Peter opened his mouth and said, “Truly I perceive that God doesn’t show favoritism; but in every nation he who fears him and works righteousness is acceptable to him. The word which he sent to the children of Israel, preaching good news of peace by Jesus Christ—he is Lord of all— you yourselves know what happened, which was proclaimed throughout all Judea, beginning from Galilee, after the baptism which John preached; even Jesus of Nazareth, how God anointed him with the Holy Spirit and with power, who went about doing good and healing all who were oppressed by the devil, for God was with him. We are witnesses of everything he did both in the country of the Jews, and in Jerusalem; whom they also killed, hanging him on a tree. God raised him up the third day, and gave him to be revealed, not to all the people, but to witnesses who were chosen before by God, to us, who ate and drank with him after he rose from the dead. He commanded us to preach to the people and to testify that this is he who is appointed by God as the Judge of the living and the dead. All the prophets testify about him, that through his name everyone who believes in him will receive remission of sins.”
While Peter was still speaking these words, the Holy Spirit fell on all those who heard the word. They of the circumcision who believed were amazed, as many as came with Peter, because the gift of the Holy Spirit was also poured out on the Gentiles.
John Calvin 1540 · Public Domain On vv34, 35, 36, 37, 38, 39, 41, 42, 43, 44, 45 34. Opening his mouth. We have already said, that…
34. Opening his mouth. We have already said, that the Scripture useth this phrase when it doth signify that there was any grave or weighty oration or speech made. In the fifth of Matthew, (Matthew 5:1,) it is said that Jesus opened his mouth when he would preach to his disciples, and intreat of most weighty matters, as if a man should say in Latin, he began to speak, having first well bethought himself what he would speak.
In truth I find. Καταλαμβανεσθαι is to apprehend, or to gather by reasons, signs, and conjectures. Cornelius was a Gentile born, yet God heareth his prayers; he vouchsafeth to show him the light of the gospel; he appointed and sendeth an angel to him particularly; thereby doth Peter know that, without respect of persons, those do please God which live godly and innocently. For before, (being wholly possessed with this prejudice, that the Jews alone were beloved of God, as they alone were chosen out of all people,) [nations,] he did not think that the grace of God could come unto others. He was not, indeed, so gross that he thought that godliness and innocency of life were condemned because they were in a man that was a Gentile; but, seeing he did simply snatch at that, that all those were estranged from the kingdom of God, and were profane, which were uncircumcised, he entangleth himself unawares in that so filthy an error, that God did despise his pure worship and an holy life, where there was no circumcision; because uncircumcision made all virtues unsavory to the Jews. By which example, we are taught how greatly we ought to beware of prejudices, which make us oftentimes judge amiss.
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Furthermore, we must note what the word person doth signify, because many are thereby deceived, whilst that they expound it generally, that one man is preferred before another. So Pelagius denied in times past that some are chosen and some are [re]proved of God; because God did not accept persons. But by this word we must understand the external state or appearance, as they call it; and whatsoever is about man himself, which doth either bring him in favor, or cause him to be hated; riches, nobility, multitude of servants, honor, do make a man to be in great favor; poverty, baseness of lineage, and such like things, make him to be despised. In this respect, the Lord doth oftentimes forbid the accepting of persons, because men cannot judge aright so often as external respects do lead them away from the matter. In this place, it is referred unto the nation; and the meaning is, that circumcision is no let, but that God may allow righteousness in a man that is a Gentile. But it shall seem by this means that God did respect persons for a time. For, when as he did choose the Jews to be his people, passing over the Gentiles, did he not respect persons? I answer, that the cause of this difference ought not to be sought in the persons of men, but it doth wholly depend upon the hidden counsel of God. For, in that he rather adopted Abraham, that with him he might make his covenant, than the Egyptians, he did not this being moved with any external respect, but (all) the whole cause remained in his wonderful counsel. Therefore, God was never tied to persons.
Notwithstanding, the doubt is not as yet dissolved, because it cannot be denied but that circumcision did please God, so that he counted him one of his people who had that token of sanctification. But we may easily answer this also that circumcision followed after the grace of God, forasmuch as it was a seal thereof. Whereupon it followeth that it was no cause thereof. Nevertheless, it was unto the Jews a pledge of free adoption; in such sort, that uncircumcision did not hinder God, but that he might admit what Gentiles he would unto the society of the same salvation. But the coming of Christ had this new and especial thing, that after that the wall of separation was pulled down, (Ephesians. 2:14,) God did embrace the whole world generally. And this do the words in every nation import. For so long as Abraham’s seed was the holy inheritance of God, the Gentiles might seem to be quite banished from his kingdom; but when Christ was given to be a light of the Gentiles, the covenant of eternal life began to be common to all alike.
