Since We Are God's Offspring

Acts 17:16-34

Good morning! Today we continue our series in the Book of Acts, looking at the second half of Chapter 17. To have context, let me remind you of the first half of the chapter, which was discussed last week. Paul is in the middle of his second missionary journey, in Macedonia, which today is Greece. At the end of Chapter 16, Paul and Silas depart Philippi after having been beaten with rods there and thrown into prison. But God rescues them with an earthquake, and the jailor and his family come to faith in Christ. 

Now an interesting detail is that Chapter 16 uses the pronoun “we”, whereas Chapter 17 returns to the pronoun “they”. Assuming that the “we” included the author of Acts, Luke, it would appear that Luke stayed behind in Philippi when Paul and Silas depart. This would make sense, as the body of believers is very young in the faith and could benefit from further teaching and encouragement. 

Now their next significant stop is in Thessalonica. Along the way they go through Amphipolis and Apollonia. It is a 30-to-40 mile journey from each city to the next. At Thessalonica, Paul began his outreach, as he did so often, in a Jewish synagogue. Some came to faith, but others were jealous and stirred up people against them. They could not find Paul and Silas, but instead rounded up Jason, at whose whom they were staying, and some others who had believed, complaining before the city officials. 

Because the whole city was stirred up against Paul and Silas, the other believers kept them hidden until nighttime when they sent them away to Berea, about 50 miles away. Once again, Paul and Silas start in the synagogue. The Berean Jews were much more open to their message than the Jews of Thessalonica were, eagerly examining the Scriptures to verify what Paul and Silas were saying to them, and many came to faith along with many Gentile Greeks. But the Jews of Thessalonica learned what was going on in Berea, and they went there, seeking to once again turn the town against them. They were successful, and so once again Paul was sent away. This time, it was apparently just Paul who went. We are told that Silas stayed behind along with Timothy. 

This was a longer journey, all the way to Athens. We are told that Paul’s escorts brought him to the coast, to the sea, a journey of about 30 miles, and then I think it is likely that they went by boat to Athens, a distance of around 200 miles. Paul asked his escorts to send word for Silas and Timothy to join him. 

Regarding Athens, I am going to quote from Wikipedia, which in turn quotes from multiple sources: “Classical Athens was a powerful city-state. It was a center for the arts, learning and philosophy, and the home of Plato's Academy and Aristotle's Lyceum. It is widely referred to as the cradle of Western civilization and the birthplace of democracy, largely because of its cultural and political influence on the European continent—particularly Ancient Rome.”

Plato’s Academy was founded by Plato himself in 387 BC and continued until 83 BC. One of the people who studied there, from 367 to 347 BC was Aristotle, who then started his own school, the Lyceum, which continued until 86 BC. Both these schools widely quoted Socrates, who was also an Athenian and is considered the founder of Western philosophy. Although these schools were no longer in existence at the time of Paul, their existence for hundreds of years strongly influenced the city as a whole, and at the time of Paul, Athens continued to be the world’s premier place for schools of philosophy, philosophical debates, and learning in general. Additional famous people who lived and worked in Athens prior to the time of Paul include the playwrights Aeschylus (who wrote the Oresteian trilogy – Agamemnon, The Libation Bearers, and The Eumenides), Sophocles (who wrote the Theban trilogy – Oedipus Rex, Oedipus at Colonus, and Antigone), and Euripides (who wrote Orestes and the Bacchae). (If you never studied these, and they’re all Greek to you, that’s fine!) The physician Hippocrates and the historian Thucydides were also Athenians. 

Although the “golden age” of Athens was about 400 to 500 years earlier, Athens was still a dominant city in terms of its effects on philosophy, history, science, mathematics, and culture at the time of the New Testament. It is no exaggeration to call Athens the pinnacle of the Gentile world at that time, and Paul now faced this city, alone. 

And this brings us to today’s passage.   

