Acts 17:26

"And has made of one blood": here again Paul is at odds with man's ideas, above all with the Greek belief in many gods. The unity of the human race is a truth that goes with the truth of one true God. Men saw that each race had its own national god. So the lie of many gods was tied to the matching claim of many independent races of men, and encouraged it. This was a favourite idea of the pagan world. They held that they had sprung from the earth in some remarkably foolish way, while at the same time maintaining that each was independent of the other.

The one origin of man goes with the unity of God, just as the claim of separate races goes with their separate patron gods. As the Jews fell away, their self-exalting vanity helped that falsehood along. Yet God had entrusted the revelation of this twofold truth to them alone, and Christianity alone applied it fully and carried it out according to God.

He goes on to put man in his place before Him. The one blood that all men share levels every distinction that Jew and Greek alike prided themselves on. What is more, He fixed their times and the very boundaries of their dwellings. He withheld His care from no creature He had made. He appointed all this so that men would feel their limits and dependence, see the divine ordering of things around them, and in their need feel after Him and find Him.

It is true that all nations from their beginning forgot God. No one showed that evil more than the people whose conscience Paul was now appealing to. Despite their willing ignorance, God took an interest in their actual circumstances. He fixed the appointed seasons of their national life, its progress and its fall, along with the boundaries of their dwelling.

For up to the flood mankind was only one community, and, whatever their growing corruption and violence, no strange gods were set up against God. Nor had God started government as a human institution holding authority from Him. When He did, it was left neither to fate nor to chance, but He determined the seasons, and the limits of their dwelling.

But God's ordering of the nations was far from being all His care. His heart went out in grace to every soul of man. In losing God, man had lost the one centre his heart must have, and the basis of all true morality... But God remained the God of goodness and mercy, ready to hear and forgive.

But God has dealt with men as He has so that they might seek the Lord, if it may happen that they will feel after Him and find Him. Paul adds that He is not far from every one of us, showing that if anyone honestly seeks God, God will reveal Himself.

This verse makes it clear that the earth's surface is enough for men to live on, and that God has set the boundaries of the nations. Suppose men had respected these God-appointed boundaries and had been content with the "place in the sun" He gave them. Then there would have been no wars. But they found no satisfaction in what they had, and they refused to feel after God for it. So they cast greedy eyes on their neighbours' portion and broke the boundaries God appointed. From this comes the bloodshed and the sorrow.

The idea that all men are brothers has some truth in a creatorial sense, since God has "made of one blood all nations of men" (Acts 17:26). It is not true in any other sense. The Scriptures draw the sharpest line imaginable between the believer and the man of the world.