22 Then Paul stood in the midst of Mars' hill, and said , Ye men of Athens, I perceive that in all things ye are too superstitious.
23 For as I passed by , and beheld your devotions , I found an altar with this inscription , TO THE UNKNOWN GOD. Whom therefore ye ignorantly worship , him declare I unto you.
24 God that made the world and all things therein , seeing that he is Lord of heaven and earth, dwelleth not in temples made with hands;
25 Neither is worshipped with men's hands, as though he needed any thing, seeing he giveth to all life, and breath, and all things;
26 And hath made of one blood all nations of men for to dwell on all the face of the earth, and hath determined the times before appointed , and the bounds of their habitation;
27 That they should seek the Lord, if haply they might feel after him, and find him , though he be not far from every one of us:
28 For in him we live , and move , and have our being ; as certain also of your own poets have said , For we are also his offspring.
29 Forasmuch then as we are the offspring of God, we ought not to think that the Godhead is like unto gold, or silver, or stone, graven by art and man's device.
30 And the times of this ignorance God winked at ; but now commandeth all men every where to repent :
31 Because he hath appointed a day, in the which he will judge the world in righteousness by that man whom he hath ordained ; whereof he hath given assurance unto all men, in that he hath raised him from the dead.
32 And when they heard of the resurrection of the dead, some mocked : and others said , We will hear thee again of this matter. 33 So Paul departed from among them.
34 Howbeit certain men clave unto him, and believed : among the which was Dionysius the Areopagite, and a woman named Damaris, and others with them.
Devotional:
The Greeks considered themselves the only civilized race. They called every one else barbarians. Paul wounded their pride by telling them that all people have the same ancestors. We are all descendants of Adam and Eve.
Racism is bred into us without our awareness. Most of us were raised in a closed society. We lived with our own people in our own towns. And somehow we figured that our race, our nation, maybe even our clan, was superior in the eyes of God.
The Bible knows onjy one division within the human race�the division between Jews and Gentiles. And even that division is abolished in Christ. All pride of race or class or color dishonors God and insults the image of God in all people.
For two thousand years God dealt almost exclusively with the Jewish nation and allowed nearly all Gentiles to live in spiritual ignorance (v. 30). But since the world has been reconciled to God through Jesus' sacrifice on the cross, all people of all nations are equal before God and must express their unity in Christ. In Adam all of us were created. In Christ all of us must be re-created.
