‘And he said to them, “You yourselves know how it is an unlawful thing for a man who is a Jew to join himself or come in to one of another nation, and yet God has shown me that I should not call any man common or unclean. That is the reason also that I came without saying anything against it, when I was sent for. I ask, therefore, with what intention you sent for me.”
Peter then explains why he has behaved in such an unusual manner. They will know that he is a Jew, and they will know that as a Jew he could not be expected to mix socially with non-Jews, nor enter a Gentile house. He is very much aware that they must be wondering why he has done so. He does not want them to think that he is careless about his own religious sensitivities or the religious sensitivities of the Jews. The requirements here, of course, went beyond the actual Law, and refer rather to what had become the custom, partly due to Pharisaic interpretation. But they were requirements that resulted from an urgent desire not to be religiously contaminated.
Indeed, he points out, the reason that he has done so is because God had shown him that he must not call any man common or unclean whom God has cleansed. That is why he has come without making any excuses, and without demurring at the thought of entering a Gentile house. God had told him to come, and he has therefore assumed that God has ensured that the house is ‘clean' (just as He had cleansed the unclean animals).
Peter is not saying that he will never again make such distinctions. This is a particular case. Later he will have to be rebuked by Paul for allowing such distinctions to interfere with his fellowship with Gentile Christians (Galatians 2:11-13). The question continued to be like a nettle to Jewish Christians.
Having made his position clear, both to Cornelius and to the Jewish Christians he had brought with him, who must also have been a little perturbed, he then asks why he has been sent for.
‘Another nation.' Often a contemptuous expression on the lips of a Jew, but here possibly more neutral. Peter is in fact demonstrating that God does not think like that.