Acts 10:1-33

III. GENTILE INDUCTION NEW CHRISTIAN CENTRE ANTIOCH, Acts 10:1 to Acts 11:30.

1. Cornelius’ Vision and Mission to Peter, Acts 10:1-33 .

Luke now unfolds a new and positive advance in the secession of Christianity from Judaism. (See notes on Acts 4:1; Acts 6:8; Acts 6:13.) The martyrdom of Stephen had sealed the certainty of such a separation, and now head of the movement must be the leading Apostle Peter, under angelic guidance, at the Gentile capital, Cesarea. This was a vital question not for Judaism only, but for even us in this nineteenth century, and in this land of America: Must we be circumcised Jews in order to be Christians? So believed the first Jerusalem Church; so, at first, Peter held; and from this yoke it was Paul, the apostle of us Gentiles, preeminently, who was our emancipator!

That Gentiles should be admitted into the Church was clear; they could be admitted even into the Jewish Church. (See note on Acts 3:26.) The Old Testament predicted that Christ, the Messiah, should be a light to the Gentiles, a salvation to the ends of the earth. Jesus commanded his apostles to Go teach all nations, that is, go disciple all Gentiles. This the apostles well understood. But this they could not understand, that the Mosaic ritual, circumcision and all, should, as the Church expanded to universality, fall off, like a dry, outgrown shell, from its back. Of this great truth the Hellenists caught the first glimpse, Stephen the first clear view, and Paul embraced the great conception as the one idea of his life. The Epistle to the Romans is his written and forever permanent expression of this great truth.