John Calvin's Commentaries (1540-1563) — public domain. Text from the Calvin Translation Society English edition (1840s-50s) via the Christian Classics Ethereal Library (ccel.org). Calvin's coverage is partial (roughly two-thirds of the Bible); uncommented books and verses are honest gaps, never fabricated. The 19th-century editor's footnotes and remarks are omitted so the notes are faithfully Calvin's own voice.
Geneva Bible translators 1599 · Public Domain On vv34, 35, 36, 37, 38, 41, 44 Distinction of nations is taken away by the coming…
Distinction of nations is taken away by the coming of Christ: And it is evidently seen by faith and righteousness, who is agreeable to him, or whom he accepteth.
That God judgeth not after the outward appearance.
Geneva Bible (1599) marginal notes — public domain.
John Trapp 1656 · Public Domain On vv34–45 34 Then Peter opened his mouth, and said, Of…
34 Then Peter opened his mouth, and said, Of a truth I perceive that God is no respecter of persons:
Ver. 34. No respecter of persons] That is, of their outward state and condition, as country, sex, wealth, wisdom, &c. Outward things neither help nor hurt, please nor displease God, but as they are in a good or bad man; as a cipher by itself is nothing, but a figure being set before it, it increaseth the sum.
John Trapp, A Commentary or Exposition upon All the Books of the Old and New Testament (1647–1656) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Matthew Poole 1685 · Public Domain On vv34–45 Opened his mouth; an expression used (as formerly) in…
Opened his mouth; an expression used (as formerly) in matters of great moment, as Mat 5:2.
God is no respecter of persons; God does not accept of one because he is a Jew, and respect another because he is a Gentile; though St. Paul, being prejudiced by his education, had been carried along with that error of the Jews; against which, notwithstanding, God had declared himself even unto them, Deu 10:17, which is also confirmed unto us in the New Testament, Rom 2:11; 1Pe 1:17; so that our being of any nation or any condition, rich or poor, honoured or despised, on the one side recommends us not unto God, and on the other side it will not hinder us from being accepted with the Lord.
Matthew Poole's English Annotations on the Holy Bible (1683–1685) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
William Burkitt 1703 · Public Domain On vv34, 36, 44 As if the apostle had said, "I now very…
As if the apostle had said, "I now very plainly perceive, that the partion wall is broken down, and that national prerogatives, or personal excellencies, find no acceptance with God: But that any man, be he of what nation or family soever, if he feareth God, and worketh righteousness, shall find acceptance with him."
Observe here, 1. That no external qualifications, personal privleges and prerogatives, will procure favour and acceptance with God, who neither receives nor rejects men barely for outward respects; I perceive that God is no respecter of persons.
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Observe, 2. The true character of a religious man: he is one that feareth God and worketh righteousness; that is, a strict observer of the duties of both tables, of piety towards God, and of justice and charity toward man; and the phrase of working righteousness, implies diligence, and delight, and perserverance in the ways and works of righteousness.
Observe, 3. The privilege of such a religious and truly righteous man: He is accepted with God.
Thence learn, That both the person fearing God, and his works of righteousness are accepted with him, of any nation under heaven, of any calling, sex or condition whatsoever; In every nation, he that feareth him, and worketh righteousness is accepted with him.
William Burkitt's Expository Notes on the New Testament (1700–1703) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Matthew Henry 1710 · Public Domain On vv34, 44 We have here Peter's sermon preached to Cornelius and…
We have here Peter's sermon preached to Cornelius and his friends: that is, an abstract or summary of it; for we have reason to think that he did with many other words testify and exhort to this purport. It is intimated that he expressed himself with a great deal of solemnity and gravity, but with freedom and copiousness, in that phrase, he opened his mouth, and spoke, Act 10:34. O ye Corinthians, our mouth is open to you, saith Paul, Co2 6:11. "You shall find us communicative, if we but find you inquisitive." Hitherto the mouths of the apostles had been shut to the uncircumcised Gentiles, they had nothing to say to them; but now God gave unto them, as he did to Ezekiel, the opening of the mouth. This excellent sermon of Peter's is admirably suited to the circumstances of those to whom he preached it; for it was a new sermon.
