Verses 1-34
Chapter 17
17:1-9 When they had
taken the road through Amphipolis and Apollonia, they came to
Thessalonica where there was a synagogue of the Jews. Paul, as his
custom was, went in to them and, for three Sabbaths, he debated with
them from the scriptures, opening the scriptures to them and presenting
the evidence that Christ had to suffer and to rise from the dead, "and
this man," he said, "is the Christ, Jesus whom I proclaim to you." Some
of them believed and threw in their lot with Paul and Silas. Thus it was
with many of the worshipping Greeks and with a considerable number of
women who belonged to the most influential ranks of society. The Jews
resented this. They got hold of some of the low characters who haunted
the market place and they formed a mob and set the city in an uproar.
They surged up to Jason's house and kept demanding that they should
bring them before the people. When they did not find them, they dragged
Jason and some of the brethren to the city magistrates, shouting, "These
men who have upset the civilized world have arrived here too; and Jason
has received them as his guests. These are all teaching against the
decrees of Caesar for they say that there is another emperor Jesus."
They disturbed the mob and the chief magistrates as they heard this. So
they took surety from Jason and the others and let them go.
The coming of Christianity to Thessalonica was an event of the
first importance. The great Roman road from the Adriatic Sea to the
Middle East was called the Egnatian Way; and the main street of
Thessalonica was actually part of that road. If Christianity was firmly
founded in Thessalonica it could spread both east and west along that
road until it became a very highway of the progress of the kingdom of
God.
The first verse of this chapter is an extraordinary example of
economy of writing. It sounds like a pleasant stroll; but in point of
fact Philippi was 33 Roman miles from Amphipolis; Amphipolis was 30
miles from Apollonia; and Apollonia was 37 miles from Thessalonica. A
journey of over 100 miles is dismissed in a sentence.
As usual Paul began his work in the synagogue. His great success
was not so much among the Jews as among the Gentiles attached to the
synagogue. This infuriated the Jews for they looked on these Gentiles as
their natural preserves and here was Paul stealing them before their
very eyes. The Jews stooped to the lowest methods to hinder Paul. First
they stirred up the rabble. Then, when they had dragged Jason and his
friends before the magistrates, they charged the Christian missionaries
with preaching political insurrection. They knew their charge to be a
lie and yet it is couched in very suggestive terms. "Those," they said,
"who are upsetting the civilized world have arrived here." (King James
Version: "these men who have turned the world upside down"). The Jews
had not the slightest doubt that Christianity was a supremely effective
thing. T. R. Glover quoted with delight the saying of the child who
remarked that the New Testament ended with Revolutions. When
Christianity really goes into action it must cause a revolution both in
the life of the individual and in the life of society.
17:10-15 The brethren
immediately sent Paul and Silas away to Beroea by night. When they
arrived there they came into the synagogue of the Jews. These were men
of finer character than those in Thessalonica and they received the word
with all eagerness. They daily examined the scriptures to see if these
things were so. Many of them believed, as did a considerable number of
well-to-do Greek women and men. When the Jews of Thessalonica knew that
the word of God was preached by Paul in Beroea they came there too in an
attempt to stir up and disturb the people. The brethren then
immediately sent Paul away as far as the sea coast, while Silas and
Timothy remained there. Those who conducted Paul brought him as far as
Athens; and, when they had received an order to tell Silas and Timothy
to come to him with all speed, they went away,
Beroea was 60 miles west of Thessalonica. Three things stand
out in this short section. (i) There is the scriptural basis of Paul's
preaching. He set the people of Beroea searching the scriptures. The
Jews were certain that Jesus was not the Messiah because he had been
crucified. To them a man who had been crucified was a man accursed. It
was no doubt in passages like Isaiah 53:1-12
that Paul set the people of Beroea to find a forecast of the work of
Jesus. (ii) There is the envenomed bitterness of Jews. They not only
opposed Paul in Thessalonica; they pursued him to Beroea. The tragedy is
that undoubtedly they thought that they were doing God's work by
seeking to silence Paul. It can be a terrible thing when a man
identifies his aims with the will of God instead of submitting his aims
to that will. (iii) There is the courage of Paul. He had been imprisoned
in Philippi; he had left Thessalonica in peril of his life, under cover
of darkness; and once again in Beroea he had had to flee for his life.
Most men would have abandoned a struggle which seemed bound to end in
arrest and death. When David Livingstone was asked where he was prepared
to go, he answered, "I am prepared to go anywhere, so long as it is
forward." The idea of turning back never occurred to Paul either.
17:16-21 When Paul was
waiting for them in Athens, his spirit was deeply vexed as he saw the
whole city full of idols. He debated with the Jews and the worshippers
in the synagogue and every day he talked in the city square with
everyone he met. Some of the Epicurean and Stoic philosophers took issue
with him. Some of them said, "What would this gutter-sparrow of a man
be saying?" Others said, "He seems to be the herald of strange
divinities." This they said because he told the good news of Jesus and
the resurrection. So they took him and brought him to the Areopagus
saying, "May we know what is this strange new teaching you are talking
about? For you are introducing things which sound strange to us. We want
therefore to know what these things mean." (All the Athenians and the
strangers who stay there have no time for anything other than to talk
about and to listen to the latest idea).
When he fled from Beroea, Paul found himself alone in Athens.
