Empire fell. For centuries, Rome stood as the seemingly invincible pinnacle of human achievement and security. Its collapse sent shockwaves across the Mediterranean world, prompting critics to blame the emergence and legal endorsement of Christianity for weakening the empire. In response to this catastrophic cultural crisis, Augustine of Hippo penned his monumental work, The City of God. Across its pages, Augustine sought not merely to defend the faith against pagan accusations, but to untangle a profound theological reality: the coexistence of two distinct realms—the City of Man, built on the love of self, and the City of God, built on the love of God.
Augustine’s inquiry addressed a perennial dilemma for the people of God: How does the heavenly city reside faithfully within the earthly city? How do citizens of God’s eternal kingdom inhabit a temporal society that often neither understands nor welcomes kingdom values? Throughout church history, believers have frequently gravitated toward one of three inadequate postures when confronting the surrounding culture.
The first erroneous posture is mere isolation—existing in the city while remaining fundamentally indifferent to it. In this mode, the church retreats behind insular walls, creating a cultural enclave that ignores the brokenness of the world outside. The second posture is overt hostility—positioning the church against the city. Mirroring the bitter spirit of the prophet Jonah perched outside Nineveh, this stance views the culture exclusively as an enemy deserving of divine destruction rather than an object of divine compassion. The third and increasingly subtle error is uncritical assimilation—becoming so entirely of the city that the church loses its distinct theological identity. In an effort to achieve cultural relevance, the church forfeits its prophetic edge, reducing the gospel to secular philanthropy and adopting the prevailing anthropology of the age.
None of these postures captures the biblical mandate. Scripture summons believers neither to isolate from the city, wage culture-war vengeance against the city, nor assimilate into the city. Instead, God calls His people to live for the city as ambassadors of His eternal kingdom.
The Babylonian Precedent: Faithfulness in Alien Territory
The Old Testament foundation for this posture is sharply articulated in the ministry of the prophet Jeremiah. For four decades, Jeremiah faithfully proclaimed the impending judgment of Judah by the Babylonian Empire under Nebuchadnezzar. While false prophets flattered the people with promises of immediate peace and superficial deliverance, Jeremiah bore the painful burden of delivering the unvarnished truth of divine discipline.
Jeremiah 23:16-17 (NASB)
Thus says the LORD of hosts, ’Do not listen to the words of the prophets who are prophesying to you. They are leading you into futility; They speak a vision of their own imagination, Not from the mouth of the LORD. ’They keep saying to those who despise Me, ’The LORD has said, ’You will have peace ‘’; And as for everyone who walks in the stubbornness of his own heart, They say, ‘Calamity will not come upon you.’
When Jerusalem fell in 586 BC, the Babylonians devastated the city, shattered its religious institutions, and forcibly deported a remnant into exile. In this trauma, the Babylonian strategy was twofold: to dismantle the exiles’ hope and gradually assimilate them into pagan culture until their distinct identity vanished. In the midst of this displacement, Jeremiah dispatched a pastoral letter from Jerusalem to the exilic community in Babylon, instructing them how to navigate life under foreign rule.
Jeremiah 29:1-7 (NASB)
Now these are the words of the letter which Jeremiah the prophet sent from Jerusalem to the rest of the elders of the exile, the priests, the prophets and all the people whom Nebuchadnezzar had taken into exile from Jerusalem to Babylon. (This was after King Jeconiah and the queen mother, the court officials, the princes of Judah and Jerusalem, the craftsmen and the smiths had departed from Jerusalem.) [The letter was sent] by the hand of Elasah the son of Shaphan, and Gemariah the son of Hilkiah, whom Zedekiah king of Judah sent to Babylon to Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon, saying, ’Thus says the LORD of hosts, the God of Israel, to all the exiles whom I have sent into exile from Jerusalem to Babylon, ’Build houses and live [in them]; and plant gardens and eat their produce. ’Take wives and become the fathers of sons and daughters, and take wives for your sons and give your daughters to husbands, that they may bear sons and daughters; and multiply there and do not decrease. ‘Seek the welfare of the city where I have sent you into exile, and pray to the LORD on its behalf; for in its welfare you will have welfare.’
This passage provides timeless theological principles for God’s covenant people living as resident aliens in a fallen world. The apostle Peter later drew directly upon this exilic framework, addressing New Testament believers as “elect exiles” scattered among the nations, summoned to holy and fruitful conduct within the pagan Roman Empire.