I. Because they were Gentiles to whom he preached. He shows that, notwithstanding this, they were interested in the gospel of Christ, which he had to preach, and entitled to the benefit of it, upon an equal footing with the Jews. It was necessary that this should be cleared, or else with what comfort could either he preach or they hear? He therefore lays down this as an undoubted principle, that God is no respecter of persons; doth not know favour in judgment, as the Hebrew phrase is; which magistrates are forbidden to do (Deu 1:17; Deu 16:19; Pro 24:23), and are blamed for doing, Psa 82:2. And it is often said of God that he doth not respect persons, Deu 10:17; Ch2 19:7; Job 34:19; Rom 2:11; Col 3:25; Pe1 1:17. He doth not give judgment in favour of a man for the sake of any external advantage foreign to the merits of the cause. God never perverts judgment upon personal regards and considerations, nor countenances a wicked man in a wicked thing for the sake of his beauty, or stature, his country, parentage, relations, wealth, or honour in the world. God, as a benefactor, gives favours arbitrarily and by sovereignty (Deu 7:7, Deu 7:8; Deu 9:5, Deu 9:6; Mat 20:10); but he does not, as a judge, so give sentence; but in every nation, and under ever denomination, he that fears God and works righteousness is accepted of him, Act 10:35. The case is plainly thus -
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1. God never did, nor ever will, justify and save a wicked Jew that lived and died impenitent, though he was of the seed of Abraham, and a Hebrew of the Hebrews, and had all the honour and advantages that attended circumcision. He does and will render indignation and wrath, tribulation and anguish, upon every soul of man that doeth evil; and of the Jew first, whose privileges and professions, instead of screening him from the judgment of God, will but aggravate his guilt and condemnation. See Rom 2:3, Rom 2:8, Rom 2:9, Rom 2:17. Though God has favoured the Jews, above other nations, with the dignities of visible church-membership, yet he will not therefore accept of any particular persons of that dignity, if they allow themselves in immoralities contradictory to their profession; and particularly in persecution, which was now, more than any other, the national sin of the Jews.
2. He never did, nor ever will, reject or refuse an honest Gentile, who, though he has not the privileges and advantages that the Jews have, yet, like Cornelius, fears God, and worships him, and works righteousness, that is, is just and charitable towards all men, who lives up to the light he has, both in a sincere devotion and in a regular conversation. Whatever nation he is of, though ever so far remote from kindred to the seed of Abraham, though ever so despicable, nay, though in ever so ill a name, that shall be no prejudice to him. God judges of men by their hearts, not by their country or parentage; and, wherever he finds an upright man, he will be found an upright God, Psa 18:25. Observe, Fearing God, and working righteousness, must go together; for, as righteousness towards men is a branch of true religion, so religion towards God is a branch of universal righteousness. Godliness and honesty must go together, and neither will excuse for the want of the other. But, where these are predominant, no doubt is to be made of acceptance with God. Not that any man, since the fall, can obtain the favour of God otherwise than through the mediation of Jesus Christ, and by the grace of God in him; but those that have not the knowledge of him, and therefore cannot have an explicit regard to him, may yet receive grace from God for his sake, to fear God and to work righteousness; and wherever God gives grace to do so, as he did to Cornelius, he will, through Christ, accept the work of his own hands. Now, (1.) This was always a truth, before Peter perceived it, that God respecteth no man's person; it was the fixed rule of judgment from the beginning: If thou doest well, shalt thou not be accepted? And, if not well, sin, and the punishment of it, lie at the door, Gen 4:7. God will not ask in the great day what country men were of, but what they were, what they did, and how they stood affected towards him and towards their neighbours; and, if men's personal characters received neither advantage nor disadvantage from the great difference that existed between Jews and Gentiles, much less from any less difference of sentiments and practices that may happen to be among Christians themselves, as those about meats and days, Rom. 14. It is certain the kingdom of God is not meat and drink, but righteousness, and peace, and joy in the Holy Ghost; and he that in these things serveth Christ is accepted of God, and ought to be approved of men; for dare we reject those whom God doth not? (2.) Yet now it was made more clear than it had been; this great truth had been darkened by the covenant of peculiarity made with Israel, and the badges of distinction put upon them; the ceremonial law was a wall of partition between them and other nations; it is true that in it God favoured that nation (Rom 3:1, Rom 3:2; Rom 9:4), and thence particular persons among them were ready to infer that they were sure of God's acceptance, though they lived as they listed, and that no Gentile could possibly be accepted of God. God had said a great deal by the prophets to prevent and rectify this mistake, but now at length he doth it effectually, by abolishing the covenant of peculiarity, repealing the ceremonial law, and so setting the matter at large, and placing both Jew and Gentile upon the same level before God; and Peter is here made to perceive it, by comparing the vision which he had with that which Cornelius had. Now in Christ Jesus, it is plain, neither circumcision availeth any thing, nor uncircumcision, Gal 5:6; Col 3:11.
