The Unchanging Gospel

In my daily times of prayer recently I’ve been going through the Acts of the Apostles and of course came to Paul in Athens: Paul the “simple”(?) disciple of Christ in that city of giant philosophers and intellectuals. He was “greatly provoked” by their idolatry (that is the same word that is used in Greek version of the Bible – the LXX – of God’s attitude to idolatry). You remember he cleverly took as his text their altar “to an unknown God.”

Well, we live in a world that doesn’t “know God” – Paul preaches of One who is the Creator of the universe, Lord of Heaven and earth, Sustainer of of Life, Ruler of nations, who determines their place in the scheme of things, Father of all human beings, whose offspring we all are, and who is the Judge of the world. Who calls everybody to repentance.

What we learn here is that you cannot preach the Gospel of Jesus without the doctrine of God , or the Cross without Creation, or Salvation without Judgement. Perhaps we need to review our evangelism?