‘And when there had been much questioning, Peter rose up, and said to them, “Brethren, you know that a good while ago God made choice among you, that by my mouth the Gentiles should hear the word of the good news, and believe. And God, who knows the heart, bore them witness, giving them the Holy Spirit, even as he did to us, and he made no distinction between us and them, cleansing their hearts by faith.”
As a result there was a great deal of discussion, and then finally, when much had been said on all sides, Peter stood up and declared his position.
He reminded all present of his own experience with Cornelius and his fellow-Gentiles many years before, and of how God had chosen him to take to these Gentiles the Good News with the result that they had believed. But more than that. What had been especially significant was that God, Who knows the heart of all men, had borne witness to the fact that, even while they were uncircumcised, he had cleansed their hearts by faith, for He had given to them His own Holy Spirit in precisely the same way and with the same signs as He had previously done to the Jews who believed. God had openly and deliberately made no distinction. He had treated both circumcised Jews and uncircumcised Gentiles in the same way. He had cleansed both in the same way. He had sanctified both by His Holy Spirit (1 Peter 1:2) in the same way. And He had evidenced the significance of this to Peter in a vision. He had made it clear that because He had cleansed them from heaven they were to be seen as cleansed and holy, and in no way to be treated as ‘common' or unclean (they were not to be bathed or circumcised).