This verse is often misinterpreted to support pantheism, suggesting God is identical to the universe or that humans are divine in essence, ignoring Paul's monotheistic context and use of pagan poetry as a rhetorical bridge to proclaim the gospel; others twist it into universalism, implying all people are automatically saved as 'offspring' without need for faith in Christ, overlooking the surrounding call to repent from idolatry and the exclusivity of salvation through Jesus.
Acts 17:28
King James Version (1769)
28 For in him we live, and move, and have our being; as certain also of your own poets have said, For we are also his offspring.
In Acts 17:28, Paul addresses Athenian philosophers by quoting their own poets to affirm the foundational truth that all humanity exists in vital dependence on God the Creator, whose life sustains our very existence, movement, and being, positioning us as His offspring and calling for recognition of this intimate Creator-creature relationship as a bridge to repentance and worship of the one true God rather than idols.