By John Stott
So then, God has granted even the Gentiles repentance unto life. Acts 11:18
It is difficult for us to grasp the impassable gulf that yawned in those days between Jews and Gentiles. No orthodox Jew would ever enter a Gentile’s house, let alone sit down at the table with him. We saw in Acts 8 how God prevented a Jewish-Samaritan schism in the church; how will he now prevent a Jewish-Gentile schism?
The story is told twice in Acts – firstly by Luke in chapter 10 and secondly by Peter at the beginning of chapter 11. We will follow the latter. It has been well said that the principal subject of Acts 10 and 11 is not the conversion of Cornelius but the conversion of Peter (from his racial prejudice). Peter told the Jerusalem church what happened. It was only by four successive hammer blows of revelation that God convinced Peter not to call anybody unclean (10:28).
The first hammer blow was the divine vision of a sheet let down from heaven containing clean and unclean animals, reptiles, and birds, while God’s voice told Peter to kill and eat. The second was the divine command to accompany the three men who had come from Cornelius, without hesitation or distinction, even though they were Gentiles. The third was the divine preparation, namely that an angel had told Cornelius to fetch Peter. Thus God was working at both ends, in Cornelius and in Peter, deliberately arranging for them to meet by granting to each on successive days a special, independent, and appropriate vision. The fourth and final hammer blow was the divine action. While Peter was still speaking the Holy Spirit came on the gentile audience. This has often been described as the gentile Pentecost, corresponding to the Jewish Pentecost that had taken place in Jerusalem.
These four hammer blows of revelation were all aimed deftly at Peter’s racial prejudice. Together they demonstrated conclusively that God had welcomed gentile believers into his family on equal terms with believing Jews. The right deduction was immediately made: since God had given the same gift of the Spirit to Gentiles and Jews, the church must give them an equal welcome. If God had given them Spirit baptism, the church might not deny them water baptism, “God does not show favouritism” (v. 34)
For Further Reading: Acts 11:1-18