I truly understand that God shows no partiality, but in every nation anyone who fears him and does what is right is acceptable to him. (Acts 10:34b-35)

Have you ever changed your mind about a social custom or belief that you once held dear? Many of us who have reached our sixth decade or more grew up in an environment steeped in racism. Getting used to the idea that blacks and whites could—and should!—share the same spaces took some adjustment for many people, but now most of us think little of it: we have learned to embrace new attitudes toward people of different ethnic backgrounds. [DD]

Our journey to acceptance may have begun with a developing friendship with someone different. We may have been influenced by a powerful book or a prophetic sermon. Or, we may have learned from a new environment, such as a college campus or military unit, where acceptance was easier and friendship opportunities were greater.

Prejudice is nothing new. Peter, one of Jesus’ closest disciples, had grown up in an environment of suspicion and distrust between Jews and Gentiles that went back for hundreds of years. As Hebrew exiles began returning to Jerusalem after Cyrus the Persian conquered Babylon, they lived under Persian rule and had no national identity. As a means of self-preservation and an attempt to please God in hopes of future blessing, religious leaders began a campaign of ethnic uniformity that promoted purity and pedigree.

Ezra and Nehemiah enforced new policies that outlawed marriage to anyone outside of the Jewish community while also calling for closer adherence to purity laws and more faithful support of the temple. The conscious effort to cement a stronger ethnic identity proved successful in preserving the Jews as a people, but it also drove a wedge between them and their neighbors, including other Jews whose pedigrees were deemed lacking.

The isolationist worldview prescribed by his inherited faith was all Peter knew, so he had to learn that Christ’s saving work was not restricted to the Jews. While in Joppa on a preaching mission, a hungry Peter was praying on a rooftop patio when he had a vision in which God showed him a large sheet containing animals that were edible, but ritually unclean by Jewish law. A voice told Peter “What God has made clean, you must not call profane” (10:9-16).

The Lord of all

(vv. 34-36)

As Peter was trying to make sense of the vision, three messengers from a Roman centurion named Cornelius arrived, asking Peter to accompany them to Caesarea and meet with their commanding officer. Cornelius was described as a “God-fearer,” a Gentile who worshiped the God of the Jews but had not fully converted through circumcision. The text emphasizes his piety as a man who prayed constantly and gave generous alms for the poor. [DD]

Still thinking about his vision, Peter felt led by the Spirit to go with them. When he arrived in Caesarea after a long journey up the coast, he found not only Cornelius but a large group of Gentile God-fearers, all eager to hear a word from God (10:17-33).

Peter knew that he was violating Jewish custom by meeting in that setting and he acknowledged some awkwardness about it, but when he learned that the Gentiles sought eagerly to hear a message from God, he had little choice but to preach.

Peter began by relating what he himself had only recently learned by connecting his vision of “unclean” but edible animals to his audience of “unclean” Gentiles who also feared God and who wanted to know God better.  “I truly understand that God shows no partiality,” he said, “but in every nation anyone who fears him and does what is right is acceptable to him” (10:34b-35).

Overcoming partiality would be an ongoing challenge, not just between Jews and Gentiles, but between classes, genders, and other ethnicities, as well. As the gospel spread and churches blossomed, Paul and others urged believers to treat all people as equal in God’s sight (Rom. 2:11, Eph. 2:11-22, Col. 3:25, James 2:1, 1 Pet. 1:17).

Peter, like other Hebrews, had grown up believing that while God was Lord of all nations or ethnic groups, Israel was chosen to be a special people, to live in a unique and potentially rewarding relationship with God.

Exodus 19:5-6 preserves a tradition that “all the earth” was God’s, but Israel would be regarded as different: “Now therefore, if you obey my voice and keep my covenant, you shall be my treasured possession out of all the peoples. Indeed, the whole earth is mine, but you shall be for me a priestly kingdom and a holy nation.”

