Acts 17:17-33

¹⁷He debated in the synagogue with the Jews and those who worshiped God, as well as in the marketplace with those he happened to meet from day to day.

¹⁸Some Epicurean and Stoic philosophers also argued with him. “What is he going on about?” they wondered. Others concluded, “He seems to be teaching about some foreign gods,” because he was speaking about Jesus and the resurrection.

¹⁹So they took him to the Areopagus, and asked him, “Please tell us about this new teaching that you're promoting.

²⁰We're hearing from you things that sound odd to us, so we'd like to know what they mean.”

²¹(All the Athenians, including foreigners who lived there, spent their whole time doing nothing except explaining or listening to something new.)

²²Paul stood up right in the middle of the Areopagus and said, “People of Athens, I notice you are very religious about everything.

²³As I was walking along, looking at your shrines, I found an altar that had the inscription, ‘To an Unknown God.’ This unknown God whom you worship is the one I'm describing to you.

²⁴The God who created the world and everything in it, the Lord of heaven and earth, doesn't live in temples we make.

²⁵He doesn't need to be served by us as if he needed anything, since he is the source of all life for every living being.

²⁶From one man he made all the peoples who live on the earth, and decided beforehand when and where they should live.

²⁷God's purpose was that they should seek him, hoping they would reach out for him and find him—though he isn't far from any one of us.

²⁸In him we live, move, and exist. Just as one of your own poets wrote, ‘We are his family.’

²⁹Since we are his family we shouldn't think that God is like gold, or silver, or stone, shaped by human artistry and thinking.

³⁰God disregarded people's ignorance in the past, but now he commands everyone everywhere to repent.

³¹For he has set a time when he will rightly judge the world by the man he has appointed, and he proved to everyone that he is the one by raising him from the dead.”

³²Some of them laughed when they heard about the resurrection of the dead, while others said, “Please come back so we can hear more about this later.”

³³So Paul left them.