Thoughts on Acts 17

Today’s reading: Judges 5; Acts 17

I’m not really sure what to make of Paul’s statement near the end of Acts 17 today when he says “The times of ignorance God overlooked…”

As Paul is speaking before the Areopagus, and is making his case for Christianity, he says:

“Being then God’s offspring, we ought not to think that the divine being is like gold or silver or stone, an image formed by the art and imagination of man. The times of ignorance God overlooked, but now he commands all people everywhere to repent, because he has fixed a day on which he will judge the world in righteousness by a man whom he has appointed; and of this he has given assurance to all by raising him from the dead.”

But what exactly does he mean when he says that God overlooked the times of ignorance? He is speaking in the context of worshiping idols, so the ignorance he is referring to seems pretty clearly to be referring to this worship as contrasted with the knowledge of the true God who is being made known to them, but what is overlooked? Does it mean nobody before Jesus was ever condemned? Or was there a different standard of some kind before the cross?

First off, I think we can say confidently that when Paul says “overlooked” he is not saying nobody was condemned prior to the cross. I say that based on what Paul himself says in his letter to the church in Rome. In Romans 5, as Paul is comparing and contrasting the work of Adam and the work of Jesus, he says, “Therefore, as one trespass led to condemnation for all men…” in reference to Adam’s sin. So Adam’s sin resulted in condemnation for every person that would follow after him, obviously including all those who lived in the “times of ignorance.” So I think it’s safe to take that option off the table.

The next place that takes me though, if we aren’t saying nobody was condemned, is how they were saved. Today we are saved through faith in Christ, but clearly nobody before the cross could put their faith in the death and resurrection of Jesus as the payment for their sins. I personally like the way Dr. Michael Heiser talks about this as an issue of believing loyalty in Yahweh. It helps me think about it a little more concretely to recognize that that is what God is looking for from His people all throughout the Old Testament. He isn’t looking for exacting Law keeping, He is looking for their continued faithfulness to Him, not worshiping other gods (we’ve talked about this point a lot as we were going through the Pentateuch). But what about people outside of Israel?

This is a question that nags at me. We have examples like Rahab, Ruth, Naaman, and even Nebuchadnezzar and Darius, non-Jews who recognized the power and uniqueness of Yahweh, but they seem to be few and far between. That’s not necessarily wrong or bad, but the piece I struggle with is that God gave the nations over to their gods at Babel. This is something we’ve talked about a few times, but there are a handful of Old Testament passages that make it clear that at the Tower of Babel, when God mixed up the people’s language and scattered them, He was disinheriting them from being His and He gave them over to lesser elohim, lesser spiritual/divine beings, instead. So while Israel was God’s people, the rest of the nations were not His people and were given over, by Him, to the worship of these other gods. But if God allotted to them the worship of these lesser gods, then wouldn’t faithfulness to Yahweh actually look like worshiping the gods He allotted to them…?

The best I can think at this point then is based on God’s condemnation of those lesser gods in Psalm 82, where He declares His judgment on the gods of the nations because they have not ruled properly, but have judged unjustly. So while the nations were given over to the worship of these gods, the gods led their nations into immorality and unrighteousness. Maybe this is where people could have been expected to not follow their gods into debauchery. In Romans 2 Paul talks about how, for those without the law (those outside of Israel), they were a law to themselves with their consciences either excusing or condemning them. So if the faithful pursuit of their allotted god would lead them to violate their own conscience, they could be expected to have rejected that and/or at the very least, not followed that aspect of their religion.

This is my best guess as to what Paul means by God overlooking the times of ignorance. I could be wrong, but I don’t think people outside of Israel were condemned for worshiping other gods since God had made that their portion, but He did still hold them accountable for the moral understanding they did have, which would have included the conscience He had given them. So in the past, when the nations, at large, didn’t know any better, they weren’t held accountable for not worshiping Yahweh (though they were still accountable for what they did know), but now that Christ has come, the time of ignorance is over and that worship is no longer acceptable or enough and so will no longer be overlooked as the only way to get to the Father is through the Son.

And like I said, while this is where my thinking is currently at, it’s really just my best guess rather than a position I feel I have landed on really firmly. So I am more than open to any thoughts, ideas, objections, input, or anything else people have on this topic!