Paul Shows Us How to Confront Others with the Gospel

Paul’s Method

Paul’s methodology was to take the gospel to the Jews first and then to the Gentiles, so he normally started off in the synagogue, with the Jews and God-fearers, those who might have been expected to be relatively open to the Christian message. In Athens, however, he engaged with the philosophers, who, though they may not necessarily have been cultured despisers of religion in general, were certainly cultured despisers of Christianity. The Epicureans taught that the gods were distant and irrelevant. Whether or not they may have existed, they did not have any impact on this world, and there was nothing beyond death. The only real meaning of life was to be found in the pursuit of pleasure, enjoying this world to the full and experiencing your best life now. The Stoics, on the other hand, found the meaning of life in subjection to an impersonal fate, which controlled everything. They followed the path of rigorous asceticism, seeing pain and pleasure alike as things to be endured as one sought to become more and more detached from the material world.

Although polar opposites in many ways, these philosophers agreed on one thing: Whatever the answer to life’s issues might be, it certainly wasn’t the Jesus whom Paul preached. In intellectual terms, they dismissed Paul as an unimpressive lightweight, whose message was obvious foolishness. They called him a “babbler” (Acts 17:18) or, literally, a “seedpicker” (spermologos)—a term that originally described birds that collected their food from the scraps in the gutter and later came to describe someone with a cobbled-together, half-digested ideology.¹ They were not in the least impressed by Paul’s message.

Think about that point for a moment. These people thought that the great apostle Paul’s presentation of the gospel was utterly unconvincing. What clearer demonstration could there be that spiritual truths are spiritually discerned and that a special work of the Holy Spirit is necessary if people are ever to be brought to faith? Luke made that point explicitly in the case of Lydia’s conversion in the previous chapter of Acts, saying, “The Lord opened her heart to pay attention to what was said by Paul” (Acts 16:14). Without that work of the Spirit in a person’s heart, no one can come to faith in Christ.

We often struggle to believe that truth. We are sometimes tempted not to share the gospel with our friends or neighbors because we are not sure what to say. This is perhaps especially true when we think about sharing the gospel with people whom we expect to be antagonistic to the gospel, the cultured despisers. Perhaps you think to yourself, If only I could share the gospel like the apostles did, then I would be much bolder. Surprisingly, though, even the apostle Paul, who shared the gospel with all his wisdom and skill, was still laughed at and mocked. They may not have stoned him in Athens as they did elsewhere, but they were equally dismissive of his preaching.

Spiritual truths become clear to a person only through a work of the Spirit of God. So no matter how simple and basic your presentation of the gospel may be, if the Spirit is at work, a person’s heart can be opened to Christ. On the other hand, no matter how intellectually brilliant and finely honed your approach, if God’s Spirit isn’t at work, a person’s heart will not be opened to receive Christ. This truth should give us both boldness and humility in our evangelism. It should give us boldness because we know that God will bring those whom he has chosen to himself, no matter how simple and unformed our words. On the other hand, it should give us humility and lead us to depend on God in prayer because we know that all our wisdom and skill cannot change a single heart.

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Paul’s Manner and Message

Even while the philosophers mocked Paul, they still invited him to speak to the collected intellectual gathering at the Areopagus (Acts 17:19–20). As Luke informs us, this was not because they thought that his philosophy was interesting and persuasive; rather, it was because they heard in his words something new—and new was always of interest in the philosophical circles of Athens (Acts 17:21). That cultural interest in new religious ideas gave Paul the opportunity to preach to the Athenians about Christ.

There are two things to notice about Paul’s approach to these cultured despisers of his religion. On the one hand, Paul’s manner toward the Athenians was polite and even complimentary. He said, “Men of Athens, I perceive that in every way you are very religious. For as I passed along and observed the objects of your worship, I found also an altar with this inscription: ‘To the unknown god.’ What therefore you worship as unknown, this I proclaim to you” (Acts 17:22–23). We need to learn from Paul’s approach because we are sometimes offensive in our manner of presenting the gospel. We may be rude and obnoxious, and as a result, people don’t want to listen to us. In this case, it is really our style of presentation that they are rejecting, not the substance of the gospel. Paul was polite and respectful toward the Athenians throughout this speech.

