Acts 14:17Meaning & Commentary from the Church Fathers

See, he does not wish to increase their guilt, but rather teaches them to refer everything to God. The apostles knew that one should not be so concerned to say something worthy of God as to say what is useful to the hearers. Notice how covertly he also points to their guilt. If God did so much for them, then they deserve punishment for not knowing their Nourisher while enjoying such blessings. Yet he does not say this plainly, but only hints at it, saying, "giving us rains from heaven." So David also said, "They were enriched with the fruit of wheat, wine, and oil" (Ps 4:8). In many other places, when he speaks about creation, he points to this. Jeremiah likewise first speaks of creation, and then of providence, which appears in the sending of rains. Paul is guided by these things in his speech. "Filling," he says, "our hearts with food and gladness." Food is given in abundance, not only in sufficiency and according to need.

When the preachers of the Gospel learned of this, they were filled with grief. With torn garments they rushed into the crowd to stop their mad attempt. “What are you doing?” Paul said to them. “We are men like you. We have come here to turn you from these worthless idols to the living God, the almighty Cause of all being. Though until now He left men to their own will, so that they might learn how little they can do by their own powers, He never left them without witness to Himself. He sent them everything needed for sustenance and delight.”

The apostles' stay in Lystra was marked, among other things, by the healing of a man lame from birth. Yet this great work of God, performed by the Apostle Paul in the name of Jesus Christ, produced a sad misunderstanding among the pagan inhabitants of the city. It gave rise to the thought that the wonderworkers were gods who had appeared in human form. They wanted to offer sacrifices to Paul and Barnabas, so that the apostles barely succeeded in convincing these foolish zealots of their error. Afterward the apostles preached the word of God there unhindered for some time. But Jews who came from Antioch of Pisidia succeeded in stirring up the population against the apostles even there. This disturbance was so violent that Paul was stoned and dragged outside the city, since they thought he was dead. Therefore, on the next day, he had to leave that city and go to Derbe.

Thus, little by little, after compelling the crowd to heed their exhortations, they explained that in past generations God, as it were, permitted all nations to walk in their own ways. He did not give them special revelations. Yet even in those days He did not cease to bear witness to Himself by benefactions, giving them from heaven “rains and fruitful seasons, filling our hearts with food and gladness.”

Nevertheless, while leaving the Gentiles to walk in their false ways, God did not cease to bear witness to Himself by beneficial manifestations in nature. This is a gentle indication that the Gentiles too could have known the true way of God from contemplation of visible nature (cf. Rom 1:20). "Without forcing free will, the Lord allowed all people to walk according to their own judgment. Yet He Himself constantly performed such works from which they, as rational beings, could understand the Creator" (Theophylact). Of these beneficial actions of God in nature, only those directly related to life are mentioned: rains and fruitful seasons. These manifestations of God's grace were especially understandable to simple people.

Dwelling on the religious condition of his hearers, the Apostle Paul explains God's providential relation to them. Long ago He permitted the nations to come to God by their own ways, that is, by ways they had devised for themselves. Yet He continued to give them rains, the tempering of the air, and the fruitfulness of the earth, which gives food and joy. The apostle spoke neither rebuke nor approval, as he later did in Athens. But he clearly showed that the Gentiles had their own ways to God, and that God had never left them without His own witness. This means that they are not rejected by God even now. Yet the form of service to God that they wished to perform before the apostles, by slaughtering a calf adorned with garlands, could in no way be accepted or approved. "See," says St.