8. The conversion of Cornelius
From the conversion of Saul to be the apostle to the Gentiles, Luke moves to the conversion of Cornelius, the first Gentile to become a believer. Both conversions were essential foundations on which the Gentile mission would be built. And prominent in both was a leading apostle, the first conversion having Paul as its subject, the second having Peter for its agent. Both apostles (despite their different callings) had a key role to play in freeing the gospel from its Jewish clothing and opening the kingdom of God to the Gentiles. Luke therefore makes an abrupt change in 9:32 from Paul to Peter. He leaves Paul in Tarsus for a while (9:30), temporarily out of sight, until he is ready to bring him to the centre of the stage with the first missionary journey (13:1ff.). Meanwhile for more than three chapters (9:32 – 12:25), although he mentions Paul twice (11:25–30; 12:25), he concentrates on Peter. So, if his book narrates ‘Acts of Apostles’, this section records some specific ‘Acts of Peter’, after which Peter drops from the scene except for his appearance at the Jerusalem Council (Acts 15).
The three Peter stories Luke selects are (a) a double-miracle story (how Aeneas was healed and Tabitha raised from death), (b) a conversion story (how Cornelius was brought to faith), and (c) an escape story (how Peter was rescued from prison and so from Herod’s evil intentions). Each may be seen as a confrontation – with disease and death, with Gentile alienation and with political tyranny. Moreover, in each case conflict gave place to victory – the cure of Aeneas, the resuscitation of Tabitha, the conversion of Cornelius, and the removal of Herod. The apostle Peter is portrayed as an effective agent through whom the risen Lord continued to act and to teach by his Spirit. Leaving Peter’s imprisonment and deliverance until the next chapter, we will focus in this one on his ministry to Aeneas, Tabitha and Cornelius.
1. Peter heals Aeneas and raises Tabitha (9:32–43)
Peter is introduced as engaged in a roving ministry: he travelled about the country (32a). Previously, when persecution had broken out, the apostles had thought it wise to remain in Jerusalem (8:1b). Now that the church was enjoying a time of peace (31), however, they felt free to leave the city. Peter’s purpose was not only to preach the gospel, but also to visit the Lord’s people (32b), in order to teach and encourage them. On one of his tours he was travelling towards and then along the western seaboard, when two incidents took place which Luke evidently regarded as a complementary pair. In Lydda, about 12 miles south-east of Joppa, there lived a man named Aeneas, who had been paralysed and bedridden for eight years (33). In Joppa, the modern Jaffa and the nearest seaport to Jerusalem, there lived a woman named Tabitha or Dorcas (the Aramaic and Greek words respectively for a ‘gazelle’), whom Luke describes as a disciple . . . [who] was always doing good and helping the poor (36). In particular, she seems to have made both undergarments and outer clothing for the needy. But she became ill and died (37). This was the basic situation in these two cases. It seems that, by the way in which he recorded the miracles which then took place, Luke deliberately described Peter as an authentic apostle of Jesus Christ, who demonstrated ‘the marks of a true apostle’. Similar miracles had endorsed the prophetic ministries of Elijah and Elisha. Four factors support this suggestion.
First, both miracles followed the example of Jesus. Aeneas reminds us of that other paralysed man, who lived in Capernaum. As Jesus had said to him, ‘Get up, take your mat and go home’, so Peter said to Aeneas, Get up and roll up your mat (34). And the raising of Tabitha recalls the raising of Jairus’s daughter. Because the people were weeping noisily, Peter sent them all out of the room, just as Jesus had done (40). Further, the words spoken to the dead person were almost identical. Indeed, as several commentators have pointed out, if Peter spoke Aramaic on this occasion, only a single letter would have been different, for Jesus had said Talitha koum!, whereas Peter would have said Tabitha koum! (40).
Second, both miracles were performed by the power of Jesus. Peter knew that he could not overcome disease and death by his own authority or power. So he did not attempt to do so. Instead, to the paralysed, bedridden Aeneas he said, Jesus Christ heals you (34), while before addressing the dead Tabitha he got down on his knees and prayed (40), a detail which must have come from Peter, since nobody else was present.
Third, both miracles were signs of the salvation of Jesus. Because of his confidence in the power of Christ, Peter dared to address the diseased man and the dead woman with the same word of command: anastēthi, ‘Get up!’ (34, 40). Yet anistēmi is the verb used of God raising Jesus, which can hardly have been an accident. This is not to forget that Tabitha was ‘resuscitated’ to her old life (only to die again), whereas Jesus was ‘resurrected’ to a new life (never to die again). It is rather to point out that recovery from paralysis and resuscitation from death were both visible signs of that new life into which by the power of the resurrection we sinners are raised.
