Acts 17:28

In him we live. The whole clause literally reads: “In [or “by”] Him we are living, and are being moved, and are existing.” The words of the apostle express the thought that not merely our initial dependence is on the Creator, but that all our activities — physical, mental, and spiritual — are derived from Him. In the teaching of Paul the personality of the omnipotent, omniscient God is not merged, as is the God of the pantheist, in the impersonal Soul of the world, but stands forth with awful distinctness in the character of Creator and Sustainer of all life. “Through the agencies of nature, God is working, day by day, hour by hour, moment by moment, to keep us alive, to build up and restore us . . . The power working through these agencies is the power of God” (MH 112, 113).

Your own poets. It is possible that this phrase refers back to the first statement in this verse, as well as forward to the quotation that follows. The words “for in him we live, and move, and have our being” are an almost exact quotation from a stanza that appears to have been written by Epimenides the Cretan (6th century B.C.), and is recorded by the 9th century commentator Isho’dad:

“They fashioned a tomb for thee, O holy and high one —

The Cretans, always liars, evil beasts, idle bellies!

But thou art not dead; thou livest and abidest for ever;

For in thee we live and move and have our being”

(quoted in F. F. Bruce, The Book of the Acts [The New International Commentary on the New Testament], p. 359).

This passage is interesting, not only in view of the possible connection of Epimenides with the altar “To the Unknown God” (see on v. 23), but particularly because it contains the quotation Paul uses of the Cretans in Titus 1:12. That Paul quoted Epimenides in the latter instance increases the probability that he also had his verse in mind here.

The second phrase, “for we are also his offspring,” is clearly a quotation from a Greek poet, and was confessedly so used by Paul. It comes from Aratus (c. 270 B.C.), who was a friend of Zeno, founder of the Stoics. Like Paul, Aratus was from Cilicia. His didactic poem, Phaenomena, dealing with the main facts of astronomical and meteorological science as then known, opens with an invocation to Zeus, and contains the words that Paul quotes:

“From Zeus let us begin; him do we mortals never leave unnamed; full of Zeus are all the streets and all the market-places of men; full is the sea and the heavens thereof; always we all have need of Zeus For we are also his offspring.”

(Phaenomena 1-5; Loeb ed., p. 381).

The quotation would at once catch the attention of Paul’s hearers. By quoting from their own literature, Paul illustrated his policy of becoming “all things to all men” (1 Cor. 9:22). They would recognize that they were not dealing with an uneducated Jew, like the traders and exorcists so common in Greek cities, but with a man possessed of a culture like their own, and familiar with the thoughts of their poets. There is no need to exaggerate Paul’s classical scholarship, but it is clear from the references here mentioned, and from the quotation in 1 Cor. 15:32, that the apostle was acquainted with Greek authors and was able to introduce apt quotations from their works when the situation warranted. By so doing he does not necessarily endorse the sentiments revealed in the contexts of the words he utilizes, but merely uses Greek writers to illustrate the higher teaching he presents.

Paul’s psychological approach at this juncture is instructive. The apostle does not tell them at the outset that they have too high an opinion of themselves, that they are only creatures of the dust, children of the devil. Instead, he points out that they have taken too low an estimate of their position. They have forgotten that they are God’s offspring, and have counted themselves, even as the unbelieving Jews had done, “unworthy of everlasting life” (Acts 13:46).