Does God Need Us?

“So Paul, standing before the council, addressed them as follows: ‘Men of Athens, I notice that you are very religious in every way, for as I was walking along I saw your many shrines. And one of your altars had this inscription on it: ‘To an Unknown God.’ This God, whom you worship without knowing, is the one I’m telling you about.” (Acts 17:22-23, NLT)

“Those who obey God’s commandments remain in fellowship with him, and he with them. And we know he lives in us because the Spirit he gave us lives in us.” (1 John 3:24, NLT)

“You are coming to Christ, who is the living cornerstone of God’s temple. He was rejected by people, but he was chosen by God for great honor.” (1 Peter 2:4, NLT)

Imagine a society that has never heard of Jesus and whose citizens believe they have most things figured out. They sit at the pinnacle of human knowledge and culture—looked up to by the rest of the world. If ever there was a place like that, it was ancient Athens.

When the apostle Paul first brought the gospel to Athens, he was invited to address a civic body of cultural elites, known as the Areopagus. They took an interest in any new ideas that came along. When they got wind of Paul’s message about Jesus, they invited him to speak.

In Acts 17, Luke recounts Paul’s speech to the Athenians, in which he describes their city’s religious life, full of statues and temples. He explained that the one true God was too big to be contained within their temples, and he was utterly unlike the stone statues that dotted their city.

Ancient pagans walked on stone streets to stone temples to make offerings to stone statues. But the offerings weren’t only out of reverence; the worshipers believed they were providing sustenance for their handcrafted gods. Despite how powerful the immortal gods were thought to be, it was believed they needed the food and drink offered to them by mortals.

In paganism, the gods required physical shrines and statues to be properly worshiped and provided for. We are not ancient pagans, but we Christians can accidentally interact with God in similar ways, thinking we need specific, visible expressions of our faith in order to be seen (and see ourselves) as serious followers of Jesus. We may not carve actual statues of God and try to bow down to them, but we can be accidentally pagan in analogous ways.

To help stir your imagination along these lines, reflect on these questions:

• What outward expressions of my faith have grown so weighty that I can’t imagine my faith in God without them?
• Do I become consumed with worry when I feel God is being disrespected in society, as if he’s actually vulnerable and in need of my protection?
• What have I built for God that I prioritize ahead of him? Has what I’m doing for God surpassed my focus on knowing him?

The freeing truth is that God doesn’t need us to build him real or imaginary shrines. The reverse is true: he is building you – along with the rest of his Church – into a temple. You don’t need to be afraid that God doesn’t recognize your devotion to him. If you have given your life to Jesus, he is constantly with you by the presence of the Spirit.

Also, unlike the pagan deities, God doesn’t need anything from you. He wants to be close to you, and he invites you to join him in his mission. But he doesn’t need anything from you. He’s not a little statue that you need to feed. He is God Almighty, maker of heaven, earth, and you!

As you now turn to the Bible to discover the truth about God and yourself, reflect on these questions:

• Why do you think it’s so easy for Christians to become hyper-focused on what they’re doing for God, rather than focusing on growing in a trusting relationship with him?
• In what ways do Christians subtly and accidentally believe that God is vulnerable, as if he needs us to protect him?