Peter was now ready to declare, in preaching about Jesus, that “he is Lord of all” (v. 36b).

God’s love is universal, reaching out to all people, encouraging them to do what is right and pleasing to God.

A savior for all

(vv. 37-41)

After referring twice to God’s message (literally, “word”) through Christ, Peter got to the point and explained that God had “anointed Jesus with the Holy Spirit and with power,” which Jesus demonstrated by traveling about, doing good deeds and healing people, proving that God was with him and that he had power over evil (v. 38).

Peter spoke as a witness of what happened next, of how “they” put Jesus to death by “hanging him on a tree” (an idiom for crucifixion), and how God had raised him from the dead on the third day (vv. 39-41).

Note Peter’s tact in describing Jesus’ death. Charges had been brought against Jesus by the Jewish authorities, but Roman soldiers had carried it out. Peter was a Jew in the home of a Roman soldier and surrounded, no doubt, by other soldiers. Instead of assigning blame in the death of Jesus, he says only that an indefinite “they” had killed Jesus.

Peter had already come to believe that Jesus’ death was a necessary part of his message and work in the world. When God raised Jesus from the dead and caused him to appear before witnesses, eating and drinking in their company, the disciples became fully convinced that Jesus’ message and God’s message were one and the same.

Even as he spoke, Peter was learning in practical terms that the good news was intended for all people. Peter would have been present when Jesus ascended to heaven and would have heard his parting words, which Luke described as a promise to the disciples that they would be empowered by the Spirit to “be my witnesses in Jerusalem, in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth” (Acts 1:8).

Now Peter found himself at the northwestern corner of Judea, beyond Samaria, speaking to a cosmopolitan group of people who may have come from “the ends of the earth” as far as he was concerned. Peter’s status as an outsider was clear, but he plunged ahead.

A message for all

(vv. 42-43)

Peter recalled how Jesus had “commanded us to preach to the people and to testify that he is the one ordained by God as judge of the living and the dead” (v. 42).

What “command” did Peter have in mind? We may think of Matt. 28:19-20, commonly known as “the great commission,” or of Luke’s version in Acts 1:8.

Luke also had written in his gospel of a post-resurrection occasion when Jesus appeared to the disciples and “opened their minds to understand the scriptures” that both taught of him, declaring “that repentance and forgiveness of sins is to be proclaimed in his name to all nations, beginning from Jerusalem” (Luke 24:45a, 47).

Peter was beginning to understand in practical terms what he had previously known in theory: the gospel really was for all people, and Jesus’ disciples were to proclaim it in all places.

Peter’s speech suggests that he still may have been uncomfortable with the notion, for he proclaimed the gospel more as a warning than as good news. When he said the disciples were “to preach to the people and to testify,” he used a word that can also describe a solemn warning. Since the context involves the prospect of judgment, a better translation might be “to preach to the people and to warn them …,” as in NET2 (v. 42).

All would be judged, Peter said, both living and dead—and the criteria of judgment would be one’s response to Jesus. [DD]

Peter concluded his speech with a claim that “all the prophets” had testified that “everyone who believes in him receives forgiveness through his name” (v. 43). The statement cannot be read literally: not all the prophets spoke of a coming Messiah and none of them spoke in the specific terms that Peter described.

There was a belief, however, that the prophets had envisioned a coming age in which all peoples would come to worship God. In his speech on the day of Pentecost, Peter had quoted Joel 2:32a in saying “Then everyone who calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved” (Acts 2:21).

Thoughts of Pentecost immediately arise when we read of what happened next: while Peter was still speaking and thus, before his audience made any outward response, “the Holy Spirit fell upon all who heard the word” so that the Gentiles spoke in tongues and praised God, astounding the Jews who had come with Peter (vv. 44-46).

The evidence was clear to see: the gospel truly was—and is—for all people. Peter was just beginning to accept the radically inclusive nature of God’s grace. Have we gotten on board?