Acts 10:34-43 Commentary

Few accusations carry more emotional wallop than that of favoritism. Some children hurt their parents by accusing them of favoring one child over another. How many employees haven’t at least quietly suspected their bosses were playing favorites with some of their workers?

At least this Sunday’s Epistolary Lesson’s Peter has the courage to admit he’d always assumed even God played favorites. Yet when he witnesses the Spirit’s mighty work in and on gentiles Cornelius and his household, he must admit “I now realize [katalambanomai*] … God does not show favoritism [ouk estin prosopolemptes]” (13).

Since this Sunday’s Epistolary Lesson excludes a description of what the Spirit used to awaken Peter in this way, wise preachers will at least familiarize our hearers with what precedes it in Acts 10. The chapter begins with a description of a Roman military officer named Cornelius.

Acts 10:2 refers to his family and him as “devout and God-fearing.” What’s more, it marvels at how Cornelius “gave generously to those in need and prayed to God regularly.” Cornelius is, in other words, the kind of person who visibly bears God’s image. We might even say this gentile is a “true Israelite.”

So while the events Acts 10 subsequently describes would have shocked Christians who were Jewish, Acts’ readers aren’t shocked to read of how an angel of the God to whom Cornelius regularly speaks speaks to the Roman soldier in a vision. The angel orders the man who regularly gives orders to order Peter to come to his home.

Yet while Cornelius responds obediently, Peter doesn’t initially share his enthusiasm for a meeting. He’s too busy distinguishing between who and what’s in and outside of God’s circle of grace. However, the Spirit convinces Peter to accompany Cornelius’ messengers from Joppa (perhaps an allusion to equally reluctant Jonah’s point of departure) to their boss’s home in Caesarea.

There the gentile and Jew swap stories of the genesis of their unlikely meeting. That exchange ends with Cornelius’ report in Acts 10:33 that “We are all here in the presence of God to listen to everything the Lord has commanded you to tell us.”

Once he recovers Peter wits, he begins his presentation of the gospel with verses 34-35’s earth-shaking profession: “God … accepts [dektos] from every nation [panti ethnei] the one who fears [phoboumenos] him and does what is right [ergazomenous dikaionsynen].”

Preachers might point to a couple of things about this admission. While God chose to show God’s mercy especially to God’s Israelite people, it was always so that they might summon gentiles to obedient faith in the living God. While Israel often failed miserably at that, some gentiles, like Cornelius, did receive God’s grace with their faith in the living God.

Peter’s startling profession, what’s more, follows closely not just the report of the Ethiopian eunuch’s conversion (Acts 8:26-40), but also the Jewish Saul’s murderous persecution of Jesus’ friends (Acts 9:1-3). What’s more, it shortly precedes Peter’s need to defend his actions against Jewish Christians’ criticism of him for ministering to Cornelius (Acts 11:1-3). Acts 8-10 highlights stark differences between the ways some Jews and gentiles responded to God’s expansive love.

On top of that, Peter’s sermon to Cornelius and his household hints at the Spirit’s subtle movement of the apostle from exclusion to inclusion. “You know,” he tells the Roman centurion in verse 36, “the message [logon] God sent to the people [huiois] of Israel, announcing the good news [euangelizomenos] of peace through Jesus Christ, who is Lord of all.”

Readers can hardly hear this announcement of the logon (“the message”) God sent to the children  of Israel without hearing echoes of John 1:1: “In the beginning was the logos (“Word”) and the logos was with God and the logos was God.” So Peter’s asserting that Jesus wasn’t just the deliverer of God’s gospel. He was also the gospel’s message to the people of Israel.

What’s more, it’s hard to miss Peter’s perception of the original “target” audience of this message and messenger of peace. It was not, says the apostle, the nations or gentile individuals like Cornelius and his family members. The apostle insists the Word, instead, came to the huiois (“people”) of Israel, the biological descendants of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.

Yet Peter’s description of the logos, Jesus Christ, hints at a broader target audience. The apostle refers to him as “Lord [Kyrios] of all [panton]”. Jesus isn’t, in other words, the Master of just the children of Israel. Peter professes he’s also the Lord of the children of all nations. Jesus Christ is, as The Message paraphrases verse 36b, putting everything together again “everywhere, among everyone.”

Does Peter’s repeated reference to how Cornelius and members of his household “know” [oidate] this hint at Jesus’ universal lordship? It suggests, after all, not just that Peter finally realizes that God doesn’t play favorites. He also twice (36, 37) says his gentile audience somehow already “knows” God sent Jesus Christ to the children of Israel in order to rescue the whole world from sin.

