I’ve been camped out in Acts 10-11 for almost a week now, which is pretty rare for me to spend more than a couple of days on a particular text before moving on. But it’s been so rich that I’ve wanted to linger.
It’s God’s heart for all people that has provided the savory reflections on Acts 10-11. These chapters reveal, in narrative form, God’s heart for all people, and there is something particularly compelling to me seeing Peter’s perspective change and align with God’s.
To provide a short recap, Ch. 10 begins with this Roman centurion named Cornelius, a God-fearing man, receiving a vision that commands him to send for the Apostle Peter to hear what this man is proclaiming (about Jesus). The story then moves to Peter receiving a vision of a sheet carrying all kinds of “unclean” (to the Jew) animals descending from heaven. God commands Peter to “rise, kill, and eat” to which Peter, as a devout Jew, refuses to do. This thrice-repeated vision confuses Peter until Cornelius’ Gentile friends arrive to accompany him to Caesarea to the house of Cornelius. Long story short, Peter arrives, preaches Christ crucified, and Cornelius and all the friends he gathered receive the Holy Spirit and are converted to Jesus Christ.
It took 4 visions (1 to Cornelius and 3 to Peter), showing hospitality to Cornelius’ Gentile emissaries, a day’s journey, and seeing the Holy Spirit descend upon Gentiles for Peter to recognize what was going on. The message of salvation comes exclusively through the Jewish people but it is not exclusively for the Jewish people! The Gentiles too are receiving the Holy Spirit, being baptized, and following Jesus, the Jewish Messiah!
Peter takes flack from Jewish Christians in Jerusalem for eating with Gentiles, showing how deep the belief of Jewish superiority was within the Jerusalem church leaders (at least enough of them to make recording it in Acts 11:2 part of Luke’s narrative). This sentiment continues as persecution scatters all the Christians besides the apostles. These Christians begin preaching the gospel to no one except Jews (Acts 11:19). But a few “rebels” start sharing Christ with Greeks, and the Greeks start getting saved!
Luke is intentional in highlighting this Jew-Gentile dynamic, especially at Antioch, and his concluding remark about the church of Antioch (Acts 11:26) is that it was the first place where followers of Jesus were derogatorily named “Christian”. Given the context, it seems reasonable to conclude that the commingling of Jew and Greek contributed much to this term of derision from the outside world. They saw multiethnic unity and it disgusted them enough to create a new insult.
Throughout these two chapters, Peter keeps repeating the idea that God shows no partiality, and even to the Gentiles has God granted repentance!
This is the essence of grace. God can freely distribute it across every tribe, nation, language, and tongue, because it’s free and because God doesn’t rank people. Because all have sinned and fallen short, God can justify ALL freely by His grace as a gift through the propitiation of Christ Jesus, whose shed blood is enough to forgive the most horrific of sinners and who alone is able to bear God’s wrath and offer us life.
Truly God shows no partiality (favortism). His heart is for all people and His will is uniting people from the ends of the earth, gathering them to worship the Lamb.
The question each of us must ask is, “Do I share God’s heart and move towards all people as freely as God in Christ has moved towards me, His enemy?”
Father, none of us does this perfectly. We’re all on a journey to embrace and embody your heart for the nations. Help us see where we wrongly believe we’ve arrived and are already perfect. Help us see people as you see them. Give us courage to move toward those who aren’t like us. Please, please give us a foretaste of Revelation 7 in the here and now. Please give us your Spirit and share with us your heart for the nations and mobilize us to go and make disciples.
Amen.
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