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It sometimes strikes believers as incredible that unbelievers seem to have such a difficult time accepting the Gospel. To us the Gospel makes perfect sense. We see our need and understand how Jesus meets that need, and we readily put our trust in Him for the forgiveness and new life in His Kingdom which He offers.
The indifference, mocking, scorn, and even hostility of our unbelieving neighbors can seem most ungrateful, to the point that some Christians express a kind of “good riddance” attitude toward the lost. “There’s just no breaking through to these hard-hearted people.” Such an attitude is unbecoming those who follow the One Who humbled Himself to come among His enemies – including us (Rom. 5:10) – in order to remove the scales that covered our eyes and lift us to the very presence and glory of God.
I can imagine that the Apostle Paul was not the least bit surprised to hear that the Athenians regarded as strange his message of forgiveness and new life through the resurrection of Jesus Christ. After all, it hadn’t been that long ago that he was in the same boat – an enemy of Christ and determined to rid his nation of those who insisted on following Him. The grace that reached Paul on that Damascus road was never very far from the mind of the Apostle. He rehearsed his testimony over and over in the book of Acts and in his epistles, so amazed and grateful was he for the powerful love that had come to him from on high. Moreover, it was the love of Christ that moved Paul to reach out to people immersed in false religions, blinded by faulty worldviews, and desperately in need of the Good News of Jesus (2 Cor. 5:14, 15). Paul understood that the people he encountered, especially among the Gentiles, had never before considered the Gospel and its strong demands and foreign-sounding doctrines and ideas.
This is why we find him, in Athens, out and about among the unbelievers, listening carefully, discussing politely, and trying to gather a good picture in his mind of what he might be up against as he worked to persuade people of the truth that is in Jesus. It probably didn’t take him very long to realize that the typical Athenian was confused about truth and looking here and there for something new to plug the gaps and mend the breaches of his patchwork worldview. Athens was the home of Greek philosophy and a magnet for new worldviews coming in from the West and the East. People there thought of religion as a kind of add-on to their daily lives, and they added-on whatever deities promised to deliver the happiness they sought. Philosophy was useful for impressing others, finding a group of like-minded friends, and thinking about the world the way they thought it should be. But Rome was the daily reality – the doctrines and demands of Caesar, staying on the good side of foreign political authorities. So when Paul seemed to brush all that aside to hold out the promise of full and abundant life through One Who had died and risen again, it’s no wonder these pragmatic, superstitious people found his truth so strange. Just being labeled as strange or foreign might be enough to put most of us off (“those hard-hearted people”), but not Paul. The love of Christ that he had come to know kindled in him – as it must also in us – a deep sympathy for lost Athenians, and made him even more urgent to speak to as many as possible about the Gospel of the Lord.
Start your own ViewPoint discussion group. This week’s series is available in a free downloadable format, suitable for personal or group study. Download the series, " Strange Truth."
For more information on this topic, get the book, Understanding People, by Dr. Larry Crabb, at our online store. Or read the article, "Hands on Evangelism," by Chuck Colson. Unless otherwise indicated, all Scripture references are from The Holy Bible, English Standard Version, copyright 2001 by Crossway Bibles, a division of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
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Strange Truth
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