Jesus Christ, this Lord of all, “God anointed [echrisen] … with the Holy Spirit and power … [and] went around doing good [euergeton] and healing [iomenos] all who were under the power of [katadynasteuomenous] the devil, because God was with him” (38). God, insists Peter, empowered Jesus to help and heal people who were enslaved by powerful Satan, sin and death. God, in fact, was so with Jesus that the incarnate Son of God helped everyone, including gentiles like Cornelius, who was, in the paraphrase of The Message. “beaten down by the devil.”

Yet while Peter recognizes Cornelius has heard about all of this, he insists he himself was an eyewitness to it. “We are witnesses [martyres],” he tells Cornelius and his household in verse 39, “of everything he did in the country of the Jews and in Jerusalem.” The apostle, in other words, didn’t just hear about the amazing things Jesus did among Jewish people. He also saw them with his own eyes.

But Peter grieves how he saw more than Jesus helping Jewish people. He also witnessed how Jewish leaders convinced them to respond to The Word. “They killed [aneilan] him by hanging [kremasantes] him on a cross [xylou]” (39b). Of course, Jewish people had no authority to execute anyone in occupied Israel. Only the Roman authorities could do that. Yet Peter accuses Jewish leaders, with some popular approval, of helping convince Rome to crucify Jesus.

But, of course, God had more plans not just for Jesus, but also for Israel and the nations. “God,” says Peter in verse 40, “raised him from the dead [egeiren] on the third day.” God, in other words, affirmed the saving nature of Jesus’ sacrificial life and death by raising him to life.

Yet God didn’t keep that affirmation or Jesus’ resurrection a secret. Peter in verses 40-41 insists God graciously “caused him to be seen [edoken auton emphane genesthai]. He was not seen by all the people, but by witnesses [martysin] God had already chosen [prokecheirotonemois] – by us who ate and drank with him after he rose from the dead.”

Peter’s return to the theme of “eyewitnesses” may reflect some Jews’ ongoing insistence that Jesus’ resurrection was just a myth. What’s more, Peter’s testimony also refers to the “corporality” of the risen Jesus. He wasn’t some ghostly apparition. He ate and drank with some handpicked friends after God raised him from the dead.

Peter goes on to at least suggest that as Jesus’ and his followers ate and drank together, he also gave them a mission. In verses 42-43 he professes Jesus “commanded [parangeilen] us to preach [keryxia] to the people [lao] and to testify [diamartyrasthai] that he is the one whom God appointed [horismenos] as judge of the living and the dead.”

While preachers might call attention to any number of salient points about this mission, we might let the Spirit prompt us to highlight what Peter doesn’t say about it. Jesus called his friends to publicly announce his resurrection. He commanded them to proclaim that he is the Judge of living as well as dead people.

But Jesus does not identify his followers’ “target audience.” He commands them to share this great news with to lao (“the people”). But Jesus doesn’t tell them to proclaim the gospel just to to lao Israel oti (“to the people of Israel”), as Peter and John refer to them in Acts 4:10. So is it too much to speculate that even as he speaks to this roomful of gentiles, it’s slowly dawning on Peter that Jesus commanded his friends to preach the good news of salvation to not just the children of Israel, but also to all people?

His assertion in verse 43 seems to support that inference. There, after all, Peter says, “All the prophets testify [martyrousin] about him that everyone who believes [pisteuonta] in him receives forgiveness of sins [aphesin hamartion] in his name.” In other words, it’s not just Abraham’s biological descendants but all believers whom God graces with forgiveness. In fact, Peter notes, even the prophets bore witness that anyone and everyone who believes in Jesus Christ receives the gift that is the forgiveness of our sins in Jesus’ name.

This “big tent” is, at least broadly speaking, “old hat” for Jesus’ friends. Preachers may even see our hearers checking their phones because they’re already so familiar with it. So how might we speak this amazing grace in ways the Spirit can use to open closed ears and eyes?

We might ask our hearers if there are people whom we’ve given up on ever receiving God’s grace with their faith. We might ask if there are people who profess Jesus as Lord and Savior, but we suspect have somehow disqualified themselves from being part of God’s adopted family. We might ask how Christians, beginning with ourselves, might bear fresh martyrion to the message that everyone who believes in Jesus receives forgiveness of sins through his name.

*I have here and elsewhere added in brackets the Greek words for the English words the NIV translation uses.

Illustration

In his classic, The Divine Conspiracy: Rediscovering Our Hidden Life in God, Dallas Willard insists Jesus, in the words of one reviewer “advocates for people who need the grace of Christ in some obvious way: ‘The flunkouts and drop-outs and burned-outs. The broke and the broken. The drug heads and the divorced. The HIV-positive and the herpes-ridden. The brain-damaged, the incurably ill. The barren and the pregnant too many times or at the wrong time.

“’The overemployed, the underemployed, the unemployed. The unemployable. The swindled, the shoved aside, the replaced. The parents with children living on the streets … The lonely, the incompetent, the stupid. The emotionally starved or the emotionally dead’.”