II. Because they were Gentiles inhabiting a place within the confines of the land of Israel, he refers them to what they themselves could not but know concerning the life and doctrine, the preaching and miracles, the death and sufferings of our Lord Jesus: for these were things the report of which spread into every corner of the nation, Act 10:37, etc. It facilitates the work of ministers, when they deal with such as have some knowledge of the things of God, to which they may appeal, and on which they may build.
1. They knew in general, the word, that is, the gospel, which God sent to the children of Israel: That word, I say, you know, Act 10:37. Though the Gentiles were not admitted to hear it (Christ and his disciples were not sent but to the lost sheep of the house of Israel), yet they could not but hear of it: it was all the talk both of city and country. We are often told in the gospels how the fame of Christ went into all parts of Canaan, when he was on earth, as afterwards the fame of his gospel went into all parts of the world, Rom 10:18. That word, that divine word, that word of power and grace, you know. (1.) What the purport of this word was. God by it published the glad tidings of peace by Jesus Christ, so it should be read - euangelizomenos eirēnēn. It is God himself that proclaims peace, who justly might have proclaimed war. He lets the world of mankind know that he is willing to be at peace with them through Jesus Christ; in him he was reconciling the world to himself. (2.) To whom it was sent - to the children of Israel, in the first place. The prime offer is made to them; this all their neighbours heard of, and were ready to envy them those advantages of the gospel, more than they ever envied them those of their law. Then said they among the heathen, The Lord hath done great things for them, Psa 126:2.
2. They knew the several matters of fact relating to this word of the gospel sent to Israel. (1.) They knew the baptism of repentance which John preached by way of introduction to it, and in which the gospel first began, Mar 1:1. They knew what an extraordinary man John was, and what a direct tendency his preaching had to prepare the way of the Lord. They knew what great flocking there was to his baptism, what an interest he had, and what he did. (2.) They knew that immediately after John's baptism the gospel of Christ, that word of peace, was published throughout all Judea, and that it took its rise from Galilee. The twelve apostles, and seventy disciples, and our Master himself, published these glad tidings in all parts of the land; so that we may suppose there was not a town or village in all the land of Canaan but had had the gospel preached in it. (3.) They knew that Jesus of Nazareth, when he was here upon earth, went about doing good. They knew what a benefactor he was to that nation, both to the souls and the bodies of men; how he made it his business to do good to all, and never did hurt to any. He was not idle, but still doing; not selfish, but doing good; did not confine himself to one place, nor wait till people came to him to seek his help, but went to them, went about from place to place, and wherever he came he was doing good. Hereby he showed that he was sent of God, who is good and does good; and does good because he is good: and who hereby left not himself without witness to the world, in that he did good, Act 14:17. And in this he hath set us an example of indefatigable industry in serving God and our generation; for we came into the world that we might do all the good we can in it; and therein, like Christ, we must always abide and abound. (4.) They knew more particularly that he healed all that were oppressed of the devil, and helped them from under his oppressing power. By this it appeared not only that he was sent of God, as it was a kindness to men, but that he was sent to destroy the works of the devil; for thus he obtained many a victory over him. (5.) They knew that the Jews put him to death; they slew him by hanging him on a tree. When Peter preached to the Jews, he said whom you slew; but now that he preached to the Gentiles it is whom they slew; they, to whom he had done and designed so much good. All this they knew; but lest they should think it was only a report, and was magnified, as reports usually are, more than the truth, Peter, for himself and the rest of the apostles, attested it (Act 10:39): We are witnesses, eye-witnesses, of all things which he did; and ear-witnesses of the doctrine which he preached, both in the land of the Jews and in Jerusalem, in city and country.