While Paul was waiting for them in Athens, he was greatly distressed to see that the city was full of idols. So he reasoned in the synagogue with both Jews and God-fearing Greeks, as well as in the marketplace day by day with those who happened to be there. A group of Epicurean and Stoic philosophers began to debate with him. Some of them asked, “What is this babbler trying to say?” Others remarked, “He seems to be advocating foreign gods.” They said this because Paul was preaching the good news about Jesus and the resurrection. 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.) – Acts 17:16-21

There is a tremendous amount to unpack here. Let’s start by talking about Paul’s “great distress.” I really like the King James’ translation of this verse: “Now while Paul waited for them at Athens, his spirit was stirred in him, when he saw the city wholly given to idolatry.” What does this mean? Weren’t all the cities Paul visited wholly given to idolatry? What was different about Athens? I believe it was the pervasive extent of worship. Ancient writers said that no city was more devoted to their gods than Athens. This means that not only did you see countless idols, you also saw even more countless people making offerings and performing worship in front of these idols. More than 20 years ago, I visited Ulan Bataar, the capitol city in Mongolia, a city that is ostensibly Buddhist. While there I visited a famous Buddhist temple containing the largest indoor Buddha statue in Mongolia, one about 75 feet tall. Ulan Bataar was a large city, but the place was nearly empty. It felt to me that Ulan Bataar was much more secular than it was Buddhist, especially among the youth. My point is that even though the vast majority of people of Ulan Bataar would have identified themselves as Buddhist, I would never have described Ulan Bataar as a “city wholly given to idolatry.” And there are reasons for this. The USSR has strongly influenced Mongolia in the past, and its atheist teachings permeated the schooling system for many years. 

As for Athens, I think we can make a similar kind of comparison. Most cities in the Roman Empire were more like Ulan Bataar. Yes, they were all idolatrous, but their zeal for idolatry was more muted than that in Athens. The zeal of Athens for idolatry was unmatched. 

How would you feel about coming to a city like this, where everyone is deeply devout but devoted to false gods? Would you feel afraid? Would you feel like it was hopeless to try to spread the gospel? Not Paul. It stirred him up. Like Jesus saw before him, he saw that these people were lost and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd. And he knew that the power of the gospel was independent of his own strength; indeed, when he was weak, God was strong.  

And so, once again, we see Paul doing what he did again and again. He met with Jews and God-fearing Greeks at the synagogue, and he also went to the busy agora, the central marketplace of the city, to talk to anyone who would listen. Archaeologically speaking, we know exactly where this agora was, and many monuments (many temples, unsurprisingly) have been discovered along the site. 

Let’s talk about the Epicurian and the Stoic philosophers. As already explained, even at the time of Paul there were multiple ongoing schools of philosophy. Each of these “schools” had current students and teachers, as well as a long “proud” history of their school of thought. The Epicurians were started by Epicurus, and Zeno started the Stoics, both centuries earlier.

The Epicurians were actually what we today might call “practical atheists”. They couldn’t say this openly, as it might get them killed. But they believed not in fate, but in chance determining what happened to people. They publicly stated that yes, there were many gods, but they taught that the gods didn’t really care about people, and so they did not influence what happened to people. They also taught that “dead was dead.” That is, when you died, you turned into worm food and ceased to exist. A consequence of these beliefs was the principle that you should make the most of the short life that you have. Although you could place them among the hedonists, they also emphasized that maximizing pleasure equally meant minimizing pain, so they did not advocate being reckless. Instead, they suggested seeking modest, sustainable pleasure with peace and freedom from fear.  

Now the Stoics also had a non-traditional view of god (non-traditional for that time period). They believed, kind of like modern new-agers, that god was in everything, or more precisely, everything was god. The trees were god, the rocks were god, the cows were god, you were god, and so on. They believed that people have an individual nature as well as a universal nature (the god part), and that keeping these two natures in harmony was essential to avoiding misery. They believed that a happy life was not found in possessions, but in the pursuit of virtue, and their four cardinal virtues were temperance (restraint, self-control), courage, justice, and practical wisdom. They focused on controlling their own thoughts and opinions, because they believed they had no control over external events. This meant that they worked hard to eliminate “toxic” emotions, which for them included fear and anger but also hope. 

The Stoics and the Epicureans were, at the time of Paul, two dominant schools of philosophy, probably the two dominant schools. They disagreed strongly on practical advice about how to live your life. The Epicureans saw nothing wrong with material possessions, with tuning out of politics or otherwise remaining uninvolved, and the Stoics saw the opposite, that possessions were a trap, that making a difference in the world was essential.  Each school saw the other as not only wrong but foolish, silly. There wasn’t really outward animosity between the two groups, though. Maintaining civil discourse was the above-all rule in Athens.

Paul spoke publicly, and both groups gathered to listen. Paul was saying something different from both of them, something they could not really follow at all. They began to (politely) ridicule him, calling him a “babbler,” literally a seed pecker. They were basically calling him something like a silly chicken, kind of like how Clemson fans sometimes refer to their nemesis. 

Now it says that they brought him to a meeting of the Areopagus. The term Areopagus has multiple meanings. First of all, it is a location. It is a prominent rock outcropping in Athens, and the name means pagus, or hill, of Ares, which is the Greek name for Mars. Thus, another name for this location is Mars Hill. Centuries before the time of Paul, this location was used as the location for the Athenian governing council to meet, and then it was restricted to the location for the meeting of the Athenian judicial council, or court. A common belief was that this location was where the war god Ares was tried by the other gods for the murder of Poseidon’s son. 

At the time of Paul, it is believed that court proceedings (still called the Areopagus) no longer took place at the location called the Areopagus. So what is Acts saying happened to Paul? So, most likely, either he was put in a criminal trial at a location other than Mars Hill, or he was taken to Mars Hill because that was a popular location for philosophical discussions and debates. I personally do not believe he was on trial, as the passage does not seem to describe it in this way. I believe he was brought to Mars Hill to present his novel philosophy. I believe that the group that met there contained many of the influential people of the city, and that they had a group called a council, and that they could call in public officials if something criminal were to take place (for example, to declare outright atheism and say that the gods don’t exist), but that they in themselves did not have the authority to pronounce criminal sentences. 

The parenthetical comment seems to support this idea, as it seems that debating philosophy seems to be what this is about. They are still quite polite, and it seems like they just want something fresh to hear. It does not seem like Paul is on trial.
Now the following is a generalization, but my experience talking with philosophy majors and philosophy professors is similar to this. They seem to be very eager to hear and debate new ideas, but it is almost a form of entertainment for them. I have repeatedly gotten the impression that they aren’t really interested in determining what is actually true, or in changing how they live their lives in response to what is true. Instead, they tend to be fairly set in their beliefs, and although they may live in accordance to these beliefs, their beliefs don’t really place very stringent demands on their lives. I would argue that the same was true of the Stoics and the Epicureans.  

The Stoics remind me of people today who excessively promote things like minimalism (minimizing your possessions), minimizing your carbon footprint, promoting the cultural awareness cause “du jour”, and so on. I’m not saying that reducing your possessions is bad, or being environmentally conscious is bad, and even in the area of cultural sensitivity, we should not go out of our way to offend people, but these things are far from the most important things to think about when you think about our relationship with God and what it implies about how we should live our lives. The Epicureans remind me of an even larger group of people who never get involved, who don’t make waves, who just go to work and then focus on living a nice life with a nice variety of possessions. Again, these things are not necessarily bad, but if they are the primary focus of your life, you are again not thinking about who God really is and what He would say about how we should live our lives. 

Although it is true that the Epicureans and Stoics were two major schools of philosophy, it is also true that most average people did not prescribe to either philosophy. As the passage says, these were people who loved to discuss philosophy and who had little else to do. Your average person had to work and was strongly devoted to their particular gods that they believed had helped them in the past. As I mentioned already, Paul was likely not just disturbed by how many altars he saw, but also how many people he saw at them.  