Fourth, both miracles led to the glory of Jesus. When Aeneas was healed, all those who lived in Lydda and Sharon [the coastal plain] saw him and turned to the Lord (35). Not that we need interpret the ‘all’ as meaning literally every single inhabitant, for, as Calvin wisely comments, ‘when Scripture mentions all, it is not embracing, to a man, the whole of whatever it is describing, but uses “all” for many, for the majority, or for a crowd of people’. Similarly, when Tabitha was restored to life, this became known all over Joppa, and many people believed in the Lord (42). In accordance with the purpose of the signs, which was to authenticate and illustrate the salvation message of the apostle, people heard the word, saw the signs and believed.
2. Peter is sent for by Cornelius (10:1–8)
Peter has responded boldly to the challenges of sickness and death; how will he respond to the challenge of racial and religious discrimination? Luke may be hinting at his comparative openness by ending the story of Aeneas and Tabitha with the information that ‘Peter stayed in Joppa for some time with a tanner named Simon’ (9:43). For, since tanners worked with dead animals, in order to convert their skins into leather, they were regarded as ceremonially unclean. But Peter disregarded this, which ‘seems to show that [he] was already in a state of mind which would fit him for the further revelation of the next chapter, and for the instructions to go and baptize the Gentile Cornelius’.
At all events, we who now read Acts 10 remember that Jesus had given Peter ‘the keys of the kingdom’, although it is Matthew who tells us this, not Luke. And we have already watched him use these keys effectively, opening the kingdom to Jews on the Day of Pentecost and then to Samaritans soon afterwards. Now he is to use them again to open the kingdom to Gentiles: by evangelizing and baptizing Cornelius, the first Gentile convert (cf. 15:7).
Cornelius was stationed at Caesarea, a garrison city named after Augustus Caesar, the administrative capital of the province of Judea, featuring a splendid harbour built by Herod the Great. Luke introduces him as a centurion in what was known as the Italian Regiment (1). ‘Regiment’ translates speira, usually ‘cohort’, which consisted of six ‘centuries’ (100 men), each under the command of a ‘centurion’. Ten cohorts made up a legion. So a centurion corresponded approximately to a ‘captain’ or ‘company commander’ in our day.
In addition, he seems to have been an exemplary paterfamilias, for he and all his family were devout, their godliness being expressed both in generosity to the needy and in regular prayer to God (2). Whether God-fearing is to be understood in a general sense that Cornelius was religious (as in verse 35) or in the more technical sense that he had become ‘a God-fearer’ (e.g. 13:16, 26) is disputed. If the latter is correct, it means that he had accepted the monotheism and ethical standards of the Jews, and attended synagogue services, but had not become a full proselyte and been circumcised. So, although later (22) he is described as ‘respected by all the Jewish people’, he was still a Gentile, an outsider, excluded from God’s covenant with Israel.
It is difficult for us to grasp the impassable gulf which stretched in those days between the Jews on the one hand and the Gentiles (including even the ‘God-fearers’) on the other. Not that the Old Testament itself allowed for such a divide. On the contrary, alongside what it had to say against the hostile nations, it affirmed that God had a purpose for them. By choosing and blessing one family, he intended to bless all the families of the earth. So psalmists and prophets foretold the day when God’s Messiah would inherit the nations, the Lord’s servant would be their light, all nations would ‘flow’ to the Lord’s house, and God would pour out his Spirit on all humankind. The tragedy was that Israel twisted the doctrine of election into one of favouritism, became filled with racial pride and hatred, despised Gentiles as ‘dogs’ and developed traditions which kept them apart. No orthodox Jew would ever enter the home of a Gentile, even a God-fearer, or invite such into his home (see verse 28). On the contrary, ‘no pious Jew would of course have sat down at the table of a Gentile’.
This, then, was the deep-rooted prejudice which had to be overcome before Gentiles could be admitted into the Christian community on equal terms with Jews, and before the church could become a truly multiracial, multicultural society. We saw in Acts 8 the special steps God took to prevent the continuation of the Jewish–Samaritan divide in the church; how would he prevent a Jewish–Gentile divide? Luke sees this episode as being so important that he narrates it twice, first in his own words (Acts 10), and then in Peter’s when he explained what had happened to the Jerusalem church (11:1–18).
