²² Then Paul stood in front of the Areopagus and said, “Athenians, I see how extremely spiritual you are in every way. ²³ For as I went through the city and looked carefully at the objects of your worship, I found among them an altar with the inscription, ‘To an unknown god.’ What therefore you worship as unknown, this I proclaim to you. ²⁴ The God who made the world and everything in it, he who is Lord of heaven and earth, does not live in shrines made by human hands,^{(A) 25} nor is he served by human hands, as though he needed anything, since he himself gives to all mortals life and breath and all things.^{(B) 26} From one ancestor^[a] he made all peoples to inhabit the whole earth, and he allotted the times of their existence and the boundaries of the places where they would live,^{(C) 27} so that they would search for God^[b] and perhaps fumble about for him and find him—though indeed he is not far from each one of us.^{(D) 28} For ‘In him we live and move and have our being’; as even some of your own poets have said,

²⁹ “Since we are God’s offspring, we ought not to think that the deity is like gold or silver or stone, an image formed by the art and imagination of mortals.^{(F) 30} While God has overlooked the times of human ignorance, now he commands all people everywhere to repent,^{(G) 31} because he has fixed a day on which he will have the world judged in righteousness by a man whom he has appointed, and of this he has given assurance to all by raising him from the dead.”^(H)

¹³ Now who will harm you if you are eager to do what is good? ¹⁴ But even if you do suffer for doing what is right,^[a] you are blessed. Do not fear what they fear,^[b] and do not be intimidated,^{(A) 15} but in your hearts sanctify Christ as Lord. Always be ready to make your defense to anyone who demands from you an accounting for the hope that is in you,^{(B) 16} yet do it with gentleness and respect. Maintain a good conscience so that, when you are maligned,^[c] those who abuse you for your good conduct in Christ may be put to shame.^{(C) 17} For it is better to suffer for doing good, if suffering should be God’s will, than to suffer for doing evil. ¹⁸ For Christ also suffered^[d] for sins once for all, the righteous for the unrighteous, in order to bring you^[e] to God. He was put to death in the flesh but made alive in the spirit,^{(D) 19} in which also he went and made a proclamation to the spirits in prison, ²⁰ who in former times did not obey, when God waited patiently in the days of Noah, during the building of the ark, in which a few, that is, eight lives, were saved through water.^{(E) 21} And baptism, which this prefigured, now saves you—not as a removal of dirt from the body but as an appeal to God for^[f] a good conscience, through the resurrection of Jesus Christ,^{(F) 22} who has gone into heaven and is at the right hand of God, with angels, authorities, and powers made subject to him.^(G)