Contra Hauerwas and others, martyrdom is not merely a stance of eternal dissidence; it is a witness to the rule of God in Christ. For Oliver O’Donovan:

…since true martyrdom is a powerful force and its resistance to Antichrist effective, the church must be prepared to welcome the homage of the kings when it is offered to the Lord of the martyrs.

What this means is that the churches of the martyrs could approach the moment of peace without necessarily losing its identity, deeply rooted as it was in the cross of Christ. As long as they remembered thier own testimony to the manner of the enthronement of the Prince of peace, it could regard the temporal ruler as diakonos soi eis to agathon. As long as they remembered that the authorization of human power on the earth by God included the authority given to the disciples of Jesus for their evangelical mission, then it need not remain in an attitude of defiance.
[1] O'Donovan, The Desire of the Nations - Rediscovering the Roots of Political Theology, p. 215