Paul had travelled from Thessalonica to Berea and on to Athens. As he waited there for Silas and Timothy, his fellow preachers, he was disturbed to see that Athens was a city “wholly given to idolatry” (Acts 17:16). The people wanted to hear his “new doctrine”, and he took the opportunity of speaking the truth to them, as an ambassador for the true God. Paul drew their attention to Him as the Creator: “God that made the world and all things therein”. He spoke against their idolatry and pointed to the final judgement and to the resurrection of Christ, insisting that God was now commanding “all men everywhere to repent”. We are told about three reactions to Paul’s words: (1.) “Some mocked”; (2.) “Others said, We will hear thee again of this matter”; (3.) “Some believed”. In various proportions, these reactions have appeared again and again throughout the generations.
1. Some mocked.
They mocked the thought of a resurrection from the dead. They had never seen anyone rise from the dead; so they assumed that the whole idea was absurd. But they obviously ignored or rejected Paul’s statement about God as the One who created the world and everything in it. For the Creator to raise those who have died – and to raise Jesus, the Son of God, in particular – is by no means impossible. Accordingly the resurrection is not an idea to be mocked. Yet today the whole idea of the supernatural is rejected; the resurrection is probably despised with greater confidence than in Athens; even the idea of a Creator is often treated as a subject for ridicule. It is assumed by leading scientists that evolution is the only coherent theory of origins, and other opinion-formers also push this theory as the only option for self-respecting human beings.
But it is not. No doubt a time will come when people will look back on the present age and view as ridiculous the idea that the world and everything in it came into existence through a whole series of random changes, and that they took place quite apart from any purposive control. But God exists and He has revealed Himself in the Scriptures – though we should be able to recognise His existence through the things He has made (Rom 1:20). And the Scriptures clearly reveal that He created the whole universe – “the heavens and the earth” – and everything in it. This is revealed, not only in the first chapters of Genesis, but repeatedly throughout the Bible.
The resurrection at the end of the world is an important fact of the Christian religion, as Paul clearly asserted. First he argued, “If there be no resurrection of the dead, then is Christ not risen” (1 Cor 15:13); even more fundamental to the whole Christian message of salvation is what Paul presents as a further step in his argument: “If Christ be not risen, then is our preaching vain, and your faith is also vain”. We need to know, not only that Christ died so that sinners may be saved, but also that His sacrifice was accepted in heaven. And we know that it was accepted, because God raised Him from the dead; He was not left under the power of death, for He had conquered death. He had done all that was necessary for the salvation of every sinner who, until the end of time, will look to the Saviour. Scripture testimony to the resurrection is serious truth; it most certainly ought not to be a subject for mockery. Thus Paul, when appearing before Agrippa, asked, “Why should it be thought a thing incredible with you, that God should raise the dead?” (Acts 26:8).
2. Some said, We will hear thee again of this matter.
These were people who did not mock the ideas that Paul presented to them. They may have found Paul’s claims interesting; after all, the Athenians were always anxious “to hear some new thing”. But they did not consider his claims, in particular about the judgement to come, to be of such importance that they must give them immediate serious consideration. They may have thought that, some other day, Paul might present some further new ideas and that their interest would be stirred again.
So it is with many people today: they who are content to come, Sabbath after Sabbath, to hear the Word of God. They would never think of mocking the sermons they hear; they do not feel free to argue against the truth of God’s Word. Yet they never submit to the authority of the truth; they tell themselves that “tomorrow shall be as this day, and much more abundant” (Is 56:12); they assume that their life will go on as at present for many more years and they will have plenty more opportunities to hear the Word of God, to seek Him and to look to Christ for salvation. They may put off seeking the Lord only one day at a time, or one week at a time; but if they go on rejecting the warnings of Scripture and the message of salvation, they will eventually do so one last time – and they will reach a day without a tomorrow for them, a day when they will pass into eternity. And because they are still unsaved, it will, solemnly, be a lost eternity.
What God tells us is: “Boast not thyself of to morrow; for thou knowest not what a day may bring forth” (Prov 27:1). We cannot know when we will reach the day of our death; so we should seek to be ready now, before it is too late. Let us take seriously Scripture teaching about the resurrection, the judgement and eternity, with application to ourselves. When Christ is set before us in the gospel – the good news about a crucified Saviour who died in the place of sinners – we should seek earnestly to obey the call, “Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved” (Acts 16:31).
3. Some believed.
Two of them are mentioned by name, a man and a woman: Dionysius and Damaris. They not only accepted that Paul’s statements about the resurrection and other scriptural doctrines were true, but they trusted in the Saviour he taught them about. Yet Paul had no power to create faith in the heart of any sinner; neither has any preacher today. This is clear in the salvation of Lydia; it was the Lord who opened her heart so “that she attended unto the things which were spoken of Paul” (Acts 16:14). Matthew Henry comments, “Conversion work is God’s work; it is He that works in us both to will and to do; not as if we had nothing to do, but of ourselves – without God’s grace – we can do nothing; nor as if God were in the least chargeable with the ruin of those that perish, but the salvation of those that are saved must be wholly ascribed to Him”.
It was through the work of the Holy Spirit that Dionysius, Damaris and the others who believed in Athens were saved, and Lydia in Philippi. So it must always be. Granted that the responsibility is laid on every sinner who hears the gospel – whether in Athens or Philippi in Paul’s time, or anywhere in the world today – to receive the doctrines of the Word of God and to trust in the One who is there revealed as the Saviour of sinners, yet it is the Holy Spirit who must open the sinner’s heart and savingly apply the truth to that individual so that they believe.
What are the evidences of this saving work? Let us confine ourselves to two. First, the desire Paul expressed: to “be found in [Christ], not having mine own righteousness, which is of the law, but that which is through the faith of Christ, the righteousness which is of God by faith” (Phil 3:9). It is the Holy Spirit who enables sinners to recognise that salvation is all of grace, not of works. It is He also who enables them to desire a righteousness to be imputed to them which they cannot create. The second evidence is an urgent sense of their duty to obey God’s commandments, as expressed in the words, “I made haste, and delayed not to keep Thy commandments” (Ps 119:60) – yet acknowledging that it is only by God’s continuing grace that such obedience goes on.
But what is our response to Scripture teaching? Do we mock? Do we procrastinate? Or do we believe? Let us rephrase this last question: Do we trust in Christ Jesus, whom the Father sent into the world to save sinners?