It is first made clear that Peter is to be God’s instrument in this development, for Cornelius was instructed to send for him. One day at about three in the afternoon, which Luke has already identified as a time of prayer among Jews (3:1), he had a vision in which he distinctly saw an angel who called him by name (3). In response to his terrified question, the angel told him that his prayers and gifts to the poor had come up as a memorial offering before God (4), so that he had taken note of them, and that he must send men to Joppa, about 32 miles along the coast to the south, to fetch Simon Peter who was staying by the sea with his namesake, Simon the tanner (5–6). It was at Joppa, centuries previously, that the disobedient prophet Jonah had boarded a ship in his foolish attempt to run away from God. But Cornelius the centurion, who was himself used to giving commands, immediately obeyed this one, sending two servants and a soldier to Joppa (7–8). The angel did not preach the gospel to the centurion; that privilege was to be entrusted to the apostle Peter.
This initial incident set the stage for what followed. For the primary question was how God would deal with Peter. How would he succeed in breaking down Peter’s deep-seated racial intolerance? The main subject of this chapter is not so much the conversion of Cornelius as the conversion of Peter.
3. Peter receives a vision (10:9–23a)
On the following day after Cornelius’s vision, at about noon (i.e. twenty-one hours later), even as Cornelius’s men were approaching the city of Joppa, Peter went up on the flat roof of the tanner’s house to pray (9). He became hungry and wanted something to eat, and while the meal was being prepared, he fell into a trance (10) and had an extraordinary vision. He saw heaven opened and something like a large sheet being let down to earth by its four corners (11). Some commentators have speculated that in his hunger-induced trance on the seaside rooftop what Peter really saw was not a sheet but the sail of a boat passing by. And certainly othonē could be translated ‘sail-cloth’ (11, neb). The main point of his vision, however, was what the sheet contained, namely all kinds of four-footed animals, as well as reptiles and birds (12), evidently a mixture of clean and unclean creatures calculated to disgust any orthodox Jew. Yet, having seen the vision, he now heard a voice which issued the shocking order: Get up, Peter. Kill and eat (13). ‘Surely not, Lord!’ Peter replied, as he had done twice during Jesus’ public ministry, adding, I have never eaten anything impure or unclean (14). So the voice spoke to him a second time, ‘Do not call anything impure that God has made clean’ (15). After this it seems that the whole vision of the sheet was repeated three times, immediately after which the sheet was taken back to heaven (16).
The vision itself left Peter confused. But while he was wondering about the meaning of the vision, the delegation sent by Cornelius found out where Simon’s house was and stopped at the gate (17). They called out, asking if Simon who was known as Peter was staying there (18). Then, while Peter was still thinking about the vision, the Spirit said to him [in some direct, unmistakable way], ‘Simon, three men are looking for you (19). So get up and go downstairs. Do not hesitate to go with them, for I [the Spirit] have sent them’ (20). The key expressions mēden diakrinomenos (translated ‘Do not hesitate’) in 10:20 and mēden diakrinanta (translated ‘have no hesitation’) in 11:12 could mean ‘making no distinction’ (11:12, rsv), that is, ‘making no gratuitous, invidious distinction between Jew and Gentile’. Thus, although the vision challenged the basic distinction between clean and unclean foods which Peter had been brought up to make, the Spirit related this to the distinction between clean and unclean people, and told him to stop making it. That Peter grasped this is clear from his later statement: ‘God has shown me that I should not call anyone impure or unclean’ (28).
So Peter went down and said to the men who had come from Cornelius: I’m the one you’re looking for. Why have you come? (21).
The men replied, ‘We have come from Cornelius, the centurion. He is a righteous and God-fearing man, who is respected by all the Jewish people. A holy angel told him to ask you to come to his house so that he could hear what you have to say.’
(22)
At this, Peter invited the men into the house to be his guests (23a), even though they were uncircumcised Gentiles.
We note how perfectly God dovetailed his working in Cornelius and in Peter. For while Peter was praying and seeing his vision, the men from Cornelius were approaching the city (9–16); while Peter was perplexed about the meaning of what he had seen, they arrived at his house (17–18); while Peter was still thinking about the vision, the Spirit told him that the men were looking for him and he must not hesitate to go with them (19–20); and when Peter went down and introduced himself to them, they explained to him the purpose of their visit (21–23).