3. They did know, or might know, by all this, that he had a commission from heaven to preach and act as he did. This he still harps upon in his discourse, and takes all occasions to hint it to them. Let them know, (1.) That this Jesus is Lord of all; it comes in in a parenthesis, but is the principal proposition intended to be proved, that Jesus Christ, by whom peace is made between God and man, is Lord of all; not only as God over all blessed for evermore, but as Mediator, all power both in heaven and on earth is put into his hand, and all judgment committed to him. He is Lord of angels; they are all his humble servants. He is Lord of the powers of darkness, for he hath triumphed over them. He is king of nations, has a power over all flesh. He is king of saints, all the children of God are his scholars, his subjects, his soldiers. (2.) That God anointed him with the Holy Ghost and with power; he was both authorized and enabled to do what he did by a divine anointing, whence he was called Christ - the Messiah, the anointed One. The Holy Ghost descended upon him at his baptism, and he was full of power both in preaching and working miracles, which was the seal of a divine mission. (3.) That God was with him, Act 10:38. His works were wrought in God. God not only sent him, but was present with him all along, owned him, stood by him, and carried him on in all his services and sufferings. Note, Those whom God anoints he will accompany; he will himself be with those to whom he has given his Spirit.
III. Because they had had no more certain information concerning this Jesus, Peter declares to them his resurrection from the dead, and the proofs of it, that they might not think that when he was slain there was an end of him. Probably, they had heard at Cesarea some talk of his having risen from the dead; but the talk of it was soon silenced by that vile suggestion of the Jews, that his disciples came by night and stole him away. And therefore Peter insists upon this as the main support of that word which preacheth peace by Jesus Christ. 1. The power by which he arose is incontestably divine (Act 10:40): Him God raised up the third day, which not only disproved all the calumnies and accusations he was laid under by men, but effectually proved God's acceptance of the satisfaction he made for the sin of man by the blood of his cross. He did not break prison, but had a legal discharge. God raised him up. 2. The proofs of his resurrection were incontestably clear; for God showed him openly. He gave him to be made manifest - edōken auton emphanē genesthaî to be visible, evidently so; so he appears, as that it appears beyond contradiction to be him, and not another. It was such a showing of him as amounted to a demonstration of the truth of his resurrection. He showed him not publicly indeed (it was not open in this sense), but evidently; not to all the people, who had been the witnesses of his death. By resisting all the evidences he had given them of his divine mission in his miracles, they had forfeited the favour of being eye-witnesses of this great proof of it. Those who immediately forged and promoted that lie of his being stolen away were justly given up to strong delusions to believe it, and not suffered to be undeceived by his being shown to all the people; and so much the greater shall be the blessedness of those who have not seen, and yet have believed - Nec ille se in vulgus edixit, ne impii errore, liberarentur; ut et fides non praemio mediocri destinato difficultate constaret - He showed not himself to the people at large, lest the impious among them should have been forthwith loosed from their error, and that faith, the reward of which is so ample, might be exercised with a degree of difficulty. - Tertul. Apol. cap. 11. But, though all the people did not see him, a sufficient number saw him to attest the truth of his resurrection. The testator's declaring his last will and testament needs not to be before all the people; it is enough that it be done before a competent number of credible witnesses; so the resurrection of Christ was proved before sufficient witnesses. (1.) They were not so by chance, but they were chosen before of God to be witnesses of it, and, in order to this, had their education under the Lord Jesus, and intimate converse with him, that, having known him so intimately before, they might the better be assured it was he. (2.) They had not a sudden and transient view of him, but a great deal of free conversation with him: They did eat and drink with him after he rose from the dead. This implies that they saw him eat and drink, witness their dining with him at the sea of Tiberias, and the two disciples supping with him at Emmaus; and this proved that he had a true and real body. But this was not all; they saw him without any terror or consternation, which might have rendered them incompetent witnesses, for they saw him so frequently, and he conversed with them so familiarly, that they did eat and drink with him. It is brought as a proof of the clear view which the nobles of Israel had of the glory of God (Exo 24:11), that they saw God, and did eat and drink.
