Acts 10 — What God Has Made Clean

Today’s Passage: Acts 10

This chapter moves in one long, deliberate stride, and it helps to read it as a single story rather than three. In Caesarea a Roman officer named Cornelius is praying, and an angel comes to send him down the coast to Joppa. There a fisherman’s guest named Peter goes up on a roof, sees a sheet full of creatures let down from heaven, and hears a voice telling him that what God has made clean must not be called unclean. While he is still turning the vision over, Cornelius’s messengers arrive at the gate, and Peter goes with them into a Gentile house and begins to preach Jesus crucified and risen. He is not even finished speaking when the Holy Spirit falls on everyone listening, and baptism follows at once. The angel, the sheet, and the Spirit poured out are not three separate marvels but one long climb with a single summit: God has made the nations clean.

These things truly happened, the sheet and the voice, the Spirit falling in the middle of a sermon, the sound of tongues in a Gentile house, and we do the account no honor by hollowing it out or turning it into a formula to be worked. The same Spirit still lives in everyone who believes, and no household today waits for a fresh Pentecost of its own before the Spirit will come, for He is given to all who trust the Lord.

As you read, hold this: What God has made clean must not be called unclean.

Acts 10:1–8 (BSB)

¹ At Caesarea there was a man named Cornelius, a centurion in what was called the Italian Regiment. ² He and all his household were devout and God-fearing. He gave generously to the people and prayed to God regularly. ³ One day at about the ninth hour, he had a clear vision of an angel of God who came to him and said, “Cornelius!” ⁴ Cornelius stared at him in fear and asked, “What is it, Lord?” The angel answered, “Your prayers and gifts to the poor have ascended as a memorial offering before God. ⁵ Now send men to Joppa to call for a man named Simon who is called Peter. ⁶ He is staying with Simon the tanner, whose house is by the sea.” ⁷ When the angel who spoke to him had gone, Cornelius called two of his servants and a devout soldier from among his attendants. ⁸ He explained what had happened and sent them to Joppa.

A Roman officer kneels to pray at three in the afternoon, the hour of the evening sacrifice, and heaven takes note. The angel’s word about a memorial offering borrows the language of the altar, though it does not mean that his gifts to the poor had purchased his salvation. It means rather that God was attending to this hungry Gentile and now turns him toward the apostolic word he still needed to hear. And Cornelius obeys without delay.

Acts 10:9–16 (BSB)

⁹ The next day at about the sixth hour, as the men were approaching the city on their journey, Peter went up on the roof to pray. ¹⁰ He became hungry and wanted something to eat, but while the meal was being prepared, he fell into a trance. ¹¹ He saw heaven open and something like a large sheet being let down to earth by its four corners. ¹² It contained all kinds of four-footed animals and reptiles of the earth, as well as birds of the air. ¹³ Then a voice said to him: “Get up, Peter, kill and eat!” ¹⁴ “No, Lord!” Peter answered. “I have never eaten anything impure or unclean.” ¹⁵ The voice spoke to him a second time: “Do not call anything impure that God has made clean.” ¹⁶ This happened three times, and all at once the sheet was taken back up into heaven.

At noon Peter goes up to pray, grows hungry, and falls into a trance, and down comes the sheet with its tangle of clean and unclean (κοινός) koinos, pronounced koy-NOS. Strong's G2839, common, ordinary; unclean, profane. Peter protests that he has never eaten anything koinos, ritually impure by association rather than filthy in itself, and the voice answers him plainly: do not call koinos what God Himself has made clean. The vision speaks of food, but its true concern is people, and this is the word Peter is meant to carry away, the one that governs the whole chapter: what God has made clean must not be called unclean. It is the same word he will use again in verse 28 when he tells Cornelius’s household that God has shown him not to call any man impure or unclean, the vision’s private lesson now spoken out loud to the very people it concerned. creatures and a command to kill and eat. His answer, No, Lord, almost trips over itself, for a lord is precisely the one you do not answer with a no. Three times the lesson is pressed home until it cannot be missed, and the timing is exact: even as the sheet is drawn back up into heaven, the messengers from Caesarea are already near the door.

Acts 10:17–23 (BSB)

¹⁷ While Peter was puzzling over the meaning of the vision, the men sent by Cornelius found Simon’s house and approached the gate. ¹⁸ They called out to ask if Simon called Peter was staying there. ¹⁹ As Peter continued to reflect on the vision, the Spirit said to him, “Behold, three men are looking for you. ²⁰ So get up! Go downstairs and accompany them without hesitation, because I have sent them.” ²¹ So Peter went down to the men and said, “Here am I, the one you are looking for. Why have you come?” ²² “Cornelius the centurion has sent us,” they said. “He is a righteous and God-fearing man with a good reputation among the whole Jewish nation. A holy angel instructed him to request your presence in his home so he could hear a message from you.” ²³ So Peter invited them in as his guests. And the next day he got ready and went with them, accompanied by some of the brothers from Joppa.

