“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
the 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.”
Acts 17:22-31
We need to search for God in our own ways. He is not hard to
find. We just have to recognize our need and He makes Himself clear to us.
Before we come to know Christ, we grope for God in the darkness. But if we search for him in earnest, He will
make Himself known, for He rewards those who diligently seek Him. He will
gently tell us that He is with us. And He awaits our reply that we have found
Him.
Seek the LORD while He may be found,
Call upon Him while he is near.
Our Daily Bread –