“He Commands
All People Everywhere To Repent”
Then Paul stood in front of the Areopagus and said, “Athenians, I see how extremely
religious you are in every way. For as I went through the city and looked
carefully at the objects of your worship, I found among them an altar with the
inscription, ‘To an unknown god.’ What therefore you worship as unknown, this I
proclaim to you. The God who made the world and everything in it, he who is
Lord of heaven and earth, does not live in shrines made by human hands, nor is
he served by human hands, as though he needed anything, since he himself gives
to all mortals life and breath and all things. From one ancestor he made all
nations to inhabit the whole earth, and he allotted the times of their
existence and boundaries of the places where they would live, so that they
would search for God and perhaps grope for him and find him – though indeed he
is not far from each one of us. For ‘In him we live and move and have our
being’; as even some of your own poets have said, ‘For we too are his
offspring.’ Since we are God’s offspring, we ought not to think that the deity
is like gold, or silver, or stone, an image formed by the art and imagination
of mortals. While God has overlooked the times of human ignorance, now he commands
all people everywhere to repent, because he has fixed a day on which he will
have the world judged in righteousness by a man whom he has appointed, and of
this he has given assurance to all by raising him from the dead.”
Although he never became a convert to
the new faith that would be called Christianity, Marcus Aurelius, emperor of
Rome from AD161 to 180, displayed remarkable insight. His wisdom reflects the
law of God written in the heart of someone who did not have God’s Word. Just remember
that the happiness of your life depends on the quality of your thoughts. You do
have power over your mind, not outside events. Your life is what your thoughts
make it. Look for common ground with your neighbors, so that you can lead them
to Christ.
A faith worth
having is a faith worth sharing.
Our Daily
Bread – September 7, 2006