that they may seek God; if indeed they might feel after him and find him, although he is not far from each one of us
Paul stands before the thinkers of Athens and tells them why God arranged human history as He did. The verse raises two hard questions. If God is so near, why has man not found Him? And what does it mean to grope after someone standing at your elbow?
Paul has just spoken of nations, appointed times and set borders. One writer looks past the nations to God's care for each person.
God's arranging of the nations was far from being all His care. He felt graciously for every soul of man, who in losing Him had lost the only and necessary centre for the heart... For man was fallen from God, and sin reigned in death... But God remained the God of goodness and mercy, ready to hear and forgive. But man must seek Him, conscious of sin, misery, and darkness.
The same writer ties this aim to the ordinary kindnesses of life:
It was not only the passing testimony to His goodness in the gift from heaven of rains and fruitful seasons... but also to appointed seasons, and the boundaries where the various nations live. All of it was under God's hand, with particular favours given to each. And in it all there was at least a whisper to seek after God.
Behind "feel their way" is a word about hands, not thoughts.
The word psēlaphaō is "to feel after with the fingers, handle." It is used of what can be touched. It occurs only in Luke 24:39; Acts 17:27; Hebrews 12:18; 1 John 1:1.
The word tells you who Paul had in mind. One writer used that point with a man who could not "feel" that he was saved:
I pointed out that the word feel is only once found in the New Testament, and that is in Acts 17:27... The word does not belong to the Christian, you see, but to the heathen who have no written revelation. Our word is "faith," or "believe." We do not know because we feel; we believe God's Word, and so we know.
Paul does not say that man is near God. He says God is near man. One writer presses that difference.
Man has gone far from God, and his great desire is always to increase the distance, but God has not gone far from man. The distance lies in alienation of heart and mind... But God pursues him in the grace and love of His heart. He is ready to fall on his neck and cover him with kisses the moment that man, in the sorrow of his soul, turns round and begins to feel after his Creator, whom he has so heartlessly abandoned.
Paul's wording here is cautious. One writer weighs that groping against the gospel that came later.
We may enter into the apostle's cautious language: "if by any means they might feel after and find Him..." Compared with the gospel after Christ's work, it was groping in the dark, except where the True Light was shining.
Another writer answers those who call this groping a misfortune.
People often speak of the heathen as groping after the light and unable to find it. They call it their misfortune, not their sin, because they are held down by circumstances too hard for them. That is not really so. The truth is, "There is none that seeks after God."... It is man not seeking God, but trying to escape from God, and he has escaped, so to speak, into the darkness. The darkness is the darkness of resisted light, not the absence of light.
Commentators differ in emphasis here. One reads the closing words as an open door:
Paul adds that He is not far from every one of us. If a person honestly seeks God, God will reveal Himself.
Another answers a question about a man with right beliefs and a decent life:
"Right convictions and good practice" is not gospel. Is he born again? Acts 17:27 does not say a word about the Spirit's acting... People confuse the ground of responsibility with sovereign grace in saving.
Man's duty to return to God stands. But the door does not stay open:
Man is a lost sinner. By his love of sin he has strayed from his Maker into hopeless darkness. He is always under responsibility to return to God, who has a righteous claim on the love and obedience of all His creatures... His patience with sinners will not last for ever. Some day men may wish to "find" Him, and will discover that He is no longer "near."
- Purpose. God set the times and borders of every nation with one personal aim: that people would seek Him.
- Groping. "Feel after" is a word for hands in the dark. It is real seeking, but blind — nothing next to the light now given.
- Nearness. God never moved away; the distance is man's alienation of heart, and God pursues him across it.
- Excuse. The darkness is resisted light, not missing light. So man's failure is guilt, not misfortune.
- Urgency. Commentators differ on how far seeking gets. They agree the verse sets out man's responsibility, not the gospel. And God's patience has an end.
for in him we live and move and exist; as also some of the poets amongst you have said, For we are also his offspring.
Paul spoke in a city full of altars and philosophers. He told them God is not far off, and used their own poets to argue against the idols all around him.
Each phrase of the verse marks a different layer of our reliance on God:
In fact, man's very existence is bound up with God, however little he realizes it. "In Him we live:" He is the source of our life; "and move:" He sustains all of our activities; "and have our being:" our existence is totally dependent upon Him.
One writer draws out how complete that hold on us is, and notes what Paul is not discussing here:
He surrounds us — in Him we live and move and are! The last of these says it most fully. He sustains us. He carries us, more completely than an infant in its mother's arms, for His arms never open to let go... He is not here considering the effect of the fall, nor yet man's responsibility, but the place given him in God's design. From there he will be better able to judge how far he has departed.
Yet closeness is not the whole truth about Him:
The words "in Him we live and move and have our being" show how near God is. Yet Paul preached Him as the One above all, the Lord of heaven and earth.
The quoted line was not invented for the sermon. It came from writings the audience could check for themselves:
The apostle rises far above natural philosophy. He views man in his relation to God, with an awareness of it that no other living being on earth has... Revealed truth states that relation in the clearest terms, and its echo sounded even where the true God was not known. So the apostle could quote the Greeks themselves, centuries before he spoke: "For we are indeed his offspring." These exact words appear in the astronomical poem of Aratus, a Cilician like himself, the Phaenomena, which still exists today. They appear again, with only one letter different, in the Stoic Cleanthes' hymn to Zeus, which also still exists.
There is an irony in the choice of witness:
So the apostle turns the admission of their own poets against themselves, or more exactly against their idolatry. Strange to say, the poets, however fanciful, are wiser than the philosophers. How often they stumble in their dreams on truths they would never have imagined!
"Offspring" means we come from God as creatures. It is not the same as being His children:
Only by faith in Christ Jesus do we become children of God, but all men are His offspring as His creatures. This being so, we ought not to think of God as something less than ourselves, or as the work of our own hands; and we should be those who seek after Him.
One writer traces this back to how man was made:
Scripture derives the soul of man, as man, from the inbreathing of God, apart from His dealings of saving mercy in Christ. In this sense, as the apostle applied it (Acts 17:28), all men, even the heathen, are His offspring. In Him all live.
Paul builds on a point his hearers already accepted:
If we are the offspring of God, as the Athenians boasted, idol-worship must be wrong. The Deity could not be like an image of stone, wood, or metal. If men are the offspring of God, God cannot be like a lifeless idol. The deduction was plain indeed. No one could refute it. It dealt a death-blow to idolatry.
Paul presses the point gently rather than with scorn:
If man alone of the creatures on earth is God's offspring, how can anyone maintain that the divinity is like a work of man's craft and imagination in gold, silver, or stone? "We ought not" to think so, he says graciously... A lifeless block that man shapes cannot be, or properly represent, the God who made him and all things.
- Source. "In Him we live" — God is the origin of life. "Move" — He sustains all our activity. "Have our being" — our existence depends wholly on Him.
- Sustainer. He surrounds and carries us more closely than a mother holds her child, because His arms never open.
- Near. God is close to every person. Yet Paul preached Him as Lord of heaven and earth, not a God the world contains.
- Kin by creation. All men are His offspring as creatures, since God breathed the soul of man into him. Only faith in Christ Jesus makes anyone His child.
- Therefore no idols. Since we come from God, God cannot be something we manufacture. Paul drew that conclusion from Athens' own poets, Aratus and Cleanthes, who proved wiser than its philosophers.