4. Peter preaches to Cornelius’s household (10:23b–48)
The next day, Peter and his entourage set out north along the coastal road to Caesarea. They were a party of ten: the three Gentiles from Cornelius, Peter himself and some of the believers from Joppa (23b), who numbered six (11:12). If they went on foot, it must have taken them a good nine or ten hours, apart from stops. So they reached their destination the following day. They found a considerable company awaiting them, for Cornelius was expecting them and had assembled not only his personal household but also his relatives and close friends (24). His spiritual humility and receptivity may be judged from the fact that, as Peter entered the house, he ‘threw himself at his feet – as if he were a heavenly visitant’. It was an inappropriate gesture, however. Peter made him get up, affirming that he was himself only a man.
If Cornelius’s act of falling down before Peter was unbecoming, so too according to Jewish tradition was Peter’s act of entering a Gentile home. It is against our law, Peter said (28). This is not the best translation of athemitos, however, which ‘denotes what is contrary to ancient custom or prescription (themis), rather than to positive enactment (nomos)’. In fact, the word describes what is taboo. But now Peter felt free to break this traditional taboo and to enter Cornelius’s house, because God had shown him that no human being was unclean in his sight.
Whether consciously or unconsciously, Peter had just now rejected both extreme and opposite attitudes which human beings have sometimes adopted towards one another. He had come to see that it was entirely inappropriate either to worship somebody as if divine (which Cornelius had tried to do to him) or to reject somebody as if unclean (which he would previously have done to Cornelius). Peter refused both to be treated by Cornelius as if he were a god, and to treat Cornelius as if he were a dog.
Peter went on to say that, having been sent for, he had come without raising any objection (29). Why, then, had Cornelius sent for him?
In reply, Cornelius told the story of his vision of the angel (30–33) which had taken place four days previously. His account is identical with Luke’s (3–6), except that he now calls the angel a man in shining clothes and omits any reference to the terror he had experienced at the time (4). He then thanked Peter for coming and added: Now we are all here in the presence of God to listen to everything the Lord has commanded you to tell us (33). It was a remarkable acknowledgment that they were in God’s presence, that the apostle Peter was to be the bearer of God’s word to them, and that they were all ready and open to listen to it. No preacher today could ask for a more attentive audience.
Peter began his sermon with a solemn personal statement of what he had learned through his experiences of the previous few days. He stated it both negatively and positively. First, I now realise how true it is that God does not show favouritism (34). Prosōpolēmpsia means ‘partiality’. It was forbidden to judges in lxx, who were not to pervert justice by discriminating in favour of either the rich or the poor. For with the divine judge ‘there is no injustice or partiality or bribery’. Peter’s statement, however, has wider implications. He means that God’s attitude to people is not determined by any external criteria, such as their appearance, race, nationality or class. Instead, and positively, God accepts from every nation the one who fears him and does what is right (35). Better, and more literally, ‘in every nation whoever fears God and works righteousness is acceptable [dektos] to him’. I will leave for the time being a full examination of this statement. It is enough now to draw attention both to its context in Acts 10 and to its contrast with ‘no favouritism’. The emphasis is that Cornelius’s Gentile nationality was acceptable so that he had no need to become a Jew, not that his own righteousness was adequate so that he had no need to become a Christian. As Lenski asks: ‘If his honest pagan convictions had been sufficient, why did he seek the synagogue? If the synagogue had been enough, why was Peter here?’ Peter will soon teach him the need of faith for salvation (43).
After this introduction, affirming that ‘there is no racial barrier to Christian salvation’, Luke summarizes Peter’s sermon (36–43). Although it was addressed to a Gentile audience, its content was much the same as what he had been preaching to Jews. Indeed Peter said so, calling it both the message God sent to the people of Israel and the good news of peace [reconciliation with God and neighbour] through Jesus Christ, who is Lord of all, not just of Israel (36). It related to certain recent events which Peter’s audience knew about, because they had been public, and whose place and time Peter was able to pinpoint: You know what has happened throughout the province of Judea, beginning in Galilee after the baptism that John preached (37; cf. 1:22). These events centred on the historical Jesus, on the successive stages of his saving career, and on the salvation he offers as a result.
