Gospel in a Minute
While addressing a crowd in Athens, Paul covered from creation to the resurrection in one paragraph.
“He is the God who made the world and everything in it. Since he is Lord of heaven and earth, he doesn’t live in man-made temples, 25 and human hands can’t serve his needs—for he has no needs. He himself gives life and breath to everything, and he satisfies every need. 26 From one man he created all the nations throughout the whole earth. He decided beforehand when they should rise and fall, and he determined their boundaries. 27 “His purpose was for the nations to seek after God and perhaps feel their way toward him and find him—though he is not far from any one of us. 28 For in him we live and move and exist. As some of your own poets have said, ‘We are his offspring.’ 29 And since this is true, we shouldn’t think of God as an idol designed by craftsmen from gold or silver or stone. 30 “God overlooked people’s ignorance about these things in earlier times, but now he commands everyone everywhere to repent of their sins and turn to him. 31 For he has set a day for judging the world with justice by the man he has appointed, and he proved to everyone who this is by raising him from the dead.” Acts 17:24-31 (NLT)
Principle: Be Able to Quickly Summarize the Gospel
Sometimes we find ourselves in situation where we have a very small window of time in which to communicate big ideas.
To be an effective gospel communicator we need to learn how to share the good news with great thoroughness when given the opportunity and with brevity when that is required.
I am not sure what kind of time pressure Paul found himself, but it seems that he knew his audience’s attention span was short. He covered thousands of years in a few sentences. Let’s see what he established in that one paragraph.
- God is the Creator.
- Man-made religion and idols are useless.
- God is sovereign over the affairs of the world.
- God’s purpose for mankind was for us to seek and find him. He is near at hand.
- God is calling everyone to repent and turn to him.
- He will one day judge the world through one he raised from the dead.
Paul did not share the entire gospel in this paragraph, but he did manage to get their attention and provoke a response. He found out who was open and who just wanted to debate. That was a decent outcome.
