Tuesday, Feb. 10

Monday

Acts 10-11 essentially tells the same story twice.  It is the story of how God used a vision in a dream and a unique encounter with a Gentile named Cornelius, to change the mind and heart of the apostle Peter.  Then God used Peter to challenge the prejudices of the whole church so that the gospel might continue to spread throughout the world.  Repetition is a method that the Biblical writers used to emphasize crucial points, we should always pay careful attention when we see something repeated in the Bible.  There is a reason this story is repeated, it is a crucial moment in the history of the church!  

This story about Cornelius and Peter has a lot to say about the winds of racism that are blowing in our culture these days. They have a lot to say about our natural tendency to think of other ethnic groups besides our own as unclean or corrupt. They have a lot to say about world missions and our commitment as evangelical Christians to take the gospel of Christ to every ethnic group in the world so that people may be saved. So I hope we can be open to grasp the powerful truth of this story for our lives.

Look at Acts 10:28 - Peter is explaining to the Gentiles why he was willing to come and says, "You yourselves know how unlawful it is for a Jew to associate with or to visit any one of another nation; but God has shown me that I should not call any man common or unclean."

What this means is that Christians should never look down on a person from any race or ethnic group and say: they are unfit to hear the gospel from me. Or they are too unclean for me to go into their house to share the gospel. Or they are not worth evangelizing. Or they have too many offensive habits to even get near them.

But the phrase that makes verse 28 so powerful is the phrase "any man" or "any one": "God has shown me that I should not call any human being common or unclean." In other words, Peter learned from his vision on the housetop in Joppa that God rules no one out of his favor on the basis of race or ethnic origin or mere cultural distinctives or physical distinctives. "Common and unclean" meant rejected, despised, taboo. It was like leprosy.

And Peter's point here in verse 28 is that there is not one human being on the face of the earth that we should think about in that way. Not one. That's the amazing thing in this verse. Not one. Our hearts should go out to every single person whatever the color, whatever the ethnic origin, whatever the physical traits, whatever the cultural distinctives. Don't write off anybody. Don't snub anybody. Don't check them out like the priest and the Levite in the parable of the Good Samaritan and then pass by on the other side. "God has shown me that I should not call any one—not one—common or unclean."

Cornelius would not have been saved if no one had taken him the gospel. And no one will be saved today without the gospel. We should be full of hope and expectancy that this is the sort of wonder God is willing to work in making connections between the groping of unreached peoples and those willing to take the gospel to them.

So let us rid our minds and our hearts of all racial slurs and ethnic put-downs and be done with all alienating behaviors. And let's be Christ for some ethnic outcast, or for some untouchable leper, and let's be the Peter for some waiting Cornelius!

Jeff Frazier