First, Peter referred to Jesus’ life and ministry, how God anointed Jesus of Nazareth for his work as the Messiah, not with oil like the kings of Israel and Judah, but with the Holy Spirit and power, that is, with the power of the Spirit. Thus anointed, he went around doing good and healing all who were under the power of the devil, or ‘tyrannized’ by him, so that his power was seen to be greater than the devil’s, because God was with him (38; cf. 2:22). In addition, Peter continued, we are witnesses [eyewitnesses, in fact] of everything he did in the country of the Jews and in Jerusalem (39a), and are therefore able to give first-hand evidence or testimony. It is clear from this that ‘some kind of an account of the life and character of Jesus formed an integral part of the early church’s preaching, especially its initial evangelism’.
Next came Jesus’ death. The authorities killed him by crucifixion. But Peter hints, as he had done in his earlier sermons (2:23; 5:30), that behind the historical event lay a theological significance; behind the human execution a divine plan. For they had killed him by hanging him on a cross (39b). Peter thus indicates that Jesus was bearing in our place the ‘curse’ or judgment of God on our sins.
The third event was the resurrection (40–41). Peter emphasized that it was both a divine act (they killed him . . . but God raised him from the dead, the same dramatic contrast as in 2:23–24 and 5:30–31) and at a particular time (on the third day). It was also verified physically, because God deliberately caused him to be seen, not indeed by all the people, but by special witnesses whom God had already chosen, especially by us apostles. Moreover, the resurrection body the apostles saw, although wonderfully transfigured and glorified, could nevertheless materialize, so that they ate and drank with him, and he with them, after he rose from the dead.
The life, death and resurrection of Jesus were more than significant events; they also formed the gospel, which he commanded us [the apostles again] to preach, in the first instance to the people, that is, the Jews. But the scope of the gospel was universal. So the apostles were also to proclaim him as Lord of all (36), as judge of all and as Saviour of all who believe. They were to testify that he will return on the judgment day, since he is the one whom God appointed as judge of the living and the dead (42; cf. 17:31). All will be included; none can escape. Yet we need not fear the judgment of Christ, since he is also the one who gives salvation. Long before the apostles began to testify to him as Saviour, all the prophets did so in the Old Testament, and still do through their written words: they testify about him, the unique, historical, incarnate, crucified and resurrected Jesus, that everyone who believes in him receives forgiveness of sins through his name (43), that is, through the effectiveness of who he is and what he has done. This ‘everyone’ includes Gentiles as well as Jews: the phrase ‘crashes through the barrier’ of race and nationality.
It was a marvellously comprehensive message, a summary of the good news according to Peter which Mark would later record more fully in his Gospel, and which Luke included in his. Focusing on Jesus, Peter presented him as a historical person, in and through whom God was at work for salvation, who now offered to believers salvation and escape from judgment. In this way history, theology and gospel were again combined, as in other apostolic sermons. As Cornelius, his family, relatives, friends and servants listened, their hearts were opened to grasp and believe Peter’s message, and so to repent and believe in Jesus.
Then, while Peter was still speaking these words, and before he had finished (11:15), the Holy Spirit came on all those Gentiles who heard the message and believed (44), which was the condition Peter had just mentioned (43). The small group of Jewish Christians (circumcised believers) who had come with Peter was astonished that the gift of the Holy Spirit had been poured out even on Gentiles (45), whom they had regarded as uncircumcised outsiders. But they could not deny the evidence of their eyes and ears, for they heard them speaking in tongues and praising God (46), as had happened on the Day of Pentecost. It was ‘a type of the reconciliation between Jew and Gentile, whose alienation had for ages been secured and symbolized by differences of language’.
Peter was quick to draw the inevitable deduction. Since God had accepted these Gentile believers, which indeed he had (15:8), the church must accept them too. Since God had baptized them with his Spirit (11:16), Surely no one can stand in the way of their being baptised with water. They have received the Holy Spirit just as we have (47). How could the sign be denied to those who had already received the reality to which it pointed? Chrysostom developed this logic. By giving the Spirit to Cornelius and his household before their baptism, God gave Peter an apologia megalē (a mighty reason or justification) for giving them water-baptism. Yet in a sense their baptism ‘was completed already’, for God had done it. Peter was clear that ‘in no one point was he the author, but in every point God’. It was as if Peter said: ‘God baptized them, not I.’
So Peter ordered that they be baptised in the name of Jesus Christ. Then, having been welcomed into God’s household, they asked Peter to stay with them in their household for a few days (48), doubtless in order to nurture them in their new faith and life. The gift of the Spirit was not enough; they needed human teachers too. And Peter’s acceptance of their hospitality demonstrated the new Jewish–Gentile solidarity which Christ had established.
