This is an excerpt of a classic book, The Motive and Aim of Missions, which has just been released in a second edition by Crown & Covenant Publications. John Young was a missionary and later a professor who taught the covenant theology of missions.

How should we strive to communicate God’s message of redemption to the lost? We must approach them as those with whom God has already been dealing, but those who have terribly distorted and misrepresented His revelation. We must strive to be used as messengers of God’s Son and His Word to them. Is this not the way Paul approached the heathen Gentiles?

Let us look at his confrontation with the heathen at Lystra after he had worked a miracle and they interpreted it to mean that their gods, Jupiter and Mercurius, had returned to them. “We… preach to you that you should turn from these useless things to the living God, who made the heaven, the earth, the sea, and all things that are in them, who in bygone generations allowed all nations to walk in their own ways. Nevertheless He did not leave Himself without witness, in that He did good, gave us rain from heaven and fruitful seasons, filling our hearts with food and gladness” (Acts 14:15-17).

In verse 15, he points out that their worship is in vain and should be rejected. He also says that the missionaries have come to tell them of the Creator, “the living God” who made all things. In verses 16-17, he states that although God has thus far suffered their rebellious ways, He has been witnessing to them through His good blessings bestowed through nature. Now God wants them to turn to Him in truth. This is His theme, stated in verse 15: although they had been rejecting Him, He was still seeking them.

Paul clearly rejected, and called on them to reject, their erroneous concepts of God. Equally clearly, he told them that it was the God of the skies over their heads and the earth they stood upon who had never ceased to witness to them nor be good to them, not some foreign god (even though they had tried to make Him a foreigner by banishing Him from their minds). He had come to tell them about the only true, living, Creator-God.

In his recorded sermon to the Athenian intellectuals, Paul used the same approach (Acts 17:16ff ). Verse 16 tells us that Paul was greatly agitated by the sight of Athens’ idolatry. The symbols of their polytheistic beliefs were everywhere. He, therefore, did not limit his preaching to the synagogues, where the Jews would hear him, but went out into the marketplace and preached Jesus Christ and His resurrection from the dead.

It was a new message for Athens and, apparently, was presented in such a way that it raised the curiosity of the sophisticated city men. They arranged to have him speak before the Council of the Areopagus, the most venerable Athenian court, which met at that time in the Agora. It had great respect because of its ancient origin. Even under the Romans, the council had supreme authority in religious matters and the power to appoint public lecturers, even exercising some control over them in the interests of maintaining public order.

How should Paul begin before this illustrious and learned gathering? He began as he did in Lystra, by introducing them to the God who was not foreign to the land but who was the sovereign over it, “the Lord of heaven and earth,” even though they acknowledged that they did not know Him. Paul cleverly started by referring to the altar addressed “To the Unknown God” as evidence that their ignorance was not of His existence. Paul knew that there was an awareness stamped on their hearts as God’s image bearers, but that there was an ignorance of the truth about Him. Their worship was thus in ignorance and error. Paul had come to tell them the truth about Him.

Paul went on to point out that the true God is God of all the universe, of Athens also, then. Therefore, He, the maker of the earth, could not be tied down to any Athenian temple made with men’s hands! What would He do with temple food offerings, He who was the giver of life to all things that grow? As to the people of Lystra, he also called their attention to God’s common grace in giving them all that they possessed, and he said that God had done all this for them that they might seek Him as their Lord.

The heathen almost always have special stories attributing divine origin to themselves. The Athenians prided themselves that they were not immigrants but that they had sprung from the soil of their native Attica, and were far superior to non- Greeks, whom they called barbarians. But Paul with one thrust undercuts this idea of racial superiority and at the same time drives home again the fact that the true God is the God of all men, the one universal God. “He has made from one blood every nation of men,” he declares (Acts 17:26). The unity of the human race as descended from the one man Adam is fundamental to the salvation of men through the one Savior, the Godman, Jesus Christ.