IV. He concludes with an inference from all this, that therefore that which they all ought to do was to believe in this Jesus: he was sent to tell Cornelius what he must do, and it is this; his praying and his giving alms were very well, but one thing he lacked, he must believe in Christ. Observe,
1. Why he must believe in him. Faith has reference to a testimony, and the Christian faith is built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, it is built upon the testimony given by them. (1.) By the apostles. Peter as foreman speaks for the rest, that God commanded them, and gave them in charge, to preach to the people, and to testify concerning Christ; so that their testimony was not only credible, but authentic, and what we may venture upon. Their testimony is God's testimony; and they are his witnesses to the world. They do not only say it as matter of news, but testify it as matter of record, by which men must be judged. (2.) By the prophets of the Old Testament, whose testimony beforehand, not only concerning his sufferings, but concerning the design and intention of them, very much corroborates the apostles' testimony concerning them (Act 10:43): To him give all the prophets witness. We have reason to think that Cornelius and his friends were no strangers to the writings of the prophets. Out of the mouth of these two clouds of witnesses, so exactly agreeing, this word is established.
2. What they must believe concerning him. (1.) That we are all accountable to Christ as our Judge; this the apostles were commanded to testify to the world, that this Jesus is ordained of God to be the Judge of the quick and dead, Act 10:42. He is empowered to prescribe the terms of salvation, that rule by which we must be judged, to give laws both to quick and dead, both to Jew and Gentile; and he is appointed to determine the everlasting condition of all the children of men at the great day, of those that shall be found alive and of those that shall be raised from the dead. He hath assured us of this, in that he hath raised him from the dead (Act 17:31), so that it is the great concern of every one of us, in the belief of this, to seek his favour, and to make him our friend. (2.) That if we believe in him we shall all be justified by him as our righteousness, Act 10:43. The prophets, when they spoke of the death of Christ, did witness this, that through his name, for his sake, and upon the account of his merit, whosoever believeth in him, Jew or Gentile, shall receive remission of sins. This is the great thing we need, without which we are undone, and which the convinced conscience is most inquisitive after, which the carnal Jews promised themselves from their ceremonial sacrifices and purifications, yea, and the heathen too from their atonements, but all in vain; it is to be had only through the name of Christ, and only by those that believe in his name; and those that do so may be assured of it; their sins shall be pardoned, and there shall be no condemnation to them. And the remission of sins lays a foundation for all other favours and blessings, by taking that out of the way which hinders them. If sin be pardoned, all is well, and shall end everlastingly well.
Matthew Henry's Commentary on the Whole Bible (1708–1710) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.
John Gill 1763 · Public Domain On vv34–45 Then Peter opened his mouth,.... See Gill on Act…
Then Peter opened his mouth,.... See Gill on Act 8:35.
And said, of a truth I perceive that God is no respecter of persons; which is to be understood, not of the substances of men, but of the outward state and condition, circumstances and qualities of men; he respects the proper persons of men themselves, but not because of their outward appearances; he does not prefer or despise men, because of their being of this or the other nation, as Jews or Gentiles; or because they are circumcised, or not circumcised; or because they are high or low, rich or poor, free or bound, or the like: the true sense here is, that God valued no man the more, because he was a Jew and circumcised, nor anyone the less, because he was a Gentile and uncircumcised; and this the apostle found to be a most certain truth, of which he was fully persuaded; partly by the vision which he himself saw, and partly by that which Cornelius had, and which the more confirmed him in this matter: these words do not at all militate against the doctrines of personal election and reprobation; and indeed, those acts in God, are not according to the outward state and condition of men, or any circumstances that attend them, or any qualities they have, internal or external; but entirely proceed from the sovereign will of God; See Gill on Rom 2:11
John Gill's Exposition of the Whole Bible (1746–1763) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.
John Wesley 1765 · Public Domain On vv34, 35, 36, 37, 38, 41, 42, 43, 44, 45 I perceive of a truth - More clearly than…
I perceive of a truth - More clearly than ever, from such a concurrence of circumstances. That God is not a respecter of persons - Is not partial in his love. The words mean, in a particular sense, that he does not confine his love to one nation; in a general, that he is loving to every man, and willeth all men should be saved.
John Wesley, Explanatory Notes Upon the Whole Bible (1754–1765) — public domain. Text via the GEBible commentary corpus.
