Acts 17:22-31
The one true God commands all people everywhere to repent because He has fixed a day of judgment through the risen Jesus.
22 Paul stood in the middle of the Areopagus, and said, “You men of Athens, I perceive that you are very religious in all things.
23 For as I passed along and observed the objects of your worship, I also found an altar with this inscription: ‘TO AN UNKNOWN GOD.’ What therefore you worship in ignorance, I announce to you.
24 The God who made the world and all things in it, he, being Lord of heaven and earth, doesn’t dwell in temples made with hands.
25 He isn’t served by men’s hands, as though he needed anything, seeing he himself gives to all life and breath, and all things.
26 He made from one blood every nation of men to dwell on all the surface of the earth, having determined appointed seasons, and the boundaries of their dwellings,
27 that they should seek the Lord, if perhaps they might reach out for him and find him, though he is not far from each one of us.
28 ‘For in him we live, move, and have our being.’ As some of your own poets have said, ‘For we are also his offspring.’
29 Being then the offspring of God, we ought not to think that the Divine Nature is like gold, or silver, or stone, engraved by art and design of man.
30 The times of ignorance therefore God overlooked. But now he commands that all people everywhere should repent,
31 because he has appointed a day in which he will judge the world in righteousness by the man whom he has ordained; of which he has given assurance to all men, in that he has raised him from the dead.”
The one true God commands all people everywhere to repent because He has fixed a day of judgment through the risen Jesus.
To present Paul’s Areopagus address proclaiming the true Creator God, confronting idolatry, and calling all people to repentance in light of the risen Christ.
This passage records Paul's formal address at the Areopagus and represents one of the most theologically concentrated speeches in Acts. Luke shows how Paul proclaims biblical truth in a philosophically pluralistic environment. The sermon moves from creation to repentance to resurrection and judgment.
At the Areopagus in Athens, Paul addresses philosophers and civic leaders. He references an altar to an unknown god as a point of contact. Drawing on biblical theology, he proclaims monotheism, divine sovereignty, human accountability, and resurrection. The speech confronts Epicurean denial of providence and Stoic pantheism with the personal Creator who judges the world.
The Gospel Reasoned from Scripture and Proclaimed to the Nations
Acts 17 shows that the gospel must be reasoned from Scripture, tested by Scripture, and proclaimed to idolaters as the message of the Creator God who commands repentance and has raised Jesus from the dead.