Increasingly, you will find that your unbelieving friends will not have a background rooted in a Judeo-Christian outlook…. drive the conversation toward God as Creator of all things. What might a Creator require of his creation? What would be the obligations of a creature to his Creator? What do the common human experiences of provision, beauty and laughter say about God’s gratuitous goodness? How could a man be made right with a God who is so good and so just? Then drive toward Jesus as the revelation of the Creator to creation and the only One who can justify the ungodly.

Imagine this situation. A man rolls into town. He performs an amazing feat to the applause of the crowd. Then he’s deified on the spot. No, I’m not talking about your average NFL game. I’m talking about Paul and Barnabas’s visit to Lystra, recorded in Acts 14:1-20.

Paul and Barnabas were run out of Iconium under the threat of having large stones flung at their heads. Upon arriving in Lystra Paul is led by God to heal a man who had been crippled since birth. With a simple command from Paul, God restored health to the man’s feet and provides a preaching opportunity for Paul.

But something extremely unexpected happened as the Lycaonians gathered around Paul. They immediately assumed that Paul and Barnabas were Greek gods. Paul they called Hermes and Barnabas they called Zeus. In this religiously charged moment the Lycaonians were preparing to sacrifice to Paul and Barnabas as gods when Paul intervened with a fascinating entry point to the gospel of Jesus. He said,

“Men, why are you doing these things? We also are men, of like nature with you, and we bring you good news, that you should turn from these vain things to a living God, who made the heaven and the earth and the sea and all that is in them. In past generations he allowed all the nations to walk in their own ways. Yet he did not leave himself without witness, for he did good by giving you rains from heaven and fruitful seasons, satisfying your hearts with food and gladness” (Acts 14:15-17).

This is a profound engagement with pagan culture, and especially important for people living in hemispheres that are becoming increasingly post-Christian.

Messiah vs. Maker

Here Paul deviates from his usual pattern. Paul’s modus operandi for missionary work was to show up in the Jewish Synagogue on a Saturday to proclaim Jesus as the messiah of the Old Testament. We might call this a Redemptive-Historical approach to the Old Testament. When he spoke to Jews, Paul knew he had a wealth of biblical knowledge to work with. His goal was to convince the Jews that Jesus was the messiah and that the messiah had to be crucified and resurrected.1 This line of reason follows the narrative of God as Redeemer.

But this crowd was different. The revelation of the God of the Torah might as well be another god in the pantheon of gods rather than the written revelation of the one true and living God. So Paul, both to share the gospel and avoid assuming deity himself, begins his preaching in Lystra with God as the maker of all things. This line of reasoning follows the narrative of God as Creator.

Evangelism that extols God as Redeemer has a wealth of biblical information to work from; in contrast, evangelism that begins with God as Creator is the point of contact to common human experience.2 Not every human being agrees that they need to be saved. But no one can escape the fact that they were created–and that they are the Imago Dei.

Paul’s argument is that the ubiquitous Creator-creature distinction and experience obligates all people to confess three truths.

1. Acts 17:2-3

2. We have to admit in the end that though useful and biblical, this is a false dichotomy. Biblical and redemptive history begin with and rely heavily upon the creation narrative of Genesis 1.

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