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. Acts 17:23
The definition of an agnostic is someone who believes that nothing is known or can be known of the existence or nature of God or of anything beyond material phenomena; a person who claims neither faith nor disbelief in God. So, were the people in Athens agnostics? I don’t think so. They didn’t deny that there is a God or deny that He can be known. All that they were sure of is that there was a God Who they did not know. What a wonderful opportunity they presented to Paul when he encountered their strange altar. They were willing to pay homage to God, even if they knew nothing about Him. And so all Paul had to do was introduce them to Him. Do we have such an opportunity today?
In the previous verse, Paul reminds the Athenians that they are too superstitious. They went out of their way to acknowledge that there might be a God they didn’t know. If anything, the people of today are too apathetic, going out of their way to ignore or avoid having anything to do with God. To them, God may well be unknown, and they are content to let Him remain unknown. To most of them, God is not relevant to their careless and sinful lifestyles, and they don’t want that to change. We who are saved see the terrible folly of such an attitude. We understand that ignoring – or even denying – God does not preserve us from having to answer to Him. The problem is for us to get across to others the need to stop and consider that the God they do not know and do not want to know longs for them to come to know Him and what He can do for them. Even as we struggle to find a way, we can be truly thankful that the God Who was once unknown to us has made Himself known. What a blessing this is.
Before ever we could know God, we had to understand our great need of Him. We had to grasp the need of a Saviour before we could appreciate that a Saviour is available. It was the Holy Spirit, not ourselves, Who brought us to repentance and then to faith in the Saviour. It was the Holy Spirit, too, Who taught us that the One Who purchased us with His blood did so that we might be a possession for Him. We came to know that our Saviour is also our Lord, desiring our obedience to His Word. None but the Holy Spirit could unfold to us the riches of the Word of God. None but the Holy Spirit could lead us into appreciation of our spiritual blessings, into fellowship with the Lord’s people, into the glorious hope of our imminent rapture into the presence of Jesus Christ.
As we consider these things, we must acknowledge that there is much about our God that remains unknown. It is our desire that we might learn more of Himself. -Jim MacIntosh