For as I passed along and carefully observed your objects of worship, I came also upon an altar with this inscription, To the unknown god. Now what you are already worshiping as unknown, this I set forth to you.
The God Who produced and formed the world and all things in it, being Lord of heaven and earth, does not dwell in handmade shrines.
Neither is He served by human hands, as though He lacked anything, for it is He Himself Who gives life and breath and all things to all [people].
And He made from one [common origin, one source, one blood] all nations of men to settle on the face of the earth, having definitely determined [their] allotted periods of time and the fixed boundaries of their habitation (their settlements, lands, and abodes),
So that they should seek God, in the hope that they might feel after Him and find Him, although He is not far from each one of us.
For in Him we live and move and have our being; as even some of your [own] poets have said, For we are also His offspring.
Since then we are God's offspring, we ought not to suppose that Deity (the Godhead) is like gold or silver or stone, [of the nature of] a representation by human art and imagination, or anything constructed or invented.every
Such [former] ages of ignorance God, it is true, ignored and allowed to pass unnoticed; but now He charges all people where to repent (to change their minds for the better and heartily to amend their ways, with abhorrence of their past sins),
Because He has fixed a day when He will judge the world righteously (justly) by a Man Whom He has destined and appointed for that task, and He has made this credible and given conviction and assurance and evidence to everyone by raising Him from the dead.
(Act 17:23-31)
IMO, The people who lived, among the Gentiles, during these "former ages of ignorance", will be judged by the secrets of their hearts on that day. Will ignorance be their excuse? No there is no excuse. Jesus, the Logos, the Creator of All, is the Light that Lights EVERYMAN THAT COMES INTO THE WORLD. The divine nature is imprinted(and always has been), as the "conscience" of EVERYMAN. Jesus did not come to judge the world, but so that the world could be made whole by Him. Those who have the gospel will be judged by it as to the motivation of their WORKS and their REWARD or lack thereof. Those who had only the law will be judged by it as to the motivation of their works and their REWARD or the lack thereof. ALL THROUGHOUT ALL TIME will be judged BY THE SECRETS OF THEIR HEARTS. It is written that the law came to MAKE SIN MORE EXCEEDINGLY SINFUL, to provoke it to the surface, as a tutor to lead us to Christ. It DOES NOT SAY their was NO CONSCIOUSNESS OF SIN before the law. Indeed we know for a fact that there was CONSCIOUSNESS OF SIN from the beginning, by the actions of Adam and Eve after the fall and by the actions of Cain after he slew his brother.
So, as we continue to read the word through the prism of JUDGMENT and interpret the word "saved" as meaning deliverance from kolassis, we might be missing that save(sozo) merely means heal, make whole, deliver- and is not focused merely on the judgment.
Actually, every thing God does involves PROGRESSIVE LEVELS OF HEALING AND DELIVERANCE, the making whole of that which was once bound in futility, namely mankind. So, I think that IT WAS TOO EARLY for Paul to be speaking STRICTLY OF JEWS AND CHRISTIANS in Romans one. I think there is a broader application of the principle he was illustrating in those verses, which, in my opinion, is more about HOW God discerns the hearts than WHO FROM WHEN He judges.
That's jus my opinion, :o), Peace out
