Scripture Daily

Context No. 1151 of 4322 · Acts

Context · Reflection

Acts 17:22-34: in context

22Paul stood in the middle of the Areopagus and said, “You men of Athens, I perceive that you are very religious in all things. 23For as I passed along and observed the objects of your worship, I also found an altar with this inscription: ‘TO AN UNKNOWN GOD.’ What therefore you worship in ignorance, I announce to you. 24The God who made the world and all things in it, he, being Lord of heaven and earth, doesn’t dwell in temples made with hands. 25He isn’t served by men’s hands, as though he needed anything, seeing he himself gives to all life and breath and all things. 26He made from one blood every nation of men to dwell on all the surface of the earth, having determined appointed seasons and the boundaries of their dwellings, 27that they should seek the Lord, if perhaps they might reach out for him and find him, though he is not far from each one of us. 28‘For in him we live, move, and have our being.’ As some of your own poets have said, ‘For we are also his offspring.’ 29Being then the offspring of God, we ought not to think that the Divine Nature is like gold, or silver, or stone, engraved by art and design of man. 30The times of ignorance therefore God overlooked. But now he commands that all people everywhere should repent, 31because he has appointed a day in which he will judge the world in righteousness by the man whom he has ordained; of which he has given assurance to all men, in that he has raised him from the dead.” 32Now when they heard of the resurrection of the dead, some mocked; but others said, “We want to hear you again concerning this.” 33Thus Paul went out from among them. 34But certain men joined with him and believed, including Dionysius the Areopagite, and a woman named Damaris, and others with them.

Standing before the philosophers at the Areopagus in Athens, Paul begins not with condemnation but with a bridge: I see you are very religious; I even found an altar inscribed To an Unknown God, and that God, whom you worship without knowing, I proclaim to you. He describes the Creator who does not live in temples or need anything from human hands, who made every nation from one man and set them in their times and places so that they would seek him and perhaps find him, though he is not far from any of us, for in him we live and move and have our being. He calls for repentance, because God has fixed a day of judgment by the man he raised from the dead. Some mock, some want to hear more, and a few believe.

Paul's approach in Athens is a model of meeting people where they are without watering down the truth. He starts from something in their own experience, their altar to an unknown God, and their own poets who said we are God's offspring, building a bridge from what they already sensed to the God he came to proclaim. He honors the genuine reach for the divine buried even in their idolatry, that altar to a God they knew they did not know. And the God he describes is close: not far from any of us, the one in whom we live and move and have our being, who made us to seek him and reach out for him and find him. That is a gracious picture of every human search for meaning as a groping after the God who is actually near. But Paul does not stop at the comfortable common ground; he presses on to repentance, judgment, and the resurrection, the very point where some begin to mock. He builds the bridge all the way to the cross and empty tomb and lets it divide the room. Meeting people where they are is the start; leading them to the risen Christ is the goal.

Do I meet people where they are, honoring their genuine reach for God, while still leading them all the way to the risen Christ who calls for repentance, even where it divides the room?

Sources