| Cornelius
By Charles H. Welch
The vision that Peter had of the great sheet, and his subsequent visit to
Cornelius, form part of the movement that we see taking place in Acts 8 to 11,
which prepares the way for the work of Paul, the apostle to the Gentiles. It
will be found that there is nothing in Acts 10 to warrant the idea that Peter
had a ministry among the Gentiles, for the vision of the sheet and the visit to
Cornelius were exceptional. They accomplished their purpose, and Peter was left
free to pursue his ministry among the circumcision.
The subject before us falls into four parts:
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THE VISION OF CORNELIUS (Acts 10:1-9).
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THE VISION OF PETER (Acts 10:9-24).
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THE MINISTRY OF PETER (Acts 10:24-48).
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THE EFFECT UPON THE CHURCH (Acts 11:1-18).
Cornelius is described as:
‘A devout man, and one that feared God with all his house, which gave much
alms to the people, and prayed to God always’ (Acts 10:2).
Paul’s converts are described variously as:
‘Ye know that ye were Gentiles, carried away unto
these dumb idols, even as ye were led’ (1 Cor. 12:2).
‘When ye knew not God, ye did service unto them which
by nature are no gods’ (Gal. 4:8).
‘At that time ye were without Christ, being aliens
from the commonwealth of Israel, and strangers from the covenants of promise,
having no hope, and without God in the world’ (Eph. 2:12).
Yet it is abundantly clear from Acts 10 that had he not had the vision of the
sheet Peter would have called the devout, prayerful Cornelius ‘common and
unclean’. How is this attitude possible if it is true that the Church began at
Pentecost? The dispersion of the Jew throughout the Roman world had of necessity
influenced Gentile thought, and there were accordingly some who, though
uncircumcised and outside the Hebrew pale, were nevertheless worshippers of the
true God. Lydia, a woman of Thyatira, is said to be one who ‘worshipped God’ and
is found at the place of prayer (Acts 16:14). At Thessalonica there was ‘a great
multitude of devout Greeks’ (Acts 17:4), at Athens Paul disputed with devout
persons (Acts 17:17); and at Corinth Paul found a refuge in the house of one
named Justus who ‘worshipped God’ (Acts 18:7). It was to this class that
Cornelius belonged, for if he had been a proselyte he would not have been looked
upon by the Jew as ‘common and unclean’. This conclusion is further strengthened
by Peter’s confession:
‘Of a truth I perceive that God is no respecter of
persons: but in every nation he that feareth Him, and worketh righteousness,
is accepted with Him’ (Acts 10:34,35).
We must now turn our attention to the vision given to Peter, which produced
so great a revolution.
Joppa! Did Peter ever think of Jonah? Was not Peter’s name ‘Simon bar Jonah’?
Did not Jonah remonstrate with God because of His mercy to Gentiles? Were the
problems of the expanding gospel forcing themselves upon Peter? We are not told,
but we believe that he would have been neither human nor an apostle, if such
were not the burden of his thought.
Falling into a trance upon the housetop he saw a vessel descending from
heaven, and containing four-footed beasts, reptiles of the earth, and fowls of
the air, and a voice said to him: ‘Rise, Peter, slay and eat’. It is hardly
possible for any Gentile to enter into the thoughts that would fill the mind of
a Jew, whether Christian or otherwise, who received such a command. We can,
however acquaint ourselves with the law that governed this matter of clean and
unclean animals and see what is written:
‘These are the beasts which ye shall eat among all the beasts that are on
the earth. Whatsoever parteth the hoof, and is clovenfooted, and cheweth the
cud, among the beasts, that shall ye eat’ (Lev. 11:2,3).
Then follows the long list of prohibited animals, with the recurring
sentiment:
‘They are unclean to you’ (Lev. 11:8).
‘Ye shall have their carcases in abomination’ (Lev.
11:11,20,23).
Not only so, but
‘These are unclean to you among all that creep:
whosoever doth touch them, when they be dead, shall be unclean until the even’
(Lev. 11:31).
All this prohibition is because Israel were a separated people:
‘For I am the LORD your God: ye shall
therefore sanctify yourselves, and ye shall be holy; for I am holy ... This is
the law of the beasts, and of the fowl, and of every living creature that
moveth in the waters, and of every creature that creepeth upon the earth:
TO MAKE A DIFFERENCE between the unclean and the clean, and between the
beast that may be eaten and the beast that may not be eaten’ (Lev. 11:44-47).
This instruction to ‘make a difference’ is reiterated in the corresponding
section of Leviticus, namely, chapter 20.
‘I have said unto you, Ye shall inherit their land,
and I will give it unto you to possess it, a land that floweth with milk and
honey: I am the LORD your God, which have SEPARATED YOU from
other people. Ye shall therefore PUT DIFFERENCE between clean beasts
and unclean ... which I have SEPARATED from you as unclean. And ye
shall be holy unto Me: for I the LORD am holy, and have severed you
from other people, that ye should be Mine’
(Lev. 20:24-26).
It was in this atmosphere that the Jew was born, lived, moved and had his
being. Practically from cradle to grave, from morning till night, waking or
sleeping, marrying or giving in marriage, buying or selling, he was continually
reminded that all the Gentiles were unclean, and that his own nation alone was
holy unto the Lord. This separation to the Lord was seriously enforced upon his
conscience by the scrupulous observances of the Levitical law. The bearing of
all this upon the words and attitude of Peter in Acts 10 is most evident by the
following references:
‘Not so, Lord; for I have never eaten any thing
that is common or unclean’ (Acts
10:14).
