God’s plan for the nations sits at the center of Paul’s argument. Each nation was given over for a time to lesser spiritual powers (see Deuteronomy 32:8). That period, Paul says in verse 30, was the time of ignorance. But the era of such particular tribal cults is over. Paul announces the dawn of the universal, unrestricted reign of Christ. Whatever a culture’s ancestral religion—Hindu, Buddhist, Muslim, animist, secularist—Christ stands over and against it as Lord of all, not as one franchise among many. 

Will being a Christian cost you something in the present day? If you merely identify as one—even if you aren’t—will that help or hurt your social standing? 

Most of us already know the answers. We feel the cultural temperature. 

Aaron Renn has called the years since 2014 the negative world—the stretch in which Christian conviction is no longer treated as quaint and harmless but as a threat to the public good. Real cost now follows public Christian conviction. The positive and neutral worlds that shaped most of our witness instincts are gone. 

In response, the church has rightly appealed to Peter’s call to “always being prepared to make a defense to anyone who asks you for a reason for the hope that is in you, yet do it with gentleness and respect” (1 Peter 3:15). Generally, sincere believers intuit when to keep their composure under pressure and give a humble answer when questioned. This is the defensive posture of cultural apologetics. 

But defense is only half of our calling. Faithful witness in a hostile age demands both Peter’s gentle reverence described in his epistle and Paul’s provoked spirit in Acts 17 that arose when he was faced with Athens’ idolatry—such that he was compelled to act. The recovery of a proper offensive Christian witness is the unfinished business of the church in the negative world. 

Paul’s discourse at the Areopagus in Acts 17 is one of the New Testament’s clearest patterns for cross-cultural offensive evangelism—as relevant for the missionary serving among the unreached as for the modern believer at home in his own neighborhood. Seven tactics emerge from his address that are applicable for us today. 

1. Seek Common Ground (v. 22) 

Men of Athens, I perceive that in every way you are very religious. (Acts 17:22 ESV) 

The word translated “religious”—deisidaimonésteros—carries the sense of being fearful toward the gods, pious, or superstitious. Paul finds a foothold by acknowledging what is true: the Athenians took the unseen world seriously. 

But notice he does not pitch his tent on this small plot of common ground. He uses it to gain rhetorical leverage, immediately shifting to introduce the Athenians to the one true and living God. 

Today, we must seek common ground with unbelievers—but not too much. Insider movements, syncretism, and the “we all worship the same God” framing are dangers downstream of confusing the foothold for the home base. Common ground, including the recognition of pagan spirituality as a sort of grasping after the real, may be a starting point for evangelism, but it cannot carry the conversation alone. 

2. Proclaim, Don’t Just Share (v. 23) 

What therefore you worship as unknown, this I proclaim to you. (Acts 17:23) 

Today’s evangelical vocabulary prefers share or invite. Biblical evangelism does more. News announcers don’t suggest; they declare. Proclamation does not require a soapbox, but it is the moment a believer stops speaking for himself and starts speaking as an ambassador for the Lord (2 Corinthians 5:20). 

3. Start With Who God Is (vv. 24–25) 

The God who made the world and everything in it, being Lord of heaven and earth, does not live in temples made by man, nor is he served by human hands, as though he needed anything, since he himself gives to all mankind life and breath and everything. (Acts 17:24–25) 

Years ago, when conducting doctrinal interviews of missionary candidates, I would ask, “Who is God?” Most would reply that he is loving, kind, and merciful—true things. Few gave ontological answers touching upon God’s essential nature—his self-existence, eternality, triunity, omniscience, omnipresence, immutability, impassability, and so forth. 

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