Paul stood up in the middle of the council on Mars Hill and said, “People of Athens, I see that you are very religious in every way. As I was walking through town and carefully observing your objects of worship, I even found an altar with this inscription: ‘To an unknown God.’ What you worship as unknown, I now proclaim to you.” – Acts 17:22-23

Something I said in Bible study this week has been bouncing around inside my head for the past couple of days, so now I have to write about it or it’s never going to settle. Writing is one of the ways I try to pin down these random disparate thoughts and gain some clarity. Sometimes it turns out I’m just feeding them coffee!

We were talking about the Apostle Paul showing up in Athens and I asked the following question: “What – if you had to keep it simple – is the Good News Paul wanted to share?”

Or, put another way, “In a city that acknowledged literally dozens of gods, why the story about one more?”

The answer to those questions is also the answer to our own passion – or lack thereof – to share the Jesus story today.

The Good News Story

The good news I understand is this: Jesus has made the way clear for a restored relationship with God. Jesus is very much God’s invitation home. In consequence we do not need – like the Athenians – to set up dozens of idols as substitutes for the real thing. So it’s not “one more” god, it turns out to be about 50 less!

Back to the first paragraph. The thing I said. I suggested that Jesus is a catalyst, that Jesus activates something that is already inside each one of us and sets it free. What I am talking about is the power of love.

This is why Jesus is very clear on the “tell-tale signs” that people are his followers. “It’s the love that pours out and gets all over everyone around you,” he said (John 13:34-35). Paul later observed that the fruit (the evidence) of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control – “the Holy Spirit produces this kind of fruit in our lives,” he writes in Galatians 5.

The idea that Jesus is a catalyst really resonates. I believe that God created humankind equipped with everything we need for a “Your will be done here on Earth as it is in Heaven” kind of a world.

Clearly so much of what we see, around the world and in our own country, is not the fruit the Holy Spirit produces in our lives. Clearly peace and love and kindness are not spilling out and getting all over everyone – even in the vicinity of many who claim the name of Christ.

Clearly we need to see a revolution of Good News.

There is no other way than Jesus. There is no other catalyst for such love. – DEREK