1 Peter 2:11-12 (NASB)
Beloved, I urge you as aliens and strangers to abstain from fleshly lusts which wage war against the soul. Keep your behavior excellent among the Gentiles, so that in the thing in which they slander you as evildoers, they may because of your good deeds, as they observe [them], glorify God in the day of visitation.
Settle, Multiply, and Flourish: The Exilic Mandate
Jeremiah’s letter outlines several specific commands that radically dismantled the natural instincts of the displaced Judeans.
First, God commanded the exiles to enter in and build a stable life: to construct homes, plant gardens, and eat of their yield. To a people grieving national catastrophe and residing among brutal captors, settling down sounded counterintuitive. Yet God made clear that their exile would span seventy years, not a brief moment. Rather than retreating into passivity or plotting armed insurrection, they were to contribute to the ordinary rhythms of human flourishing and honest labor.
2 Thessalonians 3:10-12 (NASB)
For even when we were with you, we used to give you this order: if anyone is not willing to work, then he is not to eat, either. For we hear that some among you are leading an undisciplined life, doing no work at all, but acting like busybodies. Now such persons we command and exhort in the Lord Jesus Christ to work in quiet fashion and eat their own bread.
Second, God instructed the exiles to multiply and not decrease. They were to marry, bear children, and establish generational continuity. While Babylon sought to erase Jewish identity through gradual assimilation, God commanded His people to preserve their covenant distinctiveness and expand their numbers. Faithful presence required deep cultural engagement without theological capitulation. In the new covenant, this mandate extends from biological multiplication to spiritual multiplication through the Great Commission, as the church reproduces disciples and entrusts the gospel to faithful generations.
2 Timothy 2:2 (NASB)
The things which you have heard from me in the presence of many witnesses, entrust these to faithful men who will be able to teach others also.
Seeking the Shalom of the Earthly City
The central and most radical directive of Jeremiah’s letter appears in the command to seek the shalom of Babylon. In the Old Testament, shalom denotes far more than the mere absence of hostility; it signifies wholeness, justice, divine order, and complete well-being. God tied the welfare of His people directly to the welfare of their captors.
Jeremiah 29:7 (NASB)
‘Seek the welfare of the city where I have sent you into exile, and pray to the LORD on its behalf; for in its welfare you will have welfare.’
Seeking the shalom of the earthly city requires a twofold pursuit: horizontal engagement and vertical reconciliation.
Horizontal shalom addresses the common grace goods of human society. It involves pursuing righteousness, equitable laws, civil peace, and compassionate care for the vulnerable—the orphan, the widow, the poor, the unborn, and the marginalized. By affirming the imago Dei in every individual, the church demonstrates kingdom values through concrete deeds of mercy, justice, and community renewal. These endeavors coincide with the universal human longing for safety, dignity, and flourishing.
However, horizontal benevolence alone does not constitute the fullness of God’s shalom. True peace requires vertical shalom—reconciliation between holy God and sinful humanity through Jesus Christ, the Prince of Peace. The ultimate malady of the City of Man is spiritual alienation from its Creator. Thus, kingdom presence must integrate gospel deeds with explicit gospel words.
2 Corinthians 5:18-20 (NASB)
Now all [these] things are from God, who reconciled us to Himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation, namely, that God was in Christ reconciling the world to Himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and He has committed to us the word of reconciliation. Therefore, we are ambassadors for Christ, as though God were making an appeal through us; we beg you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God.
To labor for the temporal good of one’s neighbors while remaining silent regarding their eternal destiny is a betrayal of Christian love. The church must care simultaneously for earthly suffering and eternal redemption.
Faithful Ambassadors of the Heavenly Realm
Finally, Jeremiah commanded the exiles to intercede on behalf of the city. Corporate intercession acknowledges that the true transformation and peace of any community are ultimately works of divine grace rather than human ingenuity. Following the example of Christ, who wept over Jerusalem with profound lament, the church is called to pray earnestly for the spiritual awakening and temporal flourishing of the surrounding world.
Luke 19:41-42 (NASB)
When He approached [Jerusalem], He saw the city and wept over it, saying, ’If you had known in this day, even you, the things which make for peace! But now they have been hidden from your eyes.
The church does not exist in isolation, nor does it wage destructive warfare against the culture, nor does it dissolve into cultural mimicry. By planting roots, maintaining uncompromised covenant identity, laboring for comprehensive shalom, and unceasingly interceding for its neighbors, the City of God stands as a radiant, redeeming witness in the midst of the City of Man.