Peter and Cornelius (9:43-10:48).
It is difficult for us to appreciate the huge step that is now about to be described. To us it may all seem like a great fuss about nothing. But it was bringing about a total change in the way that Christian Jews would see Gentiles. It was doing nothing less than opening the Gentile world to the possibility of their becoming Christians without being circumcised and having to observe all the ritual regulations of the Jews.
For centuries the Jews had seen themselves as separated from the Gentiles by the question of religious ‘cleanness' and ‘uncleanness'. On the whole Jews were ‘clean' and Gentiles ‘unclean' by virtue of the nature of their lives. This was because of the regulations that all orthodox Jews followed, some to a greater extent than others. This covered such things as washings, types of food eaten, contact with dead things, partaking of blood, contact with skin diseases, contact with those who were ‘unclean', and so on. That is why when Gentiles sought to become Jewish proselytes, and to become ‘members of the congregation of Israel', and so able to enter the Court of Israel in the Temple and partake in the Passover, they had to initially ritualistically bathe themselves fully in order to remove the ‘uncleanness' of the Gentile world, and be circumcised. After that they could be treated as full Jews.
‘God-fearers', on the other hand, were people who worshipped the God of Israel as the one God, and respected the Old Testament and the moral teaching of the Jews, but were not willing to be circumcised. Nevertheless any of these who wished to mix and eat with Jews would certainly be required to observe the basic laws of ‘cleanliness'.
These laws are in part described in Leviticus 11-14, and include the necessity of avoidance for food purposes of ‘unclean' animals, such as pigs, conies and camels, (any which did not both ‘cleave the foot and chew vigorously'), together with the avoidance of certain types of bird and fish, and of all creeping things, and included the necessity of avoiding the eating of blood, and of killing animals in such a way as to avoid this. And especially important was the avoidance of contact with what was dead or had had contact with death.
These were good laws which to some extent prevented them from eating things that could have done them harm, but, more importantly, they originally inculcated in them a taste for what was wholesome (see our commentary on Leviticus 11), and ensured a wholesome environment. It should be noted that the laws themselves were originally given in order to promote positive wholesomeness of life. It was only once Israelites began to live among other peoples that they necessarily resulted in a certain level of separateness and discrimination against them. And as so often with such things certain very religious people began to take them to extremes, and as a result even began to discriminate against fellow-Jews.
But as Jesus demonstrated, it was possible to observe these laws of cleanliness without discriminating against people to such an extent as to have nothing to do with them. No Pharisee ever criticised Jesus for failing to keep high Scriptural standards of ‘cleanliness', and yet He still moved freely among tax collectors and ‘sinners' (Mark 2:15-17; Luke 5:27-32). He lived a disciplined life.
It was in order that Gentile Christians might be able to eat with Jewish Christians that the meeting of Apostles and elders at Jerusalem would later enjoin on Gentile Christians, even at that stage, the need to avoid ‘what is strangled, and blood' (Acts 15:20). But those were the minimum limits which it was felt must essentially be applied even after the willing acceptance of Gentiles into the body of Christ, when prejudices had to some extent been broken down. This was partly as a result of what is about to be described. Even at that stage close contact with Gentiles as a whole was seen as not possible for a Christian Jew without careful regulation.
But at this stage in the life of the church things were not even as liberal as that. The general thought during the first Chapter s of Acts would be that if a Gentile wished to be accepted into the ‘community of Christians' (something which rarely came up at that stage when the preaching was to Jews), it must be by becoming a proselyte, by an initial bathing to remove attaching ‘uncleanness', followed by circumcision, for they would be seen as becoming members of the new Israel. They would then, of course, be expected to keep the laws of cleanliness in their lives and within their residences, in other words behave as Jews did as regards the laws of uncleanness. In this way no doubt a Gentile might be allowed to become a Christian.
But the thought of wholesale acceptance of Gentiles without following these conditions would have been anathema. Gentiles were of necessity ‘unclean', for they made no attempt to avoid ‘uncleanness', their lifestyles and homes were ‘unclean', especially because they ate what was ‘unclean' and allowed what had been involved with death into their homes, they were careless about contact with dead things, they partook of blood, and all in all it was necessary to keep them at a safe distance. (While we may criticise this we do well to remember that hygiene in Jewish homes was unquestionably superior to that in most Gentile homes).
We can thus imagine what Peter's reaction would have been (and the reaction of all Jews who heard of it) if without any warning he had been invited into the home of a Gentile centurion, even a God-fearer. God-fearers remained on the fringe of synagogue life. They believed in the one God, admired the moral laws of Israel, and observed the Sabbath. Their contributions to the synagogue were gratefully accepted, and they were welcome to participate to some extent in synagogue worship, but they were in no way looked on as Jews. In order for that to happen they had to become proselytes, which would include circumcision. So even for Peter to visit such a God-fearer in their home would have been frowned on in normal circumstances.
Of course, he had been used to meeting such people when they had joined the crowds in order to hear Jesus, and where they had been welcomed by Him, but that was a very different situation from this. While many would go away believing in Jesus and seeking to follow His teaching they did not join any form of identifiable ‘community'. He also knew that Jesus had responded to the Syro-Phoenician woman, and to the former demoniac in Decapolis, and we can compare also Jesus contact with the Greeks brought to him by Philip the Apostle in John 12:20-26. But in none of these cases had there been the suggestion of too close a personal contact or of entering into their homes or of them becoming part of a ‘community'.
To Peter had been given the keys (the method of opening the door) of the Kingly Rule of God. In Acts 2 he had therefore opened that door to Jews at Pentecost, and he had constantly opened that door since, as had all the Apostles, together with, among others, Stephen, Philip and Saul. Now he was to take a step further and open it to God-fearers (who would in future prove for some time to be the most fruitful people to evangelise).
It was inevitable that at some stage this challenge as to what to do with God-fearers would come up, and that fairly rapidly, so that we should not be surprised to find reference to it here. In fact we might rather be surprised that the issue had not arisen for Peter earlier. They were already to a certain extent accepted within Judaism, and the Jewish church would therefore inevitably have to consider what they were to do about them once they showed an interest in Jesus as their Messiah. Indeed how the Christians would face up to them would certainly have to be decided as soon as Christian preachers went to mixed territory, as Peter was doing here. Peter could hardly have preached in the synagogues here, in a mixed Jewish-Gentile community without the question arising, ‘can we God-fearers be baptised?' Perhaps even as this all happened he had been challenged on the matter and was puzzling about it in his own mind. But it is certainly no surprise that he would be faced up with the question. Luke is actually not dealing here with the question as to whether any believing God-fearers had already become one with Christ. That was between them and God. He is concerned with the question of what Peter did when he was faced up with the question (as at some stage he had to be) of whether he should enter their homes, and whether they could be baptised and accepted into the community of Christians without become proselytes, together with its consequences for the future.