Gospel Sermons in Acts

In the past couple weeks at church, the pastor has inexplicably raised questions about the effectiveness of Paul's sermon on Mars Hill, noting that his time in Athens was apparently limited and that there were relatively few conversions noted. He attributed this to the absence in Paul's sermon of Jesus as the Messiah and his crucifixion.

Ignoring for the moment that it seems unlikely that we have the entire contents of Paul's sermon (I would think we have a summary of the main points instead), I have to ask by what criteria we're judging the sermon. These days we consider a sermon incomplete if it doesn't contain an altar call, even though this was virtually unknown prior to Charles Finney (whose exposition of theology seems a bit suspect to me). How are we to judge the effectiveness of any particular sermon, nonetheless Paul's?

He noted other features that seem strange: no letter to the Athenians is extant (by which I think he assumed that no church was planted at this time), there is no mention of Paul being driven from the city (as happened in Thessalonika, Berea, and Philippi), and no other special commentary is made concerning the church there.

To these points I would note that no letter is extant to the Bereans, despite the evident working of the Holy Spirit in that community. Neither was Paul driven from every single place he went to preach, notably Corinth. Regarding the church, it's clear that a church certainly did exist in Athens. Dionysius' name is mentioned as among the converts, and he is reportedly one of the first bishops of that church.


As to the initial arguments regarding the invocation of Christ's name and the crucifixion, we might note that the audience were primarily Gentiles, not Jews. The idea of a Messiah was known to the Jews, but by and large an alien thing to the Greek community. (Even if there were parallels, the expectations for the Messiah to the Jew were likely different than for the Greeks.)

It makes more sense to start with a natural theology, which is essentially what we see in Paul's sermon. God is introduced as the creator and sustainer of all life. The resurrection testifies to the necessity of judgment, and so the warning is sounded. (One wonders if Paul really didn't talk about the crucifixion when he talked about the resurrection of the dead. The resurrection pervaded his discussion with Jews, too.)

Far from being "ineffective," it seems more likely that Paul tailored the sermon to the audience. He preached the gospel full well (we can see correlations from Romans in what is recorded in Acts), and it had the intended result.


I confess I'm mystified by the motivation to cast doubt on the effectiveness of this sermon. I can only speculate, and I don't really want to do that without more information; but I can't explain why a discussion concerning the audience and the likely abbreviation of the sermon as recorded in Luke wasn't even mentioned.

Christus Victor in Joshua

Again, apologies for the delays in writing. It has been a very busy few months, and it's not going to get any quieter.


We've been going through Joshua at Bible study (which I've only been able to sporadically attend lately). We covered the distribution of the inheritance last Friday, and I was struck by the contrast between Joshua and Jesus'. We read in Hebrews, for example:

For if Joshua had given them rest, God would not have spoken of another day later on. So then, there remains a Sabbath rest for the people of God, for whoever has entered God's rest has also rested from his works as God did from his (He 4.7–9).

And we see that Joshua didn't give the people rest:

Behold, I have allotted to you as an inheritance for your tribes those nations that remain, along with all the nations that I have already cut off, from the Jordan to the Great Sea in the west (Jo 23.4).

The Israelites had yet to dispossess all of the native tribes from the land upon Joshua's death, and his charge to them in the following verses is to finish the job and to keep the law. (We might digress on the latter for a little while, but I won't.)


I would think that part of the reason that Jesus can give us rest is because his job is actually finished (Jn 19.30). Unlike the children of Israel, there's nothing else more for us to do.

If we stop and think for a moment, I think we can find an atonement theme here. Joshua was victorious insofar as he defeated the enemies he faced, but Christ was utterly victorious; death is defeated. While there is a tension between the already and the not-yet, Hebrews 4.8 suggests that this rest is part of the already. (Naturally we also wait for the casting out of the Devil from heaven, too; cf Re 12.8.)

To connect the dots, let's look quickly at Leviticus:

Do not make yourselves unclean by any of these things, for by all these the nations I am driving out before you have become unclean, and the land became unclean, so that I punished its iniquity, and the land vomited out its inhabitants (Le 18.24,25).

God used Israel to judge the inhabitants of Canaan, to, as it were, make atonement for the land's iniquity. There is a connection between the people and the land that I think we often miss. The land itself required cleansing, and there was a relationship between the people and the land. So, for example, the people were to make a sacrifice even when the perpetrator of a sin was not known:

If in the land that the LORD your God is giving you to possess someone is found slain, lying in the open country, and it is not known who killed him, then your elders and your judges shall come out, and they shall measure the distance to the surrounding cities. ... And all the elders of that city nearest to the slain man shall wash their hands over the heifer whose neck was broken in the valley, and they shall testify, 'Our hands did not shed this blood, nor did our eyes see it shed. Accept atonement, O LORD, for your people Israel, whom you have redeemed, and do not set the guilt of innocent blood in the midst of your people Israel, so that their blood guilt be atoned for.' (De 21.1,2, 6–8)

I wonder if perhaps we see elements of the Christus Victor idea of atonement here. If the land is a type of our home to come, the idea that the death of Christ purifies the land (and the people to dwell in it) helps make some sense of Hebrews 9.23: "Thus it was necessary for the copies of the heavenly things to be purified with these rites, but the heavenly things themselves with better sacrifices than these." (In this context the purification deals with instruments of worship, not the land itself.)

There is a sense, too, in which we can map some kind of eschatalogical judgment to the scene in Joshua, and I suppose this also naturally falls into the assertion of Christ's kingdom and kingly authority. This reeks of Christus Victor (at least to me).


I have to develop my thoughts more (it seems like almost all of my articles are fits and starts of thought rather than their completion), but I think this would allow us a more complete view of atonement. I'm a PSA guy, but I recognize that this isn't the only way people think of atonement (and that other viewpoints provide important insight, too). Seeing atonement from an eschatalogically realized perspective may help to integrate them a little more effectively.

He Is Risen!

As John 19.30 says so nicely, "It is finished."

Some verses to consider today:

I shall not die, but I shall live,
and recount the deeds of the LORD.
The LORD has disciplined me severely,
but he has not given me over to death.
Open to me the gates of righteousness,
that I may enter through them
and give thanks to the LORD.
This is the gate of the LORD;
the righteous shall enter through it.

(Ps 118.17-20)

Lift up your heads, O gates!
And be lifted up, O ancient doors,
that the King of glory may come in.
Who is this King of glory?
The LORD, strong and mighty,
the LORD, mighty in battle!
Lift up your heads, O gates!
And lift them up, O ancient doors,
that the King of glory may come in.
Who is this King of glory?
The LORD of hosts,
he is the King of glory!

(Ps 24.7-10)

But on the first day of the week, at early dawn, they went to the tomb, taking the spices they had prepared. And they found the stone rolled away from the tomb, but when they went in they did not find the body of the Lord Jesus. While they were perplexed about this, behold, two men stood by them in dazzling apparel. And as they were frightened and bowed their faces to the ground, the men said to them, "Why do you seek the living among the dead? He is not here, but has risen."

(Lu 24.1-6)


Have a Happy Easter, all.