Now while Paul was waiting for them in Athens, his spirit was provoked within him as he saw that the city was full of idols.  
- Acts 17:16


I read this passage yesterday in my devotional reading and it struck me that Paul’s spirit was provoked.  We don’t really know what that entailed since Luke doesn’t give us the details but he simply states the fact.  I suspect that since Luke was traveling with Paul during many of his journeys in the Book of Acts then it follows that Paul shared with Luke just how this happened.  Either way, when Paul saw the idolatry of Athens his spirit got provoked to do something to bring the Athenians to the truth of the gospel.  The Bible says in Acts 17:17 that Paul begin to reason in the synagogue and in the marketplace with those who happened to be there.  Paul’s passion was not just for the religious Jews to be saved (Romans 10:1-4) but he also longed to see the Gentiles come to faith in Christ Jesus.

But the question for me was am I sensitive to the Spirit to allow Him to provoke my spirit?  Do I hate the things that God hates?  Does sin grieve me like it grieves the Spirit?  Does the sins of humanity, their idolatry and their depravity in general grieve me and cause me to long for them to hear the gospel?

Often the modern believer finds themselves getting too comfortable with the world.  We begin to grow tolerant of sin when we allow sin in our homes through ungodly music and television or when we begin to adapt to the ungodly values of this world.  As I posted on repentance, we need a cosmic shift of mind and heart to capture God’s worldview of all things.  Jesus demands that He is either Lord of all our lives or not at all (Luke 6:46-49; 14:33).  Jesus is not asking for us to merely give up a little of our lives but He demands that we submit to His Lordship (1 John 2:6).  How is it that we can tolerate ungodly movies or television programs full of cursing, worldliness, compromise, sexual immorality, homosexuality, and other sins?  Like Judas Iscariot, we grow hard in the midst of so much light!  We learn to love Jesus when we want something from Him or need Him but ignore His commands to take up our crosses and follow Him, dying to this world in the process.  How this must break the holy heart of God.

1 John 2:15-17 is a passage of Scripture that far too often I have avoided when it comes to compromise.  The Bible says here, “Do not love the world or the things in the world.  If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him.  For all that is in the world – the desires of the flesh and the desires of the eyes and pride in possessions – is not from the Father but is from the world.  And the world is passing away along with its desires, but whoever does the will of God abides forever.”  What a call to holiness!  What a call to forsake this world, to forsake the lust of the flesh, and to forsake idolatry for the gospel.

Friends, don’t become tolerant of sin in both your own life and the lives of others.  Like Paul the Apostle, let us be provoked within our spirits to hate that which God hates.  Don’t grow weary in pursuing holiness (Hebrews 12:14) and don’t grow weary in praying for God to grant you an intense hatred for sin.  God hated sin so much but loved us so much that He sent His only begotten Son to die for our sins and to bring us to God (1 Peter 2:24).  May we share in God’s hatred for sin but His love for the lost.  May we be like Paul in sharing the gospel in both the Church and in the marketplace.

What was the first message of the Gospel preached by both Jesus and the Apostles after Jesus’ resurrection and ascension?  Repentance.  Matthew 4:17 records, “From that time Jesus began to preach, saying, ‘Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.’”  Acts 2:38 records that Peter declared to the Jews, “Repent!”  

I. Howard Marshall, in his book Kept by the Power of God, argues from Acts 5:1-11 that the point of the passage is that God still takes sin serious. I agree. There are some today who want to deny that God takes sin serious. They want to argue that the only sin that God now sees is the sin of unbelief. They teach that all of our sins are forgiven completely no matter whether we are in Christ or not and that the only reason people go to hell is for their rejection of the salvation that Jesus Christ purchased with His own blood. They point to passages such as John 19:30 or 2 Corinthians 5:18 or Hebrews 10:10, 14 or 1 John 2:2.

Read the article at The Arminian magazine on-line:

The Patristic Interpretation Of Rom. 7:14-25 Part 1, The Early Christian Witness to the Arminian Interpretation

Note:  While this represents the typical Arminian interpretation of Rom. 7 going back to Arminius, not all Arminians subscribe to this basic interpretation.  Robert Picirilli, for example, is one Arminian exception and takes a different approach to the passage.