5. Peter justifies his actions (11:1–18)
The news that the Gentiles also had received the word of God spread far and wide. The apostles and the believers throughout Judea heard about it. It is understandable that, just as the apostles needed to endorse the evangelization of the Samaritans who ‘had accepted the word of God’ (8:14), so now they were concerned about the conversion and baptism of the first Gentiles who had similarly received it (1). Not that they summoned Peter to give an account of himself. Luke writes only that Peter went up to Jerusalem of his own accord (2). And the editor of the Bezan text, anxious to put this beyond question, added that Peter had ‘for a considerable time wished to journey to Jerusalem’, that he eventually did so on his own initiative, and that he ‘reported to them the grace of God’.
At all events, on arrival in Jerusalem, the circumcised believers criticised him for having entered the house of uncircumcised men and having eaten with them (2–3). Some have suggested that Peter’s critics were ‘the circumcision party’, that is, ‘the right-wing Jewish Christians’ or ‘the extremists’. But the Greek phrase need only mean ‘those who were of Jewish birth’ (neb), namely the whole Christian community in Jerusalem, all of whom up to that time were Jews. Recent events in Caesarea had naturally disturbed them.
In verses 4–17 Peter told them the whole story (4). In fact Luke now repeats it, but more briefly, with a different order of events, and through the lips of Peter. Luke’s own account had followed the timescale of the four days, beginning with Cornelius’s vision of the angel. Peter, however, because he is recounting things as he himself experienced them, begins with his own vision of the sheet, and does not mention Cornelius’s vision until the fourth day, when he heard it from Cornelius’s lips (although the three men from Cornelius had already mentioned it, 10:22). Peter’s order of events is important because it helps us to live through his experience with him, and so to learn just how God had shown him that he should not call anybody impure or unclean (10:28). It took four successive hammer blows of divine revelation before his racial and religious prejudice was overcome, as he explains to the Jerusalem church.
First came the divine vision (4–10) of the sheet containing animals, reptiles and birds. In verse 6 the wild beasts are an addition, and so is Peter’s statement that he looked into the sheet ‘intently’ (neb). The vision was followed by the voice which gave Peter the startling order to Get up . . . Kill and eat and, after his protest, rebuked him that he was not to call anything impure that God has made clean. The whole vision, including the order and the rebuke, was repeated three times, so that the heavenly voice addressed him six times altogether with the same basic message. As a result, Peter grasped that the clean and unclean animals (a distinction which Jesus had abolished) were a symbol of clean and unclean, circumcised and uncircumcised, persons. As Rackham put it, ‘the sheet is the church’, which will ‘contain all races and classes without any distinction at all’, even though the full significance of this dawned on Peter only later.
The second hammer blow was the divine command (11–12) to accompany the three men who had come from Caesarea to fetch him. For right then, immediately after the vision had ended, Cornelius’s men arrived at Peter’s house, and the Spirit told him to go with them without hesitation or distinction (12), even though they were uncircumcised Gentiles. Indeed these six brothers, who were now with Peter in Jerusalem, had previously escorted him from Joppa to Caesarea (10:23), and so were witnesses of what had taken place. With Peter they made a group of seven, which William Barclay thought was significant, for ‘in Egyptian law, which the Jews would know well, seven witnesses were necessary completely to prove a case’, while ‘in Roman law, which they would also know well, seven seals were necessary to authenticate a really important document like a will’.
The third hammer blow was the divine preparation (13–14). That is, as Peter and his party entered Cornelius’s house, Cornelius told them how God had prepared him for their visit. An angel had appeared to him and told him to send to Joppa for Simon Peter, who would bring him a message of salvation. In Luke’s own account the content of Cornelius’s message to Peter had not been mentioned (10:5–6, 22, 32–33), but Peter knew what the angel had led Cornelius to expect.
As Peter retold the story of the two visions to the Jerusalem church, he must have been freshly impressed by the timing. For God had been working at both ends, in Cornelius and in Peter, deliberately arranging for them to meet, and preparing for it by granting to each on successive days a special, independent and appropriate vision. He told Cornelius in Caesarea to send for Peter in Joppa, and Peter in Joppa to go to Cornelius in Caesarea, and he perfectly synchronized the two events. Haenchen thinks that Luke overdoes God’s supernatural interventions, that he thereby ‘virtually excludes all human decision’ and turns the obedience of faith into ‘very nearly the twitching of puppets’. But this is unfair. To be sure, the divine intervention is plain, in the lives of both Cornelius and Peter, but neither of them was manipulated in such a way as to bypass his mind or will. On the contrary, they reflected on what they saw and heard, interpreted its significance, and deliberately chose to obey.