A vision like this needs interpreting, and the interpretation arrives from two directions at once, the Spirit speaking within and the messengers calling at the gate below. Peter is told to go with them without hesitation, and that phrase is the very opposite of his old scruple. So he takes Gentiles in as his guests for the night and the next day sets out with them, bringing fellow believers from Joppa along as witnesses. God is quietly assembling a case that the wider church will one day need to hear.

Acts 10:24–33 (BSB)

²⁴ The following day he arrived in Caesarea, where Cornelius was expecting them and had called together his relatives and close friends. ²⁵ As Peter was about to enter, Cornelius met him and fell at his feet to worship him. ²⁶ But Peter helped him up. “Stand up,” he said, “I am only a man myself.” ²⁷ As Peter talked with him, he went inside and found many people gathered together. ²⁸ He said to them, “You know how unlawful it is for a Jew to associate with a foreigner or visit him. But God has shown me that I should not call any man impure or unclean. ²⁹ So when I was invited, I came without objection. I ask, then, why have you sent for me?” ³⁰ Cornelius answered: “Four days ago I was in my house praying at this, the ninth hour. Suddenly a man in radiant clothing stood before me ³¹ and said, ‘Cornelius, your prayer has been heard, and your gifts to the poor have been remembered before God. ³² Therefore send to Joppa for Simon, who is called Peter. He is a guest in the home of Simon the tanner, by the sea.’ ³³ So I sent for you immediately, and you were kind enough to come. Now then, we are all here in the presence of God to listen to everything the Lord has instructed you to tell us.”

Cornelius has gathered a whole houseful of family and close friends before he has so much as heard the gospel, so sure is he that God is about to speak. In his eagerness he stumbles, falling at Peter’s feet as though to worship him, and Peter lifts him up and refuses the honor, for he is only a man himself. Then Peter names both the old barrier and the new thing God has shown him: no person may be branded unclean and shut out from the message. The house is ready, and Cornelius says it beautifully, that they are all present before God to hear everything the Lord has commanded.

Acts 10:34–43 (BSB)

³⁴ Then Peter began to speak: “I now truly understand that God does not show favoritism, ³⁵ but welcomes those from every nation who fear Him and do what is right. ³⁶ He has sent this message to the people of Israel, proclaiming the gospel of peace through Jesus Christ, who is Lord of all. ³⁷ You yourselves know what has happened throughout Judea, beginning in Galilee with the baptism that John proclaimed: ³⁸ how God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Spirit and with power, and how Jesus went around doing good and healing all who were oppressed by the devil, because God was with Him. ³⁹ We are witnesses of all that He did, both in the land of the Jews and in Jerusalem. And although they put Him to death by hanging Him on a tree, ⁴⁰ God raised Him up on the third day and caused Him to be seen— ⁴¹ not by all the people, but by the witnesses God had chosen beforehand, by us who ate and drank with Him after He rose from the dead. ⁴² And He commanded us to preach to the people and to testify that He is the One appointed by God to judge the living and the dead. ⁴³ All the prophets testify about Him that everyone who believes in Him receives forgiveness of sins through His name.”

Now Peter understands what he could not see before: God shows no favoritism, and Jesus is Lord of all. In a few swift strokes he preaches the whole gospel, the ministry of the Jesus who went about doing good, His death upon a tree, His resurrection on the third day, the witnesses God chose to eat and drink with Him after He rose, and the judgment He will one day bring. It ends where it must, with the promise that everyone who believes receives forgiveness of sins through His name. There is no demand for circumcision here and no second-class place for the Gentiles, only the one open door of faith.

Acts 10:44–48 (BSB)

⁴⁴ While Peter was still speaking these words, the Holy Spirit fell upon all who heard his message. ⁴⁵ All the circumcised believers who had accompanied Peter were astounded that the gift of the Holy Spirit had been poured out even on the Gentiles. ⁴⁶ For they heard them speaking in tongues and exalting God. Then Peter said, ⁴⁷ “Can anyone withhold the water to baptize these people? They have received the Holy Spirit just as we have!” ⁴⁸ So he ordered that they be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ. Then they asked him to stay for a few days.

The sermon is not even finished when the Spirit falls, a Pentecost in mid-sentence. The circumcised believers who came with Peter are astounded, for it is unmistakably the same gift and the same Spirit they had received, and the tongues they hear are the sign of it, marking the Gentiles’ place in this founding moment. Peter reasons straight from what God has plainly done: if these have received the Holy Spirit just as we did, who could possibly withhold the water? So they are baptized in the name of Jesus Christ, and Peter stays on to share their table for days. What God has made clean stands clean.