Day 1 — The Starting Point: Who Jesus Is, and What He Has Done

Today’s Passage: Acts 17:22-31

A man named Paul is standing in Athens, a long way from home. He has spent the days walking the city. Athens then was still the most famous thinking city in the world: statues on every corner, shrines in every quarter, and men who met in the open air for the pleasure of hearing something new.

Paul does not believe what the people of Athens believe, and he does not pretend otherwise. Some of them have already called him a babbler. Others are curious enough to want a proper hearing, so they bring him up to the Areopagus and ask him to explain himself. What follows is a short speech, ten verses long, given to a room of people who shared almost none of his beliefs.

As you read, hold this: The God who made everything is not far from any one of us, and He does not intend to stay unknown.

Acts 17:22-23 (BSB)

²² Then Paul stood up in the meeting of the Areopagus and said, “Men of Athens, I see that in every way you are very religious. ²³ For as I walked around and examined your objects of worship, I even found an altar with this inscription: TO AN UNKNOWN GOD. Therefore what you worship as something unknown, I now proclaim to you.

He begins with what he saw with his own feet. He had walked around, and he had examined their objects of worship, which means he looked closely enough to describe them.

Among all those altars he had found one with no name on it. The Athenians built it in case there was a god somewhere they had failed to honor. Paul could have made that altar a joke. Instead he makes it a door. That one, he says. The space you left open because you knew there might be Someone you had missed. I have come to tell you His name.

None of that is a trick to get past their guard. Paul respects these men enough to have read their city before saying a word about it.

Acts 17:24-25 (BSB)

²⁴ The God who made the world and everything in it is the Lord of heaven and earth and does not live in temples made by human hands. ²⁵ Nor is He served by human hands, as if He needed anything, because He Himself gives everyone life and breath and everything else.

Paul is saying this in the shadow of the Parthenon, put up to house a god. The God he means does not live in buildings. Not because buildings are wicked, but because the One who made the world cannot be fitted inside a part of it.

Then he turns the traffic of religion around. Their worship ran one way: food, oil, and animals carried up to gods who needed servicing and could be kept in a good mood. Paul’s God is not served by human hands, as if He needed anything. Nothing a person could carry up a hill is anything He is short of.

The current runs the other direction. He Himself gives everyone life and breath and everything else. Not to the devout only. To everyone. Every breath taken today, in that room and in this one, came from Him, including the breath of the men who were about to laugh at Paul for saying so.

Acts 17:26-27 (BSB)

²⁶ From one man He made every nation of men, that they should inhabit the whole earth; and He determined their appointed times and the boundaries of their lands. ²⁷ God intended that they would seek Him and perhaps reach out for Him and find Him, though He is not far from each one of us.

The Athenians were proud of their ancestry and told stories about having sprung from their own soil, which made everyone else lesser by birth. Paul says every nation came from one man. There is no first-class human being in that sentence and no second-class one either.

Then the reason behind the whole arrangement: that people would seek Him. Reach out for Him carries the picture of someone feeling their way in a dark room, hands out, hoping to touch a wall. Paul does not pretend that is flattering. He has just walked through a city full of hands reaching out and touching stone.

And then the line that turns the speech warm: though He is not far from each one of us. Paul says this to men who do not believe him. He does not say God is near the ones who have got it right. He says God is not far from any one of them.

Acts 17:28-29 (BSB)

²⁸ ‘For in Him we live and move and have our being.’ As some of your own poets have said, ‘We are His offspring.’ ²⁹ Therefore, being offspring of God, we should not think that the Divine Being is like gold or silver or stone, an image formed by man’s skill and imagination.

Paul now quotes their own poetry back to them, two lines his hearers had known since childhood, the way most people know a line of a national song. He is not borrowing their words to sound clever. He has read their books.

And he lets their own line carry the argument. If we really are God’s offspring, look what follows: children are not carved by their parents out of gold. Nobody makes a living thing with a chisel. So whatever God is, He did not come out of a workshop. The Athenians had built beautiful gods. Paul says, gently and with their own poem in his hand, that they had the order backwards. God made them. They did not make Him.

Acts 17:30-31 (BSB)

³⁰ Although God overlooked the ignorance of earlier times, He now commands all people everywhere to repent. ³¹ 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.”

Here the speech stops describing and becomes an address. He now commands all people everywhere to repent.

Repent is a church word, so it is worth opening. It is not a mood, and it does not mean feeling bad about yourself. It means turning: changing your mind about something so completely that you walk a different direction afterwards. What God overlooked in earlier times, Paul says, was ignorance. His point is that someone has now come and told them.

Then a day set, when the world will be judged with justice, by a Man God has appointed. Paul states it plainly and does not linger. He does not describe it, and he does not use it to frighten anyone into anything. He says it once and moves on, and so will this.

What he offers as evidence is the last thing in the speech, and it is not an argument. It is an event. God has given proof of this to everyone by raising Him from the dead. Paul is pointing at something he says happened, in a particular place, to a particular man, within the living memory of people who could go and ask. That claim can be examined. It is meant to be.

The speech ends there. Some sneered. Some said they would hear him again another time. A few believed him. Paul walked out without pressing any of them.

The God who made everything is not far from any one of us, and He does not intend to stay unknown.

Today’s Decision

Today I will read these ten verses once more, slowly, out loud if I can. Where Paul makes a claim I would have to check before I could accept it, I will write it down in my own words instead of deciding about it yet.