To the Unknown God-Part C

“The determinations of the Eternal Mind are not sudden resolves but the counterparts of an eternal counsel, the copies of divine decrees. Our times are in His hand, to lengthen or shorten, embitter or sweeten, as He pleases.” Mathew Henry. 

Paul exhorts people of Athens mostly heathen, that God is present everywhere, and we do not have to place graven images to feel His presence, and even without an altar or without a temple. There is a longing God has placed in our hearts and a longing for eternity, and a necessary and constant dependence upon His providence just like streams have upon the spring and plant life on sun. In Him we live, move, and He is our life and length of days, and we are not perished because of His patience and pity on our lives. God is our Father, and because of His Fatherly care, power, and goodness our frail life our days are prolonged. It is by His providence our souls cherishes, our thoughts run to and fro for many subjects, and our affections and love run towards proper objects. In God our souls move our bodies, we speak, we walk, and He is all in all because God has made man in His image and likeness. In Him we are a noble being ranked high, capable of knowing and enjoying God and not thrown to perish with the misery of the devil because of His love and goodness. Above all we are His offspring, formed by Him and for Him and therefore we as His children are obliged to obey His commandments. Since we are called to live for Him, we have to consecrate our entire being to Him, and become holy and acceptable to Him because there is an eternal well-being in Him.

Paul reasoned out and argued with the Athenian heathens that God cannot be represented by an image of gold, silver, or stone or graven art and by other man’s devices for the following reasons.

·         We are the off springs of God, and spirits in flesh and God our Father is a Spirit Himself, so the Godhead cannot be thought of as an image, or a mould made out of a material from this earth.

·         God does not dwell in a temple made out of our hands, and we wrong God by thinking so and put an affront upon Him. It is extremely sad when we dishonour God by making Him after the likeness of our body. We fail to realize the intensity and the depth of God’s love when He made man in the likeness of His own.

Paul now is addressing the aching question in the hearts of highly learned philosophical Athenians. How did God react towards the Gentile world before the Gospel came? 

·         Can we say that God winked at, during the time of ignorance? It is clear and obvious looking at Athens today that human learning would have flourished so much more than ever even before time of Christ coming into this world. The Gentile world was grossly flourished in all areas except the things of God and they were very ignorant. In the worship of God they were ignorant and we can safely assume idolatry was because of their ignorance.

·         God did detest and hated those times of the ignorance of the Gentiles, because He did not like His glory being parted to something or someone else. So we can safely assume and say that at this time of ignorance God did wink as an act of divine patience and ignorance.

·         God did not detest them by sending prophets as He did to Israel, but in His divine patience and forbearance He did wink and did not punish them in their idolatries but gave them the gift of His providence. He commanded all men to repent of their folly and to break off the worship of idols, and to come and worship the true and living God. He showed His love tremendously on the cross through His Son Jesus Christ, and through His authority and made it very clear that it is our duty and privilege to listen to Him. “Who in times past suffered all nations to walk in their own ways.  Nevertheless he left not himself without witness, in that he did good , and gave us rain from heaven, and fruitful seasons, filling our hearts with food and”; Acts: 14:16-17.

Paul warned them that God will judge the world that He has made, and want all the children to give an account of what they were gifted with. Male and female before God are called to give an account for the what they have done with their body; whether their body served their soul or the soul was useless to the body making provision for the flesh. It is written, “For we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ; that every one may receive the things done in his body, according to that he hath done, whether it be good or bad”; 2 Cori: 5:10. He reasoned out and argued that there is a day appointed in the counsel of God which cannot be altered where the final determination of men’s state for eternity is affirmed.

·         The world will be judged in His righteousness because He alone is righteous. God’s knowledge of men’s characters and actions are infallibly true and so His sentence upon them will be contestably just and no one absolutely no one will be able to act and say anything against this. God will judge the world by whom He has ordained from the beginning of time and that man is none other than our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, and unto Him all judgement is committed.

·         God has raised Jesus from death is the great proof of Him being appointed to judge all mankind, the dead and the living. God exalted Jesus Christ by raising Him up from death and that was the beginning, and Jesus Christ judging the world will be the perfection of it, because the One who begins will also make an end.

·         Consideration of the great judgement which is going to come, we should repent and believe in the Lord Jesus Christ and turn to God. This is a serious matter, matter of life or death. This judgement day will be a terrible day for those who are living in sin, and it is a serious matter to make the judge as our friend. True penitents, those who turn from sins will then lift up their heads with joy, and they will be the redeemed of the Lord.

When Paul addressed the resurrection of the dead to Athenians he had some issues with the people and the Gospel has little success just as anywhere else. We can safely assume that the pride of the philosophers of Athens, just like the Pharisees of Jerusalem, has prejudiced them against the Gospel of Christ. There were different categories of people when Gospel was presented.

·         Many ridiculed Paul’s preaching especially when they heard about resurrection of the dead. When they listened to the resurrection of the dead, they cannot bear it totally, because this was in direct contradiction to the principle of their philosophy. They believed life once lost was totally irrecoverable. Athenians had deified their dead heroes, but never thought they would be raised from the dead, and so they could not reconcile themselves to the doctrine of the resurrection of the dead, and the everlasting life. Paul’s doctrine was the saints’ joy, but to their jest, and they made a laughing matter of the whole doctrine.

·         Many others were willing to listen and wanted time to consider it. They do not want to comply with what Paul has said now, but want to hear Paul’s doctrine again. They are willing to debate and learn from him but would not want to take Paul’s teaching as absolute truth. 

 

Because he hath appointed a day, in the which he will judge the world in righteousness by that man whom he hath ordained; whereof he hath given assurance unto all men, in that he hath raised him from the dead. And when they heard of the resurrection of the dead, some mocked: and others said, We will hear thee again of this matter. So Paul departed from among them. Howbeit certain men clave unto him, and believed: among the which was Dionysius the Areopagite, and a woman named Damaris, and others with them. Acts: 17:16-34

 

 

 

 

 

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