Lift High the Cross
Acts 17:22-31 22 Paul then stood up in the meeting of the Areopagus and said: “People of Athens! I see that in every way you are very religious. 23 For as I walked around and looked carefully at your objects of worship, I even found an altar with this inscription: TO AN UNKNOWN GOD. So you are ignorant of the very thing you worship —and this is what I am going to proclaim to you.
24 “The God who made the world and everything in it is the Lord of heaven and earth and does not live in temples built by human hands. 25 And he is not served by human hands, as if he needed anything. Rather, he himself gives everyone life and breath and everything else. 26 From one man he made all the nations, that they should inhabit the whole earth; and he marked out their appointed times in history and the boundaries of their lands. 27 God did this so that they would seek him and perhaps reach out for him and find him, though he is not far from any one of us. 28 ‘For in him we live and move and have our being.’ As some of your own poets have said, ‘We are his offspring.’
29 “Therefore since we are God’s offspring, we should not think that the divine being is like gold or silver or stone—an image made by human design and skill. 30 In the past God overlooked such ignorance, but now he commands all people everywhere to repent. 31 For he has set a day when he will judge the world with justice by the man he has appointed. He has given proof of this to everyone by raising him from the dead.”
When I read of Paul’s exploits in spreading the gospel to those who still lived in the darkness of their unbelief, I am reminded that there is an innate need in each of us to worship. The people of Athens displayed many objects of reverence, with one even being dedicated to an unknown God in the event there was a deity that had been overlooked.
But rather than being comforted by this approach, Paul used it as a teaching moment to illuminate the hopelessness of worshipping a man-made object as though it was holy. In the 21st century we can read this account and recognize the desperation in assigning god-like qualities to an inanimate object, but such an act seemed entirely plausible at the time. Until, that is, they heard of the risen Savior.
May we be vigilant in identifying those items of our own making that we have used to replace genuine worship, and may we instead lift high the cross of Jesus that the world may be transformed by His resurrection power.
In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
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Seeking Holiness 