“He
Will Judge the World”
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 17:22-31
We can cause unfathomable sorrow when we dishonor and
debase others through bigotry. Every human being is created in the image of God
– more like God than any other creature and worthy of honor. To demean that
image is to wound another human being at the deepest level.
God desires that we show respect to all people, because
everyone bears His image.
Our Daily Bread –