In Him we live and move and have our being

This is a remarkable statement! This statement is found in Acts 17:28 and is a quotation from a Cretan poet Epimenides. Therefore, it is even more remarkable that the apostle Paul uses this quotation to affirm the truth of what Epimenides said.

 Let's look at the context of what the apostle Paul was declaring in Acts 17:16-31.

16 Now while Paul waited for them at Athens, his spirit was provoked within him when he saw that the city was given over to idols.

17 Therefore he reasoned in the synagogue with the Jews and with the Gentile worshipers, and in the marketplace daily with those who happened to be there.

18 Then certain Epicurean and Stoic philosophers encountered him. And some said, "What does this babbler want to say?" Others said, "He seems to be a proclaimer of foreign gods," because he preached to them Jesus and the resurrection.

19 And they took him and brought him to the Areopagus, saying, "May we know what this new doctrine is of which you speak?

20 For you are bringing some strange things to our ears. Therefore we want to know what these things mean."

21 For all the Athenians and the foreigners who were there spent their time in nothing else but either to tell or to hear some new thing.

22 Then Paul stood in the midst of the Areopagus and said, "Men of Athens, I perceive that in all things you are very religious;

23 for as I was passing through and considering the objects of your worship, I even found an altar with this inscription: TO THE UNKNOWN GOD. Therefore, the One whom you worship without knowing, Him I proclaim to you:

24 God, who made the world and everything in it, since He is Lord of heaven and earth, does not dwell in temples made with hands.

25 Nor is He worshiped with men's hands, as though He needed anything, since He gives to all life, breath, and all things.

26 And He has made from one blood every nation of men to dwell on all the face of the earth, and has determined their pre-appointed times and the boundaries of their dwellings,

27 so that they should seek the Lord, in the hope that they might grope for [touch] Him and find Him, though He is not far from each one of us;

28 for in Him we live and move and have our being, as also some of your own poets have said, 'For we are also His offspring.'

29 Therefore, since we are the offspring of God, we ought not to think that the Divine Nature is like gold or silver or stone, something shaped by art and man's devising.

30 Truly, these times of ignorance God overlooked, but now commands all men everywhere to repent,

31 because He has appointed a day on which He will judge the world in righteousness by the Man whom He has ordained. He has given assurance of this to all by raising Him from the dead."

So let's have a closer look at our title.

For in Him - That is in the Creator God.

We live and move - As created beings we live and move because that's what we were created to do.

And have our being - We exist because the Creator God brought us into being.

Therefore we exist because the Creator God brought us into being through the natural, human reproductive process. He blessed Adam and Eve with offspring; and their offspring were blessed by God with offspring of their own. That process has been going on from generation to generation until the present time. Without the Creator God we could not even take our next breath.

Daniel 5:23

"23 And you [Belshazzar] have lifted yourself up against the Lord of heaven. They have brought the vessels of His house before you, and you and your lords, your wives and your concubines, have drunk wine from them. And you have praised the gods of silver and gold, bronze and iron, wood and stone, which do not see or hear or know; and the God who holds your breath in His hand and owns all your ways, you have not glorified."

Daniel 5:30-31

30 That very night Belshazzar, king of the Chaldeans, was slain.

31 And Darius the Mede received the kingdom, being about sixty-two years old.

We move because the Creator God gives us the ability to move, to think, to breathe, to love and to do all the things we need to accomplish in our lives here on Planet Earth. We tend to think we are masters and mistresses of our own lives; but the true and living God holds our breath in his hands. This reveals the frailty of our mortality.

Let's see what James says in his epistle.

James 4:13-17

13 Come now, you who say, "Today or tomorrow we will go to such and such a city, spend a year there, buy and sell, and make a profit";

14 whereas you do not know what will happen tomorrow. For what is your life? It is even a vapour that appears for a little time and then vanishes away.

15 Instead you ought to say, "If the Lord wills, we shall live and do this or that."

16 But now you boast in your arrogance. All such boasting is evil.

17 Therefore, to him who knows to do good and does not do it, to him it is sin.

We live in a Space/Matter/Time universe created by the infinite, eternal God who made man in His own image. Gen 1:26, "26 Then God said, "Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness; let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the air, and over the cattle, over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth."

Man lives in a Space/Matter/Time universe. Yet, man with his human spirit is capable of knowing God. With his human soul he has self realisation and recognises himself. With his human body through his senses (taste, touch, seeing, hearing and smelling) he recognises and interacts with the world around him.

Ezekiel 18:4, "Behold, all souls are Mine; the soul of the father as well as the soul of the son is Mine; the soul who sins shall die." Therefore we are accountable to the true and living God for all our thoughts and actions. For in Him we live and move and have our being.

 

Jon Peasey

Biblical Perspectives blog www.jon-peasey.blogspot.com

Ebooks author page https://www.smashwords.com/profile/view/JRPeasey

[All Scriptures quoted are from the New King James version; unless otherwise noted. Words enclosed in [ ] are inserted for clarity. Words in bold type emphasise a point. You may notice some verses are quoted with ... at the beginning, ending or elsewhere in a verse. Only the relevant part or parts of the verse, that relate directly to the current subject matter is quoted.]