He Himself Gives Everyone
Life
Then
they took him and brought him to a meeting of the Areopagus,
where they said to him, “May we know what this new teaching is that you are
presenting? You are bringing some strange ideas to our ears, and we would like
to know what they mean.” (All the Athenians and the foreigners who lived there
spent their time doing nothing but talking about and listening to the latest
ideas.)
Paul then stood up in
the meeting of the Areopagus and said: “People of
Athens! I see that in every way you are very religious. For as I walked around
and looked carefully at your objects of worship, I even found an altar with
this inscription: TO AN UNKNOWN GOD. So you are ignorant of the very thing you
worship—and this is what I am going to proclaim to you.
“The God who
made the world and everything in it is the Lord of heaven and earth and does
not live in temples built by human hands. And he is not served by human hands,
as if he needed anything. Rather, he himself gives everyone life and breath and
everything else. From one man he made all the nations, that they should inhabit
the whole earth; and he marked out their appointed times in history and the
boundaries of their lands. God did this so that they would seek him and perhaps
reach out for him and find him, though he is not far from any one of us. ‘For
in him we live and move and have our being.’ As some of your own poets have
said, ‘We are his offspring.’
“Therefore
since we are God’s offspring, we should not think that the divine being is like
gold or silver or stone—an image made by human design and skill. In the past
God overlooked such ignorance, but now he commands all people everywhere to
repent. For he has set a day when he will judge the world with justice by the
man he has appointed. He has given proof of this to everyone by raising him
from the dead.”
Acts
17:19-31
Paul connected with
people on their own level. Jesus did the same thing. Are you doing that, as
well?
We need to mix with
other cultures and look for core values, from which we can then talk about
faith. We may have greater impact for the gospel by relating it to people in
terms they can readily embrace.
The
content of the Bible must be brought into contact with the world.
Our Daily Bread –