But, with comrades or alone, Paul never stopped preaching Christ. Athens
had long since left behind her great days of action but she was still
the greatest university town in the world, to which men seeking learning
came from all over. She was a city of many gods. It was said that there
were more statues of the gods in Athens than in all the rest of Greece
put together and that in Athens it was easier to meet a god than a man.
In the great city square people met to talk, for in Athens they did
little else. Paul would have no difficulty in getting someone to talk to
and the philosophers soon discovered him.
There were the Epicureans (see Epikoureios Greek #1946).
(i) They believed that everything happened by chance. (ii) They
believed that death was the end of all. (iii) They believed that the
gods were remote from the world and did not care. (iv) They believed
that pleasure was the chief end of man. They did not mean fleshly and
material pleasure; for the highest pleasure was that which brought no
pain in its train.
There were the Stoics. (i) They believed that everything was
God. God was fiery spirit. That spirit grew dull in matter but it was in
everything. What gave men life was that a little spark of that spirit
dwelt in them and when they died it returned to God. (ii) They believed
that everything that happened was the will of God and therefore must be
accepted without resentment. (iii) They believed that every so often the
world disintegrated in a conflagration and started all over again on
the same cycle of events.
They took Paul to the Areopagus (Greek #697
-- the Greek for Mars' Hill). It was the name both of the hill and the
court that met on it. The court was very select, perhaps only thirty
members. It dealt with cases of homicide and had the oversight of public
morals. There, in the most learned city in the world and before the
most exclusive of courts, Paul had to state his faith. It might have
daunted anyone else; but Paul was never ashamed of the gospel of Christ.
To him this was another God-given opportunity to witness for Christ.
17:22-31 Paul stood up
in the midst of the Areopagus and said, "Men of Athens, I see that in
all things you are as superstitious as possible. As I came through your
city and as I saw the objects of your worship. I found amongst them an
altar with the inscription, 'To the Unknown God.' So then, what you
worship and do not know, this I preach to you. God, who made the
universe and everything in it, this God is Lord of heaven and earth and
does not dwell in temples made with hands; nor is he served by the hands
of men, as if he needed anything, but he himself gives to all life and
breath and all things. He made of one every race of men to dwell on all
the face of the earth, and he fixed the appointed times and boundaries
of their habitations. He made men so that they might search for God, if
they might perchance feel after him and find him; and indeed he is not
far from any one of us. For by him we live and move and are. As some of
your own poets have said, 'We too are his offspring.' Since then we are
the offspring of God we should not think that the Divine is like gold or
silver or stone, engraved by the art and design of man. So then God
overlooked the times of ignorance but now he gives orders to men that
all men everywhere should repent. Thus he has fixed a day in which he
will judge the world in righteousness by a man whom he ordained for that
task, and he has given proof of this by raising him from the dead."
There were many altars to unknown gods in Athens. Six hundred
years before this a terrible pestilence had fallen on the city which
nothing could halt. A Cretan poet, Epimenides, had come forward with a
plan. A flock of black and white sheep were let loose throughout the
city from the Areopagus. Wherever each lay down it was sacrificed to the
nearest god; and if a sheep lay down near the shrine of no known god it
was sacrificed to "The Unknown God." From this situation Paul takes his
starting point. There are a series of steps in his sermon.
(i) God is not the made but the maker; and he who made all
things cannot be worshipped by anything made by the hands of man. It is
all too true that men often worship what their hands have made. If a
man's God be that to which he gives all his time, thought and energy,
many are clearly engaged in worshipping man-made things.
(ii) God has guided history. He was behind the rise and fall of
nations in the days gone by; his hand is on the helm of things now.
(iii) God has made man in such a way that instinctively he longs for God and gropes after him in the darkness.
(iv) The days of groping and ignorance are past. So long as men
had to search in the shadows they could not know God and he excused
their follies and their mistakes; but now in Christ the full blaze of
the knowledge of God has come and the day of excuses is past.
(v) The day of judgment is coming. Life is neither a progress to
extinction, as it was to the Epicureans, nor a pathway to absorption to
God, as it was to the Stoics; it is a journey to the judgment seat of
God where Jesus Christ is Judge.
(vi) The proof of the preeminence of Christ is the resurrection.
It is no unknown God but a Risen Christ with whom we have to deal.
17:32-34 When they
heard of a resurrection of dead men, some mocked and some said, "We will
hear about this again"; but some attached themselves to him and
believed. Amongst these were Dionysius the Areopagite and a woman called
Damaris. together with others.
It would seem on the whole that Paul had less success in Athens
than anywhere else. It was typical of the Athenians that all they
wanted was to talk. They did not want action; they did not even
particularly want conclusions. They wanted simply mental acrobatics and
the stimulus of a mental hike.
There were three main reactions. (i) Some mocked. They were
amused by the passionate earnestness of this strange Jew. It is possible
to make a jest of life; but those who do so will find that what began
as comedy must end in tragedy. (ii) Some put off their decision. The
most dangerous of all days is when a man discovers how easy it is to
talk about tomorrow. (iii) Some believed. The wise man knows that only
the fool will reject God's offer.
Two converts are named. There is Dionysius the Areopagite. As
already said, the Areopagus was composed of perhaps not more than thirty
people; so that Dionysius must have been one of the intellectual
aristocracy of Athens. There was Damaris. The position of women in
Athens was very restricted. It is unlikely that any respectable woman
would have been in the market square at all. The likelihood is that she
turned from a way of shame to a way of life. Once again we see the
gospel making its appeal to all classes and conditions of men and women.
-Barclay's Daily Study Bible (NT)