Acts 10:34

And Peter opened his mouth, and said, Of a truth I perceive that God is no respecter of persons: but in every nation he that feareth him, and worketh righteousness, is acceptable to him.

PETER'S ADDRESS

Peter opened his mouth ... This is the same expression found at the beginning of the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5:1), where it is related that "Jesus opened his mouth, etc." This indicates formal preparation and the deliberate presentation of significant truth. Bruce said that such an expression "is used to introduce some weighty utterance."[20] Peter's first sentence swept away the racial prejudice of centuries.

The first sweeping declaration that God's salvation was available to people of "every nation" was perhaps the only thing in Peter's sermon that was any different from the sermons he had been preaching throughout Palestine for years prior to the events here; and, as might have been expected, the sermon following this epic opening remark took the form which "the message" always took in Peter's preaching. That oral message, reduced here to writing by the evangelist Luke, had been available for years prior to the conversion of Cornelius, and was available throughout Peter's lifetime. There would have been no problem whatever in Luke's procurement of a "verbatim" record of that formalized apostolic sermon. He might have procured it either from Peter or from Paul, or from any one of a thousand Christians throughout the world of that period, all of whom had long ago committed the last syllable of it to memory.

That period, prior to the New Testament writings, in which the gospel was orally proclaimed, was, in the historical sense, so brief as to be negligible. To refer to Peter's speech recorded here as "traditional" is ridiculous; and, although the form of Peter's presentation of the message had probably jelled into something of a pattern, it was, nevertheless, Peter's eye-witness account of experiences and information in which he had participated personally. As Paul noted, "the greater part (of those witnesses and participants) remain until now" (1 Corinthians 15:6). If one wishes to know what the [@kerygma] really was, let him read the New Testament; it is the [@kerygma]!

Before passing to a consideration of the rest of Peter's speech, an event, the chronology of which is given in the next chapter, should be noticed:

And as I began to speak, the Holy Spirit fell on them, even as on us at the beginning (Acts 11:14).

Acts 10:44, says that "While Peter yet spake these words, the Holy Spirit fell on all them that heard the word."

While Peter yet spake ... does not contradict Peter's own statement that the Holy Spirit fell upon them as he "began to speak." Thus the truth appears that it was at the beginning of Peter's message when the Holy Spirit fell upon that company, thus disconnecting the event from the message of salvation that Peter delivered. The importance of this distinction will appear later.