Acts 17 and the Gospel

Acts 17 is one of the prime passages that is looked to when wrestling with contextualizing the gospel to a culture.  The Apostle Paul was very good at explaining and communicating the gospel.  All throughout the book of Acts he is constantly looking to preach the gospel.  Jesus did the same thing.  The Southeast Church is going through the book of Mark right now.  We're seeing how Jesus made proclaiming the gospel the primary concern of his ministry.

So when we look at Acts 17 we get excited about how Paul addressed the culture and proclaimed the gospel.  What we often fail to consider is the response and how Paul handled it afterwards.  Directly following Paul's time in Athens he headed to Corinth (Acts 18).  When we look at the beginning of 1 Corinthians where Paul is recounting his state when he arrived we see something interesting.  In the beginning of chapter 2, Paul writes "And I, when I came to you, brothers, did not come proclaiming to you the testimony of God with lofty speech or wisdom.  For I decided to know nothing except Jesus Christ and him crucified."

Paul had just seen how his great contextualization of the gospel resulted in very little result.  I'm by no means arguing that we should avoid contextualization, but rather that we need to really look at culture and invest time and thought into how we do it.  The gospel is going to sound crazy to most people because it divides our nature as sinners and we don't like that.  We want to be in control.  We pull our own weight and don't need help.  The gospel is the opposite of this.  The gospel says that we can't do it and so we have to rely entirely on what Christ has already accomplished.

Paul saw results and people being saved in Corinth.  Let's not get too excited about the one stop that Paul didn't see people get saved and even crushed his spirit to a certain degree.  Let us be bold in preaching Christ crucified on our behalf to accomplish what we cannot.  Let us rest in the Power of God that is made known to us because of the resurrection.