‘What God hath cleansed, that call not thou
common’ (Acts 10:15).
‘Ye know how that it is an unlawful thing for a
man that is a Jew to keep company, or come unto one of another nation; but God
hath shewed me that I should not call any man
common or unclean’ (Acts 10:28).
Here are the words of Peter himself. If we accept the chronology of the A.V.,
this incident occurred eight years after
Pentecost, and Peter is still by his own confession, ‘A man that is a
Jew’. He, at least, did not believe that ‘the Church began at Pentecost’. Not
only was he still a Jew, though a believer, but he was still under the Law. ‘It
is an unlawful thing’, said he. How then can we tolerate the tradition that the
Church began at Pentecost? He told Cornelius to his face that he would have
treated him as ‘common and unclean’, for all his piety and prayers, had he not
received the extraordinary vision of the great sheet. Yet at Pentecost.
‘All that believed were together, and had ALL
THINGS COMMON’ (Acts 2:44).
When taken with Acts 10 this is absolute proof that
no Gentile could have been there. Yet the
tradition that the Church began at Pentecost
persists!
Peter moreover makes manifest his state of mind by adding: ‘Therefore came I
unto you without gainsaying, as soon as I
was sent for’ (Acts 10:29). Can we imagine the apostle Paul speaking like this
even to the most abject of pagans? No, the two ministries of these two apostles
are poles apart. Further, Peter continued: ‘I ask therefore
for what intent ye have sent for me?’
(Acts 10:29). Can we believe our eyes? Do we read aright? Is this the man who
opened the Church to the Gentile on equal footing with the Jewish believer? He
asks in all simplicity, ‘What is your object in sending for me?’ Again, we are
conscious that such words from the lips of Paul would be not only impossible but
ridiculous. He was ‘debtor’ to wise and unwise, to Jew and Gentile, to Barbarian
and to Greek. Not so Peter. He was the apostle of the Circumcision (Gal. 2:8),
and therefore the call of Cornelius seemed to him inexplicable.
‘For what intent have ye sent for me?’-
Can we imagine a missionary in China, India or anywhere else on the broad earth,
asking such a question, or asking this question in similar circumstances? Any
Mission Board would request such a missionary to resign his post, and rightly
so. No! every item in this tenth chapter is eloquent of the fact that Peter had
no commission to the Gentiles.
At last Peter ‘began to speak’ (Acts 11:15). Let us listen to the message he
gives to this Gentile audience:
‘Of a truth I perceive that God is no respecter of persons (first
admission): but in every nation he that feareth Him, and worketh
righteousness, is accepted with Him (second admission). The word which
God sent unto the children of Israel
(note, not as Paul in Acts 13:26), preaching peace by Jesus Christ: (He is
Lord of all:) (third admission) ... published throughout all Jud -a ... in the
land of the Jews, and in Jerusalem ... preach unto the
people (i.e. the people of Israel) ...
whosoever believeth in Him shall receive remission of sins’ (Acts 10:34-43).
One cannot but be struck with the attitude of Peter. He does not preach
directly to the Gentile audience, he rehearses in their hearing the word which
God sent to Israel, saying nothing of a
purely gospel character until the very end.
But for the further intervention of God we cannot tell how long Peter would
have continued in this way. It is doubtful whether he would have got so far as
inviting Cornelius and his fellows to be baptized, as his own words indicate:
‘Can any man forbid water, that
these should not be baptized, which have
received the Holy Ghost as well as we?’ (Acts 10:47).
Peter’s ministry in the Acts concluded with the words ‘Forbidding’ and
‘Withstand’ both translations of the Greek word
koluo. Paul’s ministry concludes with the words ‘No man forbidding’ (Acts
28:31) where the Greek word is akolutos.
Peter maintained this attitude up to the tenth chapter of the Acts, he would
have ‘forbidden’ both Cornelius and God, for the word ‘withstand’ in Acts 11:17,
is koluo.
The upshot of this work at Caesarea was that even Peter was called upon to
give an account of himself.
‘The apostles and brethren that were in Jud -a heard that the Gentiles had
also received the word of God. And when Peter was come up to Jerusalem, they
that were of the circumcision contended with him, saying, Thou wentest in to
men uncircumcised, and didst eat with them’
(Acts 11:1).
We find no remonstrance from Peter to the effect that seeing that the Church
began at Pentecost, the conversion of Cornelius should have been anticipated and
be a matter for rejoicing. No, Peter patiently, and humbly, and apologizingly,
rehearsed the matter, even to the pathetic conclusion: ‘What was I, that I could
withstand God?’ (Acts 11:17). Why should
Peter ever think of withstanding God, if he knew that the Church began at
Pentecost? It is abundantly evident that neither Peter, the other apostles, nor
the brethren at Jerusalem had the remotest idea of any such thing.
‘When they heard these things, they held their peace, and glorified God,
saying, THEN HATH GOD ALSO to the Gentiles
granted repentance unto life’ (Acts 11:18).
We have devoted this much space to the story of Cornelius, because we believe
that when once the attitude of Peter here is realized, it will be utterly
impossible to still retain the traditional view that ‘The Church’ began at
Pentecost.
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