We are His offspring

“For in him we live and move and have our being.” As some of your own poets have said, “We are His offspring.” (Acts 17:28)

 

Paul hadn’t planned to cross into the province of Macedonia at outset of his second mission trip, but he changed course to there because he saw illusion of Macedonian in the dream. Then through the province of Macedonia to Athens in the southern province, preached the gospel at Areopagus. Paul said to the people of Athens that they look very religious in every life. Paul introduced them God, the master of heaven and earth, and taught that He is One who gives life and breathing to all things and people. He also said, because people are God’s offspring, that people must not worship idols, but should serve God. For this, everyone would have to become wise to know God correctly.

 

No matter what a man plans, it is God Jehovah who accomplishes it. Then some people may ask, “So what’s the use of person’s plan?” But this is an inquiry out of stupid, irresponsible, and ridiculous idea. What would happen a result of letting anything an immature child do what own wants? There would be some cases when it will work out well, but there will be many times when it goes wrong and causes harm to the child. As parents the adult, we should properly interfere with and help a child’s judgment and behavior from time to time. As such, man must behave following his own judgment and do his best, but to be more important have to believe with knowing surely a fact that the course of life doesn’t derail because of God’s care. Paul’s mission plan was originally in the northeast direction, but God made him head to the northwest, Macedonia. The Lord is the One who governs human life and makes exert individual will, but moreover leads to be fine all together everything of daily life.

There are various ways that God does to change a person’s path. God made Paul the apostle change his path by showing him an illusion through dream in the night. When we hear someone’s testimony of faith at childhood, we perhaps wanted to have the same experience to that of the witness. And there were times considered as if to be able to receive grace of God, by doing the same that like others’ experience. There may be several experiences in the process which Christians perceive faith, including dreams, knowledge, encounters, fantasies, awakening, and failure and success. And yet, since there is no fixed provisions on ‘experiences of faith’ in the Bible, we need to know that only life according to God’s words is the right path of faith experience. The mind of the spiritualism is quite advantageous to accept Christ’s faith. On the other hand, it’s hard for people who are immersed in materialistic ideas to believe in Jesus. Therefore, it is very important to have education of faith from an early age thoroughly. We would be able to turn back rightly someday because of the traces of faith left in the bottom of mind, even if entered the wrong path for a while in the process of growing up. Please never forget the Proverbs 22:6 saying, “Start children off on the way they should go, and even when they are old they will not turn from it.”

Religious people have disadvantages as well as the advantages, for some people of them show tendencies to be pantheistic. They accordingly misunderstand the theory that God is full in the universe as a pantheistic naturalistic idea. But God as the Father, the Son, and as the Holy Spirit is a personality and the only One. Personal personality is the basic character of the soul given by God. As one of the evidences, only people among the creatures try to find and serve God. Paul taught the people of Athens who true God was. Jehovah the Lord is the God who has been served since Paul’s fathers, and the Lord who has made Paul repent.

Paul cited a poem by Aratos Ἄρατος(BC 3c) who described person as ‘His offspring’. He also asked them to repent and have faith, on the past wrongdoings. The boundary mark that Paul distinguished between the past and the present was the resurrection of Jesus Christ. The right way to participate in the resurrection of Christ is repentance and faith. Before Christ’s resurrection, it was a prophetic age, so the teachings of salvation had been unclear to some extent.

 

Man is the offspring of God, who has been made in the image of God. Man is the only one who had been made directly by God among all things, and God gave breath the spirit of Oneself into man. Then, would it be right for such a noble man to serve an idol carved by one’s own technology and design on gold or silver or stone? Even if man didn’t know it before Jesus’ resurrection, from now on, Paul said have to repent according to God’s order. Remember this, if man do not believe in and follow Christ’s resurrection, cannot be saved in the grace of God.

 

(Written by Koonoh, Pastor of JDO Presbyterian Church in Korea, on May 22nd 2022)