Adam Clarke 1810 · Public Domain On vv34–45 Verse 34. God is no respecter of persons] He…
Verse 34. God is no respecter of persons] He does God esteem a Jew, because he is a Jew; nor does he detest a Gentile because he is a Gentile. It was a long and deeply rooted opinion among the Jews, that God never would extend his favour to the Gentiles; and that the descendants of Jacob only should enjoy his peculiar favour and benediction. Of this opinion was St. Peter, previously to the heavenly vision mentioned in this chapter. He was now convinced that God was no respecter of persons; that as all must stand before his judgment seat, to be judged according to the deeds done in the body, so no one nation, or people, or individual, could expect to find a more favourable decision than another who was precisely in the same moral state; for the phrase, respect of persons, is used in reference to unjust decisions in a court of justice, where, through favour, or interest, or bribe, a culprit is acquitted, and a righteous or innocent person condemned. See Le 19:15; De 1:16-17; De 16:19. And as there is no iniquity (decisions contrary to equity) with God, so he could not shut out the pious prayers, sincere fasting, and benevolent alms-giving of Cornelius; because the very spring whence they proceeded was his own grace and mercy. Therefore he could not receive even a Jew into his favour (in preference to such a person) who had either abused his grace, or made a less godly use of it than this Gentile had done.
Adam Clarke's Commentary on the Bible (1810–1826) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
Joseph Benson 1811 · Public Domain On vv34, 36, 39, 43, 44 Act 10:34-35. Then Peter opened his mouth — Addressed…
Act 10:34-35. Then Peter opened his mouth — Addressed himself to them, with a seriousness and solemnity answerable to so great an occasion; and said, Of a truth I perceive — More clearly than ever, from such a concurrence of circumstances; that God is no respecter of persons — Is not partial in his love. The words mean, 1st, That he does not confine his love to one nation; as the Jews were ready to suppose that he confined it to their nation. 2d, That he is loving to every man, and willeth that all men should be saved; but in every nation he that feareth God, and worketh righteousness — He that, 1st, Reverences God as infinitely great, glorious, wise, mighty, holy, just, and good; the cause, end, proprietor, and governor of all things: and, 2d, From this awful regard to him, not only avoids all known evil, but endeavours, according to the best light he has, to do all things well; is accepted of him — Through Christ, though he knows him not. The assertion is express, and admits of no exception. He is in the favour of God, whether enjoying his written word and ordinances or not. Nevertheless, the addition of these is an unspeakable blessing to those who were before in some measure accepted. Otherwise, God would never have sent an angel from heaven to direct Cornelius to Peter. See note on Act 10:6.
Joseph Benson's Commentary on the Old and New Testaments (1811–1818) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Albert Barnes 1834 · Public Domain On vv34–45 Then Peter opened his mouth - Began to speak,…
Then Peter opened his mouth - Began to speak, Mat 5:2.
Of a truth - Truly, evidently. That is, I have evidence here that God is no respecter of persons.
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Is no respecter of persons - The word used here denotes “the act of showing favor to one on account of rank, family, wealth, or partiality arising from any cause.” It is explained in Jam 2:1-4. A judge is a respecter of persons when he favors one of the parties on account of private friendship, or because he is a man of rank, influence, or power, or because he belongs to the same political party, etc. The Jews supposed that they were especially favored by God. and that salvation was not extended to other nations, and that the fact of being a Jew entitled them to this favor. Peter here says that he had learned the error of this doctrine, and that a man is not to be accepted because he is a Jew, nor to be excluded because he is a Gentile. The barrier is broken down; the offer is made to all; God will save all on the same principle; not by external privileges or rank, but according to their character.
The same doctrine is elsewhere explicitly stated in the New Testament, Rom 2:11; Eph 6:9; Col 3:25. It may be observed here that this does not refer to the doctrine of divine sovereignty or election. It simply affirms that God will not save a man because he is a Jew, or because he is rich, or learned, or of elevated rank, or on account of external privileges; nor will he exclude a man because he is destitute of these privileges. But this does not affirm that he will not make a difference in their character, and then treat them according to their character, nor that he will not pardon whom he pleases. That is a different question. The interpretation of this passage should be limited strictly to the case in hand - to mean that God will not accept and save a man on account of external national rank and privileges. That he will not make a difference on other grounds is not affirmed here, nor anywhere in the Bible. Compare 1Co 4:7; Rom 12:6. It is worthy of remark further, that the most strenuous advocate for the doctrines of sovereignty and election - the apostle Paul - is also the one that labored most to establish the doctrine that God is no respecter of persons - that is, that there is no difference between the Jews and Gentiles in regard to the way of salvation; that God would not save a man because he was a Jew, