Acts 17:22-34
22 So Paul stood in the midst of the Areopagus and said, “Men of Athens, I observe that you are very religious in all respects. 23 “For while I was passing through and examining the objects of your worship, I also found an altar with this inscription, ‘TO AN UNKNOWN GOD.’ Therefore what you worship in ignorance, this I proclaim to you. 24 “The God who made the world and all things in it, since He is Lord of heaven and earth, does not dwell in temples made with hands; 25 nor is He served by human hands, as though He needed anything, since He Himself gives to all people life and breath and all things; 26 and He made from one man every nation of mankind to live on all the face of the earth, having determined their appointed times and the boundaries of their habitation, 27 that they would seek God, if perhaps they might grope for Him and find Him, though He is not far from each one of us; 28 for in Him we live and move and exist, as even some of your own poets have said, ‘For we also are His children.’ 29 “Being then the children of God, we ought not to think that the Divine Nature is like gold or silver or stone, an image formed by the art and thought of man. 30 “Therefore having overlooked the times of ignorance, God is now declaring to men that all people everywhere should repent, 31 because He has fixed a day in which He will judge the world in righteousness through a Man whom He has appointed, having furnished proof to all men by raising Him from the dead.” 32 Now when they heard of the resurrection of the dead, some began to sneer, but others said, “We shall hear you again concerning this.” 33 So Paul went out of their midst. 34 But some men joined him and believed, among whom also were Dionysius the Areopagite and a woman named Damaris and others with them.
This is an absolutely wonderful description of the One True God in comparison to human thought. The God that Paul describes here is the God I want to serve. Maybe you question the existence of God altogether. However, in reading this, if there is a God, wouldn’t you want that God to be one who isn’t imagined or created by mere humans? Maybe you think that’s who this God is: a mystical creature that millions of people over thousands of years dreamt up and collaborated together to write a fairy tale book about it. If He isn’t real, then I guess it’s at least a really good story!
In the beginning of his speech, Paul mentions that they “are very religious in all respects.” This is a reflection upon the various gods they seek to impress and serve. The vast idolatry and mix of cultures and religions is a sign of seeking out the truth about higher deities. We are all born with what I like to call the “God shaped hole,” which is the part of us that yearns for God but upon birth, we are disconnected from Him. We constantly seek to fill this gap and nothing really satisfies. The Athenians couldn’t find enough “gods” to try to learn about in order to fill this gap but none of it fit. Like a jigsaw puzzle with a missing piece that you just can’t make fit. Even if you fabricate the piece to try and fit it in the hole, you know it isn’t the original and it isn’t right. The monument to the Unknown God reveals that this God that they knew existed wasn’t one they could know intimately by ritual nor by fabricating an image to Him.
Throughout the Scriptures we see the Israelites trying to fill in that gap by conforming to the Law. They tried filling it with themselves. Some of the folks in the Old Testament got the hint, that they can’t and short of the grace and mercy of God, there is no way they could live up to God’s standard. We see in the interim, aside from rampant and repeated idolatry to fill that hole they felt as a result of not being in communion with God, that the Pharisees and Scribes became their own gods: self-righteous in their religion.
In verse 30, Paul reveals the call to repentance. He is talking about our call to repentance as humans of trying to fill that hole ourselves and realizing that anything short of God Himself, it cannot be satisfied. How have you been trying to replace the necessity for God in your life? Do you ignore the hole? Do you try to stuff it with other things? Do you create other pieces of the puzzle to try to fix it yourself? They called Him the Unknown God because they couldn’t figure out how He could fit into their definition of what a god should be. They were so used to creating things to worship and worshipping things and men they found that they didn’t realize they had to think outside the box. Paul piques their interest because he is saying, “You’ve got it all wrong. God doesn’t conform to our will nor should He if He is truly God.”
How often do we want God to conform to our will and our way of doing things? How much do we refuse to believe His precepts because we don’t like them? How often do we impede our relationship with Him because we want Him to behave in a manner that makes us happy? We completely forget that by conforming to His will, we will experience a joy that is literally not of this world.
