Preaching to Intellectuals

In Athens, Paul was accused of being a babbler. This wasn’t that he spoke unintelligently, but that he seemed to have picked pieces of different views and put them into his own belief system. And from this, they wanted to know what he was teaching, most likely so that they could show their superiority of thought.

So much of the ‘church’ today want to be relevant. And they will take Paul’s preaching on Mars Hill as the reason to do this, the problem is that being relevant is a distraction from the Gospel. And isn’t it funny that everyone wants to be relevant to the hip and trendy crowd, and no one wants to be relevant to the balding, middle aged white guys. Could there be another reason why they want to be relevant?

The Athenians, as most religions today, believed that the deities could be pleased by the actions on man. So when Paul confronted them by telling them how they had the nature of God wrong, it was a great affront. We need to remember that, prior to salvation, our whole life was displeasing to God. And since our salvation, our whole life is pleasing to a God. Not because what we do has changed (but it should), but because the Father now looks at us through Jesus, and sees Him and not us.

Download now