(Acts 17:22)

This begins the story of Paul preaching in Athens to many of the people who gather near

where many statues of various gods were located. Sometimes this story is referred to as

Mar’s Hill.

This verse which is the opening line for Paul’s sermon to the Athenians is very

informative to Christians in our current culture. Sometimes it is easy to think about the

current culture as bad or unchristian and that we, as Christians, are call to get people to

change their minds about a variety of issues. At times, Christians can become somewhat

judgmental towards the culture of the day.

Christian author and pastor, Dan Kimball, in his book They Like Jesus but Not the

Church, talks about the perception of young adults about the church. And one of the

major observations is that Christians are judgmental in a very negative way. Dan

Kimball in this book is attempting to build a bridge to bringing the Christian message to

this generation of young adults who are unchurched.

Paul’s encounter in front of the Areopagus is a key in attempting to do this. The reason

that this story in the book of Acts can be very helpful in seeking to bring the Christian

message to people is to begin with where the people are and seek to connect with them

rather than simply offend them. Paul is appealing to the Athenians by stating what he

finds—‘I see how extremely religious you are in every way.’ Paul is not agreeing with

the people as they worship many and various gods (whom Paul would recognize as false

gods)—but he is attempting to connect with them and build that bridge so that he can

gain enough interest and trust to be able to lead them in a different direction. Paul could

have said to the people gathered, ‘Repent from your false gods!’ or he could have held up

signs with similar messages around these statues of the various gods. In reality, all that

would have done is turned people off—or have the people think that Paul is just a fanatic

that is not worthy of attention.

Rather, Paul appeals to them with complimenting them about how religious they are.

Then he moves then along to the message of the story of Jesus Christ. He does this by

noticing the culture and all the statues. He finds amid all the statues to the various gods,

one statue that is dedicated to the ‘Unknown God.’ Paul uses this as an way to then tell

the people, let me tell you about this ‘unknown god;’ whom he names as the God who is

the creator of all things and raised from the dead a man appointed to judge the world in

righteousness.

This whole story of Paul preaching to the Athenians, should inform us about how we can

go about and tell the story of Jesus Christ. We need to connect with people and seek to

relate to them in a real ways so that we can introduce them to the Savior of the World—

Jesus the Christ.