The Creator Lord and the Good News

Acts 17:24-27

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. And he made from one man every nation of mankind to live on all the face of the earth, having determined allotted periods and the boundaries of their dwelling place, that they should seek God, in the hope that they might feel their way toward him and find him.

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

So far, so Jewish. . . . [Paul’s message] is the message about the creator God, which is the foundation of all good news, all gospel. Without a creator God, even such good news as you might have (there is hope for bliss yet to come) is purchased at the cost of very bad news (this bliss will not involve the rescue of the present beautiful creation). . . . People sometimes grumble that Paul doesn’t seem to have put much “gospel” into this speech. But actually the whole thing is good news, from start to finish. The specific “good news” of Jesus Christ grows directly out of this doctrine of creation (89).

Aaron Orendorff

Back behind, or perhaps better, running in and through, our relationship with God is the reality of who God is. For example: as a relational, responsive Being, we pray, God listens and God acts. This is true; wonderfully true. And yet this is not all that is true. God is the creator: the vast, incomparable, incomprehensible, untamed God who “made the world and everything in it.” God is also the lord . . . the Lord “of heaven and earth,” of all there is, both physical and immaterial. He has not only made all that exists—all of it!—he has ordered it and governed it so that everything from the boarders of nations to the house you live in has been “determined” by him. And why has this sovereign, all-powerful creator Lord done this? As a show of cosmic strength? To flex is divine, narcissistic muscles? No. He has done so “that [we, all people] should seek God, in the hope that they might feel their way toward him and find.”