The fourth and final revelation to Peter was the divine action (15–17). For as Peter began to speak, or at least (since commentators warn us not to take this Semitic way of putting it too literally) while he was still speaking (10:44), the Holy Spirit came on them just as, he added, he had come on us at the beginning. It was the extraordinary similarity of the two events which struck him. He remembered what the risen Jesus had said after his resurrection (1:5), namely John baptised with water, but you will be baptised with the Holy Spirit. In other words, this was the Gentile Pentecost in Caesarea, corresponding to the Jewish Pentecost in Jerusalem.
Here, then, were the four divine hammer blows which were all aimed skilfully at Jewish racial prejudice, and especially at Peter’s: the vision, the command, the preparation and the action. Together they demonstrated conclusively that God had now welcomed believing Gentiles into his family on equal terms with believing Jews. Peter was convinced. He at once drew the correct deduction from the fact that God had given the same gift of the Spirit to Gentiles as to Jews. He asked two rhetorical questions. The first was at the time: ‘Can anyone forbid water for baptizing these people who have received the Holy Spirit just as we have?’ (10:47, rsv). The second he addressed to his critics in Jerusalem: If God gave them the same gift he gave us . . . who was I to think that I could stand in God’s way? (11:17). Both questions were unanswerable. And they were the more striking because both contain an almost identical Greek expression, namely dynatai kōlysai (10:47) and dynatos kōlysai (11:17), literally ‘able to forbid, refuse or prevent’. Water-baptism could not be forbidden to these Gentile converts because God could not be forbidden to do what he had done, namely give them Spirit-baptism. The argument was overwhelming. To be sure, to give Christian baptism to an uncircumcised Gentile was a bold, innovative step, but to withhold it would be to stand in God’s way.
If Peter had been convinced by the evidence, so now was the Jerusalem church: they had no further objections [literally, ‘they remained silent’] and praised God. As F. F. Bruce neatly puts it, ‘their criticism ceased; their worship began’. And they had good reason to glorify God, for, they concluded, even to Gentiles God has granted repentance that leads to life (18).
6. Lessons to learn
Luke tells the story of the conversion of Cornelius with great dramatic skill. But has it any significance for us? There are no Roman centurions in the world today, and Gentiles have been full members of the church for centuries. So has this incident any more than a historical interest? Yes, it speaks directly to some modern questions about the church, the Holy Spirit, non-Christian religions and the gospel.
a. The unity of the church
The fundamental emphasis of the Cornelius story is that, since God does not make distinctions in his new society, we must not make them either. Yet, tragic as it is, the church has never fully accepted the truth of its own unity or of the equality of its members in Christ. Even Peter himself, despite the fourfold divine witness he had received, later had a bad lapse in Antioch, withdrew from fellowship with believing Gentiles and had to be publicly opposed by Paul. Even then, the circumcision party continued their propaganda, and the Council of Jerusalem had to be called to settle the issue (Acts 15). Even after that, the same ugly sin of discrimination has kept reappearing in the church, in the form of racism (skin-colour prejudice), nationalism (‘my country, right or wrong’), tribalism, social and cultural snobbery, or sexism (discriminating against people on the grounds of gender). All such discrimination is inexcusable even in non-Christian society; in the Christian community it is both an obscenity (because offensive to human dignity) and a blasphemy (because offensive to God who accepts without discrimination all who repent and believe). Like Peter, we have to learn that ‘God does not show favouritism’ (10:34).
b. The gift of the Spirit
Luke, whose keen interest in the ministry of the Holy Spirit we have already noted, gives much prominence to him in the Cornelius story. This rebukes those Christians who overlook or underplay his work today. Even if the speech in foreign languages, which characterized both the Jewish and the Gentile Pentecost (2:4; 10:46), is not a universal Christian blessing, the gift of the Spirit himself is. Yet this story also poses awkward questions to those who insist on a two-stage Christian initiation, since it is certain that Luke is describing Cornelius’s conversion, and not a second, post-conversion baptism of the Spirit. For Peter preached the gospel to him, and Cornelius is said to have repented (11:18) and believed (15:7, 9). What he experienced is also called interchangeably either ‘receiving’ the gift of the Spirit (10:45, 47; 11:17) or being ‘baptized’ with the Spirit (11:16). In fact, Cornelius’s water-baptism signified and sealed the total salvation (11:14) which God had given him, including both the forgiveness of sins and the gift of the Spirit (10:43, 45), as on the Day of Pentecost (2:38).