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. – Acts 17:22-23

The word translated here as very religious we could also translate as pious. Paul uses this word as a compliment. The alternative would be to say they don’t care about God, which would be extremely offensive to them. It’s a tricky message to give, because he has such a diverse audience. He has the Stoics and the Epicureans, who both don’t really believe in the gods in the traditional way. But there are likely also government officials there and others who would be upset if he said anything negative about their objects or methods of worship. And even the Stoics and Epicureans would be offended if you said they were not pious (even though, in a very real sense, they are not). 

There’s an interesting story about the altar to the unknown god. It seems that hundreds of years earlier, there was a plague on Athens, and it was believed it was because a god was dissatisfied with the amount of offerings being made to him or her. They discussed what to do at this very location, the Areopagus, and poet Epimenides told them to gather a large number of goats and set them free in the city, following them even as they split into smaller groups, looking to see where they stopped. Wherever a group of them stopped, if there was an altar nearby, they would presume that that particular god was dissatisfied, so they would slaughter those goats and offer them at that altar. Well, they did exactly this. It turns out that a significant group of goats settled down in locations where there weren’t any altars. So what to do? The people quickly erected altars “to an unknown god” and slaughtered the goats there, assuming that the god would know that the offerings were meant for him or her. This account – which seems to be true – was well-known, and so the offer Paul made here was actually powerful and intriguing.

“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.’ – Acts 17:24-28

This is such a powerful opening. Note that it challenges both the views of the Epicureans and the Stoics. The Epicureans believed that matter was eternal, that nobody created it. And the Stoics believed that God was in everything, so God couldn’t have created God. And it challenges the views of the, shall we call them traditionalists, who worshiped their particular gods out of fear or coincidences in their lives in the past. It challenges them by saying that there is an infinitely more powerful God out there that you should be a lot more concerned about. 

And then Paul explains that this God, the one who made everything, is quite unlike their gods. He doesn’t live in temples built by human hands. Now wait a minute. What about the Temple? Well, we would not say that God, the entirety of God, lived in the Temple. We would say that God’s presence filled the Temple, but the Temple did not contain God. Consider Solomon’s own dedication speech at the Temple. He starts by praising God for keeping His covenants and for His promise to David. Then he says this:

“But will God really dwell on earth? The heavens, even the highest heaven, cannot contain You. How much less this temple I have built!” – I Kings 8:27

Now the Greeks placed their sacrifices at their altars, thinking that either their gods needed this, or in any case demanded it. But God has no need of anything from people. Without explicitly saying that what they are doing is meaningless, that their gods don’t exist, Paul is contrasting God with their gods. God doesn’t need anything from us. In fact, the opposite is true: We need everything from Him. He gives us life and breath and everything else.

Yes, there was a sacrificial system in the Old Testament, but it existed to point out our continual sin and need for forgiveness. It was a foreshadowing of the completed work of Christ on the cross. It wasn’t to “feed” God, or even to keep Him happy. It was to point out that our sin separates us from God, and that the cost for repairing this separation is the blood of someone innocent, free of sin. There were also thanks offerings of bread, but again, these were not to feed God. They too were symbolic of things fulfilled in Christ.  

Next, Paul talks about how from one man He made came all the nations. This means that God is not God for only one group of people, but all peoples. He is not the God of the Jews, but the God of humanity. This was in sharp contrast to the multitudes of gods that were worshiped in Athens, some by particular people groups, some even down to particular families. You continue to see this today in Hinduism. There is no human on earth that doesn’t owe his life to God, and so there is no human on earth that has an excuse for ignoring or refusing God.  

And then Paul so powerfully explains the why. Why did God create us? Because He wants to give us Himself, to be in relationship with us. How incredible, and how unlike the lowercase g gods, who were either petty and demanding, or aloof and uncaring, depending on what you believed. 

