“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. ‘For in him we live and move and have our being.’”
—Acts 17:27–28
The people of Athens were searching.
They searched through religion and philosophy. They debated ideas in the marketplace. They built temples, fashioned idols and erected altars to seemingly every imaginable deity. Luke even makes the slightly humorous observation that the Athenians and foreigners living there “spent their time doing nothing but talking about and listening to the latest ideas.”
That’s quite a first but.
Athens was a city searching—always another idea to discuss, another philosophy to consider, another god to appease. Altars and idols crowded the city. And somewhere among them stood one dedicated TO AN UNKNOWN GOD.
Paul noticed.
As he walked through the city, he was troubled by its abundance of idols, but he was also paying attention. He listened. He observed. He talked with people in the synagogue and marketplace. Eventually, some Epicurean and Stoic philosophers brought him before the Areopagus because they wanted to hear more about the strange ideas he was teaching concerning Jesus and the resurrection.
When Paul got his opportunity, he began: “People of Athens! I see that in every way you are very religious.”
Then he mentioned the altar. “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.”
They were surrounded by religion and endlessly discussing spiritual ideas, but they still didn’t know the God who gave them the breath with which they were discussing Him.
The Unknown God
Centuries before Paul arrived, Athens was reportedly devastated by a plague. According to an ancient tradition associated with the Cretan poet and religious figure Epimenides, the Athenians feared they had offended some deity they had neglected to honor. Epimenides was summoned to Athens and proposed an unusual solution. A flock of sheep was released on a fertile hillside. Where sheep unexpectedly lay down rather than grazing, sacrifices were offered to whatever unknown god might have been offended. Tradition says the plague subsided, and an altar to TO AN UNKNOWN GOD remained as a reminder that there might be a divine presence beyond what the Athenians knew.
Whether every detail happened exactly as it was later told is impossible to know. But the tradition is remarkably fitting when we arrive in Acts 17, because some six centuries later Paul actually walks through Athens and finds an altar bearing that inscription.
And Paul says, essentially, Let’s talk about Him.
Hidden in Plain Sight
Paul doesn’t point the Athenians toward another temple or ask them to construct another altar. In fact, he tells them that the God who made heaven and earth doesn’t live in temples built by human hands. Nor does He depend upon human beings to supply something He lacks. Quite the opposite.
“He himself gives everyone life and breath and everything else.”
Think about the scene. Paul essentially says: The God you’re searching for is the One who gave you the breath in your lungs. Your next breath? His gift. Your next heartbeat? His gift. Your very existence? His gift.
Then Paul says God created humanity so people would “seek him and perhaps reach out for him and find him, though he is not far from any one of us.”
And then comes another fascinating connection to Epimenides: “For in him we live and move and have our being.”
That’s a quote associated with Epimenides. Paul is standing among the philosophers of Athens and reaching into language familiar to their own intellectual and religious world to point them toward the God they did not know.
I love that. Paul said God was not far from them. Hope hidden in plain sight.
But Now
Paul doesn’t stop with the good news that God is near. Nearness calls for a response.
“In the past God overlooked such ignorance, but now he commands all people everywhere to repent.”
There’s our second but, and this one changes the direction of the story.
The unknown God has made Himself known. The time for endlessly collecting ideas about God has given way to an invitation to turn toward Him. Repent—have a change of heart. Quit running about, altar to altar. Recognize the Almighty God in Jesus, His Son.
Perhaps that isn’t so far removed from our own experience.
We don’t usually carve little gods from stone or build altars to them anymore. We simply find more sophisticated ways of doing essentially the same thing. We can spend our lives moving from altar to altar, hoping something will give us what we’re looking for: career, money, achievement, approval, relationships, recreation, security, control. We invest ourselves in whatever promises to make us feel safe, significant, satisfied or whole.
Sometimes we even add God in to the rotation.
But Paul’s message isn’t merely, You’re looking in all the wrong places. His message is much better than that.
The God you’re looking for has come near.
A decision is sitting on the table.
“When they heard about the resurrection of the dead, some of them sneered, but others said, ‘We want to hear you again on this subject.’”
I love that Luke doesn’t tidy up the ending. One message. One room. One announcement that the God they had called unknown had come near—and several different responses.
Some sneered. But others wanted to hear more. And some, Luke tells us, believed.
I believe that’s where this ancient story finally arrives at our doorstep.
Some of us spend years searching for something we can’t quite name. We want peace. Meaning. Belonging. Forgiveness. Hope. Something solid enough to stand on when life starts shifting beneath us. Sometimes we’re not even sure what we’re searching for; we simply know something is missing.
And when life hurts, God can seem especially far away. Grief settles in. A prayer seems unanswered. Recovery becomes difficult. Anxiety won’t quiet down. Someone we love is hurting. Disappointment has made faith harder than it once seemed.
We reach out for God and wonder where He is.
But Paul stands in the middle of a city crowded with competing gods and announces something astonishing: “He is not far from any one of us.” Maybe hope this week doesn’t require searching farther. Maybe it begins by noticing what has been hidden in plain sight all along. Take a breath. Feel your pulse. Look at the world around you. Remember the God who gives “life and breath and everything else,” and then remember that He has made Himself known to us in Jesus.
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