Knowing God

Reading: Acts 17.16-33
There are many ways from the Burdekin to Townsville. You can take the turn-off near Giru and go via Woodstock - the old route. Or you may prefer to go through Clare and up the Ravenswood road. At a stretch you might go through Bowen and Collinsville - I don't know the condition of that road.

Setting out on these different routes, we could all arrive at the same destination. However, if getting there promptly and comfortably is the aim, we would opt for the more direct route via Alligator Creek.

Only One Way

A Hindu law student said to me one day, "Peter, there are many ways to God. We are all heading in the same direction. We will all arrive there in the end."

That, of course, is the Hindu view - and the view of much Eastern religion. It is also the easy, accommodating view we tend to favour in a pluralist, multicultural society.

But there's something exclusive about the Christian gospel. We aren't talking about the universal human aspiration to grasp ultimate reality - to know God. Instead, we are talking about how God himself has reached down to the human race.

So we hear Jesus saying, "I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me" (Jn 14.6). There are many religions, but only one way.

Peter and John were taken before the Jewish Council because a lame beggar had been healed in the name of Jesus. Peter said boldly, "Salvation is found in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given to men by which we must be saved" (Acts 4.12). There are many religious gurus, but only one Saviour.

Playing the Options

In the time of Paul, Rome ruled the world, but Athens was still the intellectual capital. To this day it is recognised that Greek art, philosophy and literature have greatly influenced the world.

There are a number of factors that made the first century AD an ideal time for the spread of the Christian gospel. One was the fact of the pax Romana (the Roman peace) and the effective Roman road system. These facilitated travel for many people (not just the army) throughout the Empire. Another major factor was that Greek was the lingua franca - the language understood everywhere. It was the language in which the New Testament was written.

While Paul was in Athens, awaiting the arrival of Silas and Timothy from Berea, he was struck by the way the Athenians played the options. In fact, the New International Version says he was "greatly distressed" (Acts 17.16). They were "very religious" (v. 22) - "very superstitious" in the KJV. It wasn't just that the city was "full of idols" (v. 16). In their desire to cover all options, they even had an idol "to an Unknown God" - just in case there was some god they had failed to appease. (Pausanius said that at Athens there are "altars of gods called 'unknown'." Philostratus wrote of "Athens, where even unknown divinities have altars erected to them").

There was also an active quest for new ideas - "All the Athenians and the foreigners who lived there spent their time doing nothing but talking about and listening to the latest ideas" (v. 21). In some situations today we are told that the quest is more important than the truth, that the process is more important than the conclusions. The Athenians were much like that.

It was this open quest for new ideas that opened the way for Paul to tell the gospel before the city council - the Areopagus. And it was their religious quest - even towards "an unknown God" - that gave him a key beginning-point in what he said to them.

The One True God

Some in his audience regarded him with derision. The New International Version's "babbler" is more literally a "seed-picker" - the word referred firstly to a gutter-sparrow, then to one who wanders the market-place looking for scraps, and by extension to the person who picks up ideas here and there and tries to sound learned.

"He seems to be advocating foreign gods," they said (v. 18). Paul had kept referring to Jesus and the resurrection - Anastasis (resurrection) must be the female deity.

But Paul had come to tell them about the one true God - the "God who made the world and everything in it," the "Lord of heaven and earth" (v. 24).

God's purpose in the creation of the human race is that we all come to know him - "so that men would seek him and perhaps reach out for him and find him" (v. 27). God hasn't been playing hard to find, and in the universal religious quest there have been some true discoveries about God in the midst of the superstition - truths that Paul can quote from two of their own writers.

The first is quoted from a poem attributed to Epimenides of Crete -

The second comes from the Cilician poet Aratus who wrote that "in every direction we all have to do with God; for we are also his offspring." These two poets were both thinking of Zeus as the Supreme Being. Paul was by no means identifying the Lord God with Zeus. Rather, he is recognising here that the pagan poets have had true insights into the nature of God and our relationship to him.

As God was now offering them the way of truth, they needed to turn away from error and evil. For there will be a day of judgment, and that will be through Jesus who died and whom God raised from death.

Here was the crunch point. Paul wasn't talking about one God among many. He wasn't dabbling in the realm of ideas where you might balance many options and be committed to none. God has revealed himself and his purposes in one person, Jesus Christ - an historical person who died and rose again. At this point the crowd was divided. Some sneered at Paul. Some wanted to hear more. Others were ready to believe.

Paul went on to Corinth immediately after his stay in Athens. It is striking that he wrote in his first letter to the Corinthians, "For the message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God. For it is written: 'I will destroy the wisdom of the wise; the intelligence of the intelligent I will frustrate.' Where is the wise man? Where is the scholar? Where is the philosopher of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world? For since in the wisdom of God the world through its wisdom did not know him, God was pleased through the foolishness of what was preached to save those who believe. Jews demand miraculous signs and Greeks look for wisdom, but we preach Christ crucified: a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles, but to those whom God has called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. For the foolishness of God is wiser than man's wisdom, and the weakness of God is stronger than man's strength" (1 Cor. 1.18-25).

People may debate all they like, but finally God's offer is the only option. There are those today who poke fun at the gospel. There are genuine seekers who want to know more. And there are those who take to heart the message of what God has done in Jesus Christ and know its relevance and its power to save and change every one of us.

There are many ways to get to Townsville, but there is only one way to come to the Father - and that is through Jesus Christ. Be sure to put your trust in him. Be unashamed to commend him to others.


© Peter J. Blackburn, Home Hill and Ayr Uniting Churches, 5 May 2002
Except where otherwise noted, Scripture quotations are from the New International Version, © International Bible Society, 1984.

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