What does it mean that in Him we live and move and have our being (Acts 17:28)?

More than this, He has made of one blood all nations of mankind, though He has distributed the nations in different quarters of the earth according to the times and boundaries He has before appointed. Jews and Gentiles are fundamentally the same, all nations on the same level; but human blood is totally different than that of other creatures, as their flesh is different (1 Cor.15:39). But God has dealt as He has with men that they might seek the Lord, if it may happen that they will feel after Him and find Him. Paul adds that He is not far from every one of us, indicating that if one honestly seeks God, God will reveal Himself.

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. Paul quotes a Greek poet as saying, "For we are also His offspring."

From the viewpoint of creation, this is true: therefore it was foolish to think of God as compared to gold, silver or stone images, the work of human artistry. If men -- living, animate, intelligent beings -- are God's offspring, then certainly God is at least as living and intelligent as they!

Such is He then whom this preacher declares to the Athenians: a God who is really God. He proceeds to put man in his place with Him, leveling all distinctions upon which Jew and Greek alike prided themselves, in the assurance of that one blood in which all men participated. Nay, their times and the very bounds of their habitations had been alike fixed by. Him who withdrew not His care from any creature He had made, and who had appointed all these, that in the sense of their limitation and dependence, as well as of the divine ordering of things amid which they moved, men might in their need feel after Him and find Him. Nor is He far from any one: for indeed we are encompassed by Him, — in Him we live and move and are! The last is the full generalization: we are sustained by Him, we are carried by Him, — more completely than the infant in its mother's arms; for His arms never unclose, — in Him at all times we are: words which he caps with a quotation from their own poets, recognizing the true creative link with God of a spiritual being such as man is, "For we are also His offspring." He is not here considering the effect of the fall, nor as yet man's responsibility, but the place given him in God's design, from which he will be better able to estimate his own departure.

There had remained some glimmerings of light as to this amongst them, and Paul was able to quote some of their own poets as having spoken of mankind as being the offspring of God. In this they were right. 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 conceive of God as something less than ourselves or as the work of our own hands; and we should be those who seek after Him. His immanence is recognized in the words that "In Him we live, and move, and have our being;" yet Paul preached Him as the transcendent One, who is Lord of heaven and earth.

Consider Acts 17:28 — The preacher, being none other than the Apostle Paul, said, "For in him we live, and move, and have our being; as certain also of your own poets have said, for we are also his offspring." This seems to be conclusive enough, when detached from its context! The word "offspring" seems to denote relationship, but does it? The word is akin to "become, to be, generation, kind." As sued by the apostle in quoting their pets he uses the word offspring as denoting their having received being, "For in him we live, and move, and have our being." The thought of creaturehood is implicit in "offspring" and not relationship.

Life in itself is a very simple thing, though to give an accurate description of it in words would, I have no doubt, puzzle the wisest. It has been defined as power to enjoy the relationships in which one is placed, and though this definition of it may be far from perfect, I know no better. Of course, life can be seen to exist apart from the consciousness of surrounding objects, as that of a newly-born child, a man asleep, or one rendered unconscious through misfortune. The latter is mere animal or, better, physical life; the former, moral; one the life lived, the other the life essentially. The latter is what is referred to in Acts 17:25-28, “He gives to all life and breath,” and “In Him we live, and move, and have our being.” This can scarcely refer to life in moral relationship with God, for man in his natural condition is dead in sins. (Col. 2:13). Again, He says, “If He set His heart upon man, if He gather unto Himself his spirit and his breath, all flesh shall perish together, and man shall turn again unto dust” (Job 34:14-15).

The Scripture sense of the passage does indeed make it apply to angels, and to all created beings. It is the essential difference between the Creator and all His works, that He alone by Himself subsists. "By Him," on the other hand, "all things subsist." "He upholdeth all things by the word of His power." Thus we by no means maintain what Mr. Morris calls, and rightly calls, "the false doctrine of the innate and essential immortality of the earthly race." So far from that we contend that the race is mortal, and that immortality innate and essential belongs to no creature, fallen or unfallen. It is the assurance of this that this passage in Timothy gives. In that sense, as possessing it in Himself, God alone hath it, and in Him "we live, and move, and have our being." "By Him all things subsist."

The God unknown to the Athenians is the Creator of all things, the Lord of heaven and earth. Men's temples are nothing to Him: He is certainly not confined in them. Nor is He worshiped by means of the works of men's hands, as though He depended on man for His sustenance. On the contrary, He is the great Giver, not only of material things such as engage people's most serious attention, but of life and breath, the fundamental entities of our very existence.

No creature has life in himself; God alone has that. Man was made a living soul by God’s breathing into his nostrils the breath of life (Gen. 2:7). Therefore man is “The offspring of God,” and that no mere animal is. In Him we live, and move, and have our being (Acts 17:28). As to the lower creation, the waters brought forth the creatures that move in them, and the earth brought forth the living creature, the cattle, and the beast after its kind. In this way they were brought into being by the power of God. But man is the subject of Divine counsel. The Godhead consult together regarding his creation. God said, “Let us make man in our image.” Man is placed in intelligent relationship with God. The word of God is addressed to him. He is set in responsibility to God. He is God’s offspring. The lower creation is under his authority, he is under the authority of God. God names him, he names the animals. These are to look up to him, he is to look up to God. He was the link between God and everything that God had made upon the earth. He was to bear rule over the fish of the sea, the fowls of the air, and over everything that moved upon the earth; God was to have rule over him. There was affinity between him and God; and there was affinity between him and the living creatures.

But this was not all. He was not to spring out of matter by the mere will of God, as the beasts, by that power which calls things that are not as though they were, and they are. God formed man out of the dust, and when formed breathed from Himself into his nostrils the breath of life, and thus man became a living soul in immediate connection with God Himself. As the apostle states elsewhere, we also are His offspring. It is not said "Let the earth bring forth"; but "Let us make." And He made man in His likeness, created him indeed to multiply as the other living creatures, but gave him dominion over them, and made him the centre and head of God's creation on the earth. The seeds of the fruitful earth were given to him, the green herb and its increase to the beasts. Death and violence were not yet. *

Scripture derives the soul of man, as man, from the inbreathing of God, apart from the dealings of His 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. He is the God and Father of all, though He be only in all His saints (Eph. 4:6).