Peter’S Report To The Church At Jerusalem
PETER’S REPORT TO THE CHURCH AT JERUSALEM
ACTS 11:1-18
Are we big enough to learn new lessons that God wants to teach us?
The good work of Peter’s ministry now comes under fire! Note who its critics are (11:2). And what charge they bring against him (11:3).
The tenets of these critics are given in 15:1. Hence their name. But at this stage their accusation is that Peter broke the ritual rules and ate with Gentiles. The issue over circumcision came later, and was raised as a bulwark against the prospect of a predominantly Gentile church once the mission to the Gentiles got under way (11:20-21) so auspiciously.
The apostle’s defense occupies the next section, and goes over the same ground as in chapter 10. Why has Luke taken obvious pains to repeat the details of this incident? Certainly this account, in Peter’s own words, has a vividness and color all its own. Pick out some of the interesting additions and personal turns of phrase which Peter’s own account gives: for example, “it came down to me” (11:5); “looking at it closely” (11:6); and verse 14. From verse 15a it seems that Peter was only getting started with his sermon when God’s intervention took him and his congregation by surprise! 11:17 implies that the Twelve became full believers and Christians only at Pentecost—ie when they grasped the saving significance of the cross and the risen Lord. The defense concludes on a note which could hardly be controverted. God himself had borne witness to the rightness of his servant’s action (11:17), and any refusal to accept the response as genuine and in line with his will would be tantamount to opposing him.
In the face of such irrefutable logic, the Jewish-Christians accepted the conclusion of verse 18. Probably they did this with sincerity, but a more serious and sustained criticism was bound to arise once the evangelization of the Gentiles and their acceptance as church members without circumcision was made the rule rather than the exception. The Judaizers here were prepared to receive Cornelius and his group as an exceptional and isolated case; they were utterly opposed—as later history records—to the Pauline principle of a church in which all distinctions of race were abolished (Galatians 3:27-29). What is the bearing of all this on issues of civil rights and prejudice in the modern world?
Notes 11:6 adds a fourth group to the list of 10:12. 11:18: an admission that Peter was right—for the moment.