And then Paul quotes from two of their own poets! The first quote, quite ironically, comes from Epimenides, the very poet who came up with the solution of the goats. The second quote comes from Aratus. How did Paul know these quotes? Probably because they were common sayings at this time, almost like famous movie quotes or, visually, memes. The first quote, “in him we live and move and have our being” is one in which the original poem is lost, but likely it was a kind of platitude, not to be taken all that seriously, used to “flatter” whatever god was being addressed. The second quote is one in which we have the original poem. Here is the opening:

“From Zeus let us begin; him do we mortals never leave unnamed; full of Zeus are all the streets and all the market-places of men; full is the sea and the havens thereof; always we all have need of Zeus. For we are also his offspring…”

This is also quite ironic, because it says, “him do we mortals never leave unnamed,” yet Paul applies it (rightly so) to the unnamed God. And by the way, more irony: our God is quite literally unnamed. When Moses asks for His name, when he wants to know what to tell the Israelites when the ask Moses who is sending him, God answers, “Tell them that ‘I am’ is sending you.” That’s not a name. 

Now note that Paul has taken two quotes from Greek poets who were referring to a different god. Is this OK? Yes. The point is that even their own poets understood that there was a god who was their creator, and in whom they lived. They were wrong about who this god was, but they were right about the concept. This is what Paul is doing with these quotes. 

Continuing with Paul’s speech:

“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 17:29-31

What is Paul’s argument in verse 29? He is saying that since we are created beings, beings created by God, then nothing we ourselves create, something we make with gold or silver or stone, can be God. God created us, so we certainly cannot create God. Idols are just pictures. God cannot possibly be in them. You cannot force God to be anywhere. Your act of making an idol does not draw Him (even a part of Him) into that location. That is what Paul is saying.
If you believe such things about idols, then your view of God is far too small. Paul explains that in the past He overlooked such ignorance. That is, He revealed Himself first to the Jews, and held them to a higher standard. He gave them the Law and expected them to abide by the Law. 

But Christ has now died and risen. And in doing this, He has now paid for the sins of all who would put their faith in Him. This was not just for the Jews, but for all people. And now that it has happened, God expects all people to turn in faith to Him. To not do so means you are still in your sins, and when Christ returns, He will judge every person on the basis of whether they have repented and believed. 

So many verses confirm this, but here is one:

He will punish those who do not know God and do not obey the gospel of our Lord Jesus. They will be punished with everlasting destruction and shut out from the presence of the Lord and from the glory of His might on the day He comes to be glorified in His holy people and to be marveled at among all those who have believed. – 2 Thess. 1:8-10a

God hates idolatry, not just with regards to the Jews, but with regards to everyone, because it prevents them from getting to know God. And knowing God, through a repentant, faith-based relationship, is necessary for experiencing a future eternal life with Him, because the unholy cannot stand in the presence of the Holy. God has provided the most incredible gift in the history of the universe, the gift of forgiveness through faith in the crucified and resurrected Christ, but the gift must be received. It must be opened. And we do this through repentance, by faith, in Him.  

When they heard about the resurrection of the dead, some of them sneered, but others said, “We want to hear you again on this subject.” At that, Paul left the Council. Some of the people became followers of Paul and believed. Among them was Dionysius, a member of the Areopagus, also a woman named Damaris, and a number of others. – Acts 17:32-34

Now the teaching of the resurrection challenged the incorrect beliefs of the Epicureans, who believed that “dead is dead” and that the gods didn’t care about people. But it also challenged the Stoics, who believed that everyone and everything was god and that fear (of what God will do) and “repentance” were toxic emotions. Some rejected this out of hand, but others wanted to know more. Note that Paul did not fully explain the gospel at this encounter. He left them hungry for more. He had given them a lot to think about. He was challenging what many of them had believed since birth, and his teachings were utterly foreign to them. He would talk with them later, after they had digested what had been already said, and fully explain the gospel to them then. 

It says Paul left the Council. So what does this mean? I still think the Council was not a criminal court, but it was a formal group that met to discuss matters of religion, philosophy, and faith. And we see among the people who turn to Christ was one of the members of the Areopagus, as well as a woman whose lack of description leads us to think that she was simply a “commoner.” Why is she named? I think because God is no respecter of persons. He welcomes rich and poor, important in the world’s eyes and unimportant, equally. All who come by faith are welcomed fully into the kingdom of God.