A Change in Time and the Resurrected Judge

Acts 17:29-31

“Being then God’s offspring, we ought not to think that the divine being is like gold or silver or stone, an image formed by the art and imagination of man. The times of ignorance God overlooked, but now he commands all people everywhere to repent, because he has fixed a day on which he will judge the world in righteousness by a man whom he has appointed; and of this he has given assurance to all by raising him from the dead.”

N. T. Wright, Acts for Everyone (Part Two)

Now something new had happened! Now there was something to say, particular news about particular events and a particular man, which provided just the sort of new evidence that the genuinely open-minded agnostic should be prepared to take into account, that Epicurean and Stoic should see as forming both a confirmation of the correct elements in their worldviews and a challenge to the misleading elements, and that the ordinary pagan, trudging off to yet another temple with yet another sacrifice, should see as good news indeed. This God . . . has set a time when he is going to do what the Jewish tradition always said he would do, indeed what the must do if he is indeed the good and wise creator: he will set the world right, will call it to account, will in other words judge it in the full, Hebraic, biblical sense (92).

[W]ith the resurrection of Jesus God’s new world has begun; in other words, his being raised form the dead is the start, the paradigm case, the foundation, the beginning, of that great setting-right which God will do for the whole cosmos at the end. The risen body of Jesus is the one bit of the physical universe that has already been “set right.” Jesus is therefore the one through whom everything else will be “set right.”

The double challenge, then, is: first, repent. Turn back from your ways, particularly from your idolatry, your supposing that the gods can be made of gold and silver, or that they live in man-made houses, or that they want or need animal sacrifices! Turn away from these things, give them up, shake yourself free of them. And, second, turn to the living God . . . grope for him and find him (Acts 17.27). You will only do that if you abandon the parodies, the idols that get in the way and distract you from the true God. But if can be done. And it can be done because the living God is at work, changing the times and season so that now the day of ignorance is over and the time of revealing truth has arrived (93).