c. The status of non-Christian religions
The story of Cornelius has developed a fresh importance in relation to the new pluralism of many societies and the contemporary assessment of non-Christian religions. Some argue that it is ‘perhaps the most powerful pointer to the inclusiveness of God’s saving activity’ and contains statements which are ‘important clues for a Christian understanding of the status before God of those who are not Christians in our day’. We need, therefore, to examine carefully this ‘pointer’ and these ‘clues’.
It is true that Luke describes Cornelius as a ‘devout’ (eusebēs, ‘godly’) and ‘God-fearing’ man, who ‘gave generously to those in need and prayed to God regularly’ (10:2). Later his own servants portray him as ‘a righteous [dikaios] and God-fearing man, who is respected by all the Jewish people’ (10:22), while Peter includes him among those who ‘fear God and do what is right’ (10:35). More than this, God is represented as being pleased with him. His prayers and gifts had ‘come up as a memorial offering before God’ (10:4, 31). This phrase ‘memorial offering’ translates mnēmosynos, a sacrificial word used in the lxx of the so-called ‘memorial portion’ of an offering which was burned. Does this mean that Cornelius’s prayers and alms had been ‘accepted as a sacrifice in the sight of God’ (31, jb)? And what did Peter mean when he stated that God ‘accepts’ (dektos) in every nation those ‘who fear him and do what is right’ (10:35)? What kind of ‘acceptability’ to God is implied by this word dektos and by the use of sacrificial imagery in 10:4 and 31?
One possibility is that dektos refers to the acceptance called ‘justification’, but that fearing God and doing right (10:35) are ‘not meritorious conditions or prerequisites to the experience of divine grace, but its fruits and evidences’, and that Peter is describing believers rather than unbelievers (as, for example, Paul does in Rom. 2:10). The emphasis then is that God accepts all who fear him and do right, not irrespective of their faith in Jesus (because they have believed and now show their faith by their works), but irrespective of their race and rank. ‘The essential meaning is that whatever is acceptable to God in one race is acceptable in any other.’ An alternative explanation, however, seems to me to fit the context better. This is that dektos means not ‘accepted’ in the absolute sense of justified, but ‘acceptable’ in a comparative sense, because in everybody God prefers righteousness to unrighteousness and sincerity to insincerity, and in the case of Cornelius God provided for him to hear the saving gospel.
What Peter emphatically did not mean is that anybody of any nation or religion who is devout (‘fears God’) and upright (‘does right’) is thereby justified. Calvin rightly dismisses this notion as ‘an exceedingly childish error’. Not only does it contradict Paul’s gospel, which Luke faithfully echoes in Acts, but it is refuted by the rest of the Cornelius story. For this devout, God-fearing, upright, sincere and generous man still needed to hear the gospel, to repent (11:18) and to believe in Jesus (15:7). Only then did God in his grace (15:11) save him (11:14, 15:11), give him forgiveness of sins (10:43), the gift of the Spirit (10:45; 15:8) and life (11:18), and purify his heart by faith (15:9). Moreover, only then was he baptized and thus visibly and publicly received into the Christian community.
It is, then, a misuse of Acts 10 and 11 to suggest that before he heard Peter, Cornelius was already in right relationship with God, or ‘justified’. The essence of the story is that (negatively) God shows no favouritism (10:34) and makes no distinction between races (10:20, 29; 11:12; 15:9), and that (positively) he gave and gives the same Spirit to all alike, not irrespective of faith, but irrespective of circumcision.
d. The power of the gospel
Luke has now recounted the conversions of Saul and Cornelius. The differences between these two men were considerable. In race Saul was a Jew, Cornelius a Gentile; in culture Saul was a scholar, Cornelius a soldier; in religion Saul was a bigot, Cornelius a seeker. Yet both were converted by the gracious initiative of God; both received forgiveness of sins and the gift of the Spirit; and both were baptized and welcomed into the Christian family on equal terms. This fact is a potent testimony to the power and impartiality of the gospel of Christ, which is still ‘the power of God that brings salvation to everyone who believes: first to the Jew, then to the Gentile’.