Yet if you examine what Paul was actually saying, you will realize that even while Paul was being polite in his manner, he was also being utterly confrontational in his message. In a center devoted to the discussion of everything new, Paul chose to talk about something that was not new, but an old and familiar idea—their altar to an unknown god. What was more, in this center of learning and knowledge, far from commending them for their deep and thoughtful religiosity, he told them that their religiosity was utterly without knowledge: They were worshiping gods whom they did not know (Acts 17:23).

In other words, Paul did not go to these deeply religious people and say, “I’m really glad you have found a religion that works for you. You have your way of worshiping God, and I have my way. And we’ll all meet up at the end.” On the contrary, he went to these thoroughly religious intellectuals and basically told them, “You worship a deity of whom you have no knowledge. This ignorant worship of yours is distinctly not acceptable to the one true God, who created all things (Acts 17:24). In the past, he may have overlooked such ignorance, which is why you are still alive, but now you need to repent (Acts 17:30). There is a coming day of judgment for all (something both the Stoics and Epicureans denied) and on that day, ignorance is the path to full and final rejection by God. On that day, knowing the crucified and resurrected Christ is your only hope” (Acts 17:31). He said all this very politely but nonetheless very confrontationally. What they believed about God mattered intensely to Paul. Religion was not just a matter of private opinion or individual interpretation. It was a matter of eternal life and death.

Spiritual truths become clear to a person only through a work of the Spirit of God.

A Divine Confrontation

I think that many of us are not nearly confrontational enough in presenting the claims of Christ to people around us. We are far too willing to soften the message that we proclaim because we know that it will be a difficult message for people to receive. Paul did not flinch from proclaiming a message that he knew would be utterly offensive to his hearers, whether the Jews in the synagogues or the Greeks in the Areopagus. As he puts it in 1 Corinthians 1:22–24, “For Jews demand signs and Greeks seek wisdom, but we preach Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and folly to Gentiles, but to those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God.” To these sophisticated Greeks, who thought they knew so much about religion, Paul proclaimed a God of whom they had absolutely no knowledge yet who would be their Judge on the last day.

Paul did not leave this unknown God a mystery. In the space of a few verses, Paul told the Athenians several things about the God whom we serve. Our God is the Creator who made all things out of nothing (Acts 17:24). He is the sustaining God who gives life and breath to all (Acts 17:25). He is the sovereign God, who rules all the most intimate affairs of men (Acts 17:26). He is the Father God who cares for each of us as his offspring (Acts 17:28). He is the judging God, who commands men everywhere to repent and who will call all men to account before the throne of the God-man, Jesus Christ, once dead but now risen (Acts 17:31).

That was a comprehensive summary of theology in a very short space, but it was not a random outpouring. Paul was once again politely being intensely confrontational, challenging the worldview of his hearers with the biblical truth about who God is. Remember that the two main groups of philosophers he was addressing, the Stoics and Epicureans, both believed in gods who were not really “there” in the world in any influential way. The Stoics believed in impersonal fate while the Epicureans believed in maximized pleasure in a meaningless world. But Paul said, in effect, “God exists. He is the one who controls the affairs of men, not a disconnected and impersonal fate. He is also the one for whom and by whom we live. We were not intended merely for a life of pleasure; we have a far more profound purpose” (Acts 17:24–28).

Finally, even though these same philosophers had earlier mocked the proclamation of Jesus and the resurrection as trivial, Paul’s speech in front of the Areopagus ended with the proclamation of Jesus and the resurrection (Acts 17:31; cf. Acts 17:18). Paul would not be intimidated into changing his message because he had only one gospel to proclaim: the same sovereign God who created and sustains all things also created us and sent his Son to die on the cross so that we could have a personal relationship with him and enjoy a life that is profoundly and eternally meaningful.

Iain M. Duguid is the author of Bringing the Gospel to the Nations: Lessons for the Church from Acts 9–18.

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