Luke probably recorded Paul's address (vv. 22-31) as a sample of his preaching to intellectual pagans (cf. 13:16-41; 14:15-18; 20:18-35).712In this speech Paul began with God as Creator and brought his hearers to God as Judge.
17:22 Paul was not flattering his audience by calling them "very religious;"this was a statement of fact. The Greek words simply mean that they were firm in their reverence for their gods. Paul again followed his policy of adapting to the people he was seeking to evangelize and met them where they were in their thinking (cf. 1 Cor. 9:22).
17:23 Paul may have meant that he was going to tell his audience more about a God whom they worshipped but did not know much about, namely Yahweh. This interpretation assumes that there were people in Athens who were worshipping the Creator. Alternatively Paul may have meant that he would inform them of a God whom they did not know but had built an altar to honor. In either case, Paul began with the Athenians' interest in gods and their confessed ignorance about at least one god and proceeded to explain what Yahweh had revealed about Himself.
"An altar has been found at Pergamum inscribed to the unknown deities'. Such altars had no special deity in view. The dedication was designed to ensure that no god was overlooked to the possible harm of the city."713
"His point, as in Rom. 2:14-16, is that God has revealed some knowledge of himself and his will to all men, but that this has been clarified and illuminated by his special revelation through the Scriptures and now finally in the Gospel."714
17:24 The true God created all things. Since He is Lord of heaven and earth, human temples cannot contain Him. He is transcendent over all (cf. 7:48-50). This harmonized with the Epicureans' idea of God as above the world, but it corrected the Stoics' pantheism. Some Greek philosophers agreed that temples did not really house their pagan gods, but many Greeks thought they did.
17:25 The true God also sustains all things; He does not need people to sustain Him. In other words, He is imminent as well as transcendent. He participates in human existence. This contradicted the Epicureans' belief that God took no interest in human affairs as well as the Stoics' self-sufficiency.
17:26 The Greeks, and especially the Athenians, prided themselves on being racially superior to all other people. Still Paul told them that they, like all other people, had descended from one source, Adam. This fact excludes the possibility of the essential superiority of any race. God also determines the times of nations--their seasons, when they rise and fall--and their boundaries. In other words, God is sovereign over the political and military affairs of nations. The Greeks liked to think that they determined their own destiny.
17:27 God's purpose in regulating times and boundaries was that people would realize His sovereignty and seek Him (cf. Rom. 1; John 6:44; 12:32). God, Paul said, is not far from human contact. This again harmonized with some Greek philosophy, but it contradicted the teachings of other philosophers.
"It is implied in Acts xvii that the pagan world had made little progress in searching for its Creator. In Romans it is more vigorously stated that, for all God's visible presence in His creation, the world at large had failed to find Him."715
17:28 Here Paul cited lines from two Greek writers who expressed ideas that were consistent with divine revelation. The Cretan poet Epimenides (c. 600 B.C.; cf. Titus 1:12) had written, "For in thee we live and move and have our being."716The Cilician poet Aratus (c. 315-240 B.C.), and Cleanthes (331-233 B.C.) before him, had written, "We are also his offspring."717Paul's purpose in these quotations was to get his audience to continue to agree with him about the truth.
17:29 Paul's conclusion was that idolatry, therefore, is illogical. If God created people, God cannot be an image or an idol. Paul was claiming that God's divine nature is essentially spiritual rather than material.
17:30 Before Jesus Christ came, God did not view people as being as guilty as He does now that Christ has come. They were guilty of failing to respond to former revelation, but now they are more guilty in view of the greater revelation that Jesus Christ brought at His incarnation (cf. Heb. 1:1-2). God overlooked the times of ignorance (i.e., when people had only limited revelation; cf. 3:17; 14:16; Rom. 3:25; 2 Pet. 3:9) in a relative sense only. Before the Incarnation people died as unbelievers and were lost, but now there is more light. Consequently people's guilt is greater this side of the Incarnation. Obviously many people have not heard the gospel and are as ignorant of the greater revelation of God that Jesus Christ brought as were people who lived before the Incarnation. Nevertheless they live in a time when God has revealed more of Himself than previously.
This makes it all the more important that Christians take the gospel to everyone. Greater revelation by God means greater responsibility for people, both for the unsaved and for the saved. God previously took the relative lack of understanding about Himself into consideration as He dealt with people. Now that Christ has come, He will hold people more responsible for their sins.
"Paul appeals to the relation of Creator and creature, and to God as universal judge, in order to provide a foundation for a gospel that can address the whole of humanity. The internal impulse for this speech (internal to the implied author's perspective) comes from the need to speak of all humanity sharing an essentially similar relation to God as a basis for an inclusive gospel, a gospel commensurate with the inclusive saving purpose of God announced in Luke 2:30-32."718
"The Bible requires repentance for salvation, but repentance does not mean to turn from sin, nor a change in one's conduct. Those are the fruits of repentance. Biblical repentance is a change of mind or attitude concerning either God [Acts 20:21], Christ [Acts 2:38], dead works [Heb. 6:1], or sin [Acts 8:22]. When one trusts Christ it is inconceivable that he would not automatically change his mind concerning one or more or even all of these things."719
17:31 The true knowledge of God leads to (encourages) repentance because it contains information about coming judgment. Paul concluded his speech by clarifying His hearers' responsibility.
"He has presented God as the Creator in His past work. He shows God as the Redeemer in His present work. Now he shows God as the Judge in His future work."720
Note that Paul referred to sin (v. 29), righteousness (v. 31), and judgment (v. 31; cf. John 16:5-11; Rom. 1-3). The resurrected Jesus is God's agent of judgment (cf. 7:13; Ps. 96:13; John 5:22, 27), the Son of Man (Dan. 7:13) Paul stressed that Jesus was a man, rather than an idol or a mythological character such as the Greek gods, whom the true God has appointed as His agent of judgment.
The proof of Jesus' qualification to judge humanity is His resurrection. Jesus' resurrection vindicated His claims about Himself (e.g., His claim to be the Judge of all humankind, John 5:22, 25-29).
