"God, who made the world and everything in it, since He is Lord of heaven and earth, does not dwell in temples made with hands. Nor is He worshiped with men’s hands, as though He needed anything, since He gives to all life, breath, and all things. And He has made from one blood every nation of men to dwell on all the face of the earth, and has determined their pre-appointed times and the boundaries of their dwellings, so that they should seek the Lord, in the hope that they might grope for Him and find Him, though He is not far from each one of us; for in Him we live and move and have our being, as also some of your own poets have said, ‘For we are also His offspring.’ Therefore, since we are the offspring of God, we ought not to think that the Divine Nature is like gold or silver or stone, something shaped by art and man’s devising." (vv.24-29)
In today’s passage, Paul is giving a speech in Athens, a city filled with idols (v.16). He got the attention of some local philosophers–Epicureans and Stoics, and stressed to them the distinction between being religious and knowing the true God. Paul recognized that these philosophers had to change their ideas about God. They had to move from their own personal opinions to an understanding of who God is according to what He tells us about Himself in the Bible. He detailed how the “Unknown God," which they built an altar too, was the one true God who created the heavens and the earth (vv. 23-24).
Paul told them we are all descended from Adam through Noah, and that there is one God who created us all and to whom we all are obligated. Since God created us all, we should seek the Lord… though He is not far from each one of us. Why? Because in Him we live and move and have our being…For we are also His offspring: These two quotations Paul used from Greek poets are attributed respectively to Epimenides the Cretan [600 B.C.] (who Paul quotes again in Titus 1:12) and Aratus [310 B.C.]. Paul did not quote these men because they were prophets or because all their teaching was of God. He quoted them because these specific words reflected a Biblical truth, and by using them he could build a bridge to his pagan audience.
This God, he continued, is not “served by human hands” (v.25). In other words, God does not need us in order to survive. He made us and made the world—what could He need? Yet, in this passage, Paul revealed what God desires. God made all of this “so that men would seek him” (v.27). God loves us but He does not manipulate our minds and hearts. He made us with the capacity of choice, and it is His desire that we would want to know Him, to find Him, and to have a relationship with Him of our own free will.
Our heritage, from the beginning, is directly linked to the divine Creator. It is natural, then, that since we are God’s offspring, we will want to find our image in Him. Only in God, not in our own accomplishments, can we find the source of our true identity. For we are His children, His handiwork, His poem. “For in him we live and move and have our being” (v. 28). And, Since we are His offspring, we are responsible to have right ideas about God, and therefore must reject the wrong idea that gold or silver or stone could represent God (v.29).
In building an alter to the unknown God, the Athenians were acknowledging their ignorance to God, and Paul here has been giving them evidence of their ignorance, and now he declares (in the next few verses) such ignorance to be culpable, and boldly confronted them with the reality of coming judgment and the resurrection (vv.30-31).
As you can probably imagine the reaction was mixed, some mocked, while others said, “We will hear you again on this matter.” This is His desire that man would hear more of Him, and truly seek Him. For the cure for all mans troubles is found in His desire, "Seek Me."
The Truth: “The Lord looks down from heaven upon the children of men, To see if there are any who understand, who seek God.” (Psalm 14:2)