Paul then again impresses them with the fact that he is not introducing a foreign God who lives far away, but One who has always been near to them. To make this important point even more striking, he uses language from one of their own writers (Acts 17:28). The words used are from an address to Zeus by his son Minos, one which must have been well known to Paul because we see him quoting from it again in Titus 1:12. It says:

“They fashioned a tomb for thee, O holy and high one—

The Cretans, always liars, evil beasts, idle bellies!

But thou art not dead: thou livest and abidest forever,

For in thee we live and move and have our being.” —Epimenides, Cretica

Then he makes a direct quote from another source, one of their poets, “For we are also his offspring.”

From these things they acknowledge they know about God, which they must have derived from God’s witness to Himself in general revelation, Paul wants to show them how they have suppressed and distorted the truth. They have made images of metal with which to worship God and thus have worshiped the creature more than the Creator! This shows great ignorance, but God is willing to overlook it now if they will repent of it as a great sin against God, and turn from idols to serve the living and true God. There is no other way to escape the judgment of God, who is going to judge the whole world by One whom He has appointed. This One He has proved to be entirely adequate for this solemn task, for God raised Him from the dead.

Such was the gist of Paul’s sermon and his manner of presentation to these pagan, intellectual Greeks. He knew of their inner knowledge of God, stemming from their creation in God’s image and God’s revelation of Himself in nature. He even quoted from their religious altars and writers to prove that they acknowledged some smattering of this knowledge. But he immediately went on to show how they had suppressed and distorted it in creature worship. He warned them of God’s wrath and judgment if they did not repent of this and told of God’s mercy to overlook it if they would repent. Then he introduced the Judge whom God had provided and had demonstrated to be One of His own appointment by raising Him from the dead.

That was as far as Paul got. To sophisticated men, many of whom had no place for even the immortality of the soul, the idea of the resurrection of a dead body was beyond belief.

Many a missionary has found an almost identical reaction when he reached this great truth. Belief in the mighty works of the true God is unacceptable to the natural man until the mighty work of the Holy Spirit intervenes and regeneration takes place. Paul, no doubt, had they allowed him, would have gone on to present the saving work of the true God whom he was introducing to them, whose salvation was through the Judge who was also the Savior. It was because of this Savior’s work that God would overlook their past idolatry if they repented and believed on Him.

The Reaction

What was the result of this kind of gentlemanly, but completely forthright, presentation of the Christian message? There were at first two different reactions. There usually are if the missionary has done his work well. And Paul had done his work well. His task was to make the message just as intelligible to his heathen audience as he could. He wanted them to hear it with as full a hearing as it was possible for the natural man to attain. He had done all he could to make the unknown known in terms they could understand. We may be sure his heart was full of prayer that God would bless the effort with the work of the Spirit in bringing regeneration and spiritual understanding.

The two reactions were these: Some mocked his presentation of the Christian message; others felt an inner voice telling them that this was deserving of the most careful consideration. It was too close to their real, inner God-consciousness to resist so easily. They needed to hear more, and they said so. From those who went with him, some came to enlightenment and faith in Jesus Christ.

These results are still the results a missionary today can expect if he makes the message clear to the unsaved. If he has not made its distinctiveness clear and has left vagueness in the people’s minds so that they think of it merely as generally a good thing and similar to the best ideas in their own religions, he may get a ready response of acceptance from many when he gives an invitation to accept His Lord. But as time goes on, and they receive further instruction and enlightenment, and discover the exclusiveness and real meaning of the Christian message, they may well say, “This is not what I thought it was! I don’t want this!” Then they will leave the church, causing much grief and damage to its testimony. The easy believism was based on a false belief.

But if the message has been made clear so that they have a real hearing of it—with a comprehension of its significance, of its exclusiveness, of its distinction from their pagan religious ideas, and of its real truth—then a desire to continue to learn more will probably reflect an inner hunger that is finding satisfaction in the truth and the working of the Holy Spirit. From such enlightened followers it will be only a matter of time until the Spirit who has begun His work among them will complete it, and some will come to saving faith.

How great is our privilege to be ambassadors of the living God and to communicate His precious message! May it ever be our aim to make it clear and plain so that men may truly hear it from us, and that God the Holy Spirit may use our presentation to bring life everlasting to the lost.