“To the Unknown God.”

This city was like Boston and New York both rolled into one.  Boston, because of its history and all the scholars and philosophers there; New York, because of its impact on commerce, culture, information and city life.  Athens was the cultural and learning Mecca of the ancient Western world.  Philosophers by the hundreds would engage in ancient “show and tell” sessions that would last days, even weeks!  Every new visitor making his way to the Areopagus on Mars Hill kept the local gossip lines humming with “news.”  If the Greeks had had the technology, talk radio would have been born here!

Athens was a city much like many Western cities today:  cosmopolitan, humanistic, tolerant, pluralistic and postmodern.  Persecution was considered to be uncivilized.  Great athletes and great thinkers were popular symbols of human achievement in the areas of mind and body.  The Olympics were held here, as were the great debates about life and all its many questions and anomalies.

But Athens was also a city filled with idols — thousands of them.  On one street they lined both sides!  Athenians were very religious…even to the point of being superstitious.  The spiritual darkness was almost overwhelming.  Paul had heard of Athens and the goings-on there (who hadn’t?), but this was his first (and only) trip to the city.  Fleeing persecution, friends brought him there probably thinking that he would find safe cover in the large city that welcomed new ideas and frowned on uncivilized behavior.  While waiting for Silas and Timothy to arrive, Paul was stunned, even upset, at the rampant spiritual blindness in the midst of such learned community.  In fact, he wrote to the Corinthians shortly after this visit, “Where is the wise?  Where is the scribe?  Where is the disputer of this age?  Has not God made foolish the wisdom of this world? … For you see your calling, brethren, that not many wise according to the flesh, not many mighty, not many noble, are called” (1 Corinthians 1:20, 27).

So he began doing what he always had done:  “he reasoned in the synagogue with the Jews and with the Gentile worshipers, and in the marketplace daily with those who happened to be there” (Acts 17:17).  These marketplaces were similar to the Areopagus, but on a much smaller and less influential scale.  At that venue some philosophers heard him and thought he was a novice (v. 18), literally a “seed picker,” a rude way of saying he didn’t have any original insights, but gathered bits and pieces of others’ discoveries and made a hybrid, disjointed philosophy.  Nevertheless, they took him to the Areopagus to be heard by the others.

Paul’s address is highly instructive for everyone living in similar places like Athens.  First, he looks to find something in common with the idolatrous city dwellers.  He begins by acknowledging that they worship God (v. 23), goes on to show their common humanity, saying they have common needs (vs. 26-27), and even quotes one of their poets (v. 28).  Of course, he mixed these favorable comments with the necessary elements of an evangelistic presentation:  they are alienated from and ignorant of God (he is “unknown”, vs. 23, 30), judgment is coming (v. 31), and that God has left the witness of Christ’s resurrection (v. 31) to which they must respond.  And some do (v. 34).

God is the unknown God only to unbelievers.  Unbelievers, no matter how rich, educated, sophisticated, good looking, powerful, well connected or influential, all have the same common struggles and fears as anyone else.  If they don’t, they are either lying or have totally deceived themselves!

But God was not content to remain unknown.  He made a choice before Adam’s fall in the Garden that he would not allow the human race to fall hopelessly into permanent spiritual darkness before the judgment.  Jesus was “the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world” (Revelation 13:8).  God promised to send him as the woman’s Seed to bruise the head of the serpent (Genesis 3:15).  People remain in darkness by their own choices, conscious or otherwise.  God speaks to everyone through Creation (Romans 1:19-20) and conscience (1:21), so that “they are without excuse.”  He wants everyone to know that “this is eternal life, that they may know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent” (John 17:3, our emphasis).

Aren’t you glad that God is no longer unknown to you?  Have you thanked him today for revealing himself to you?  Are you making him known to others?  If not, he will continue to be the unknown God.  Do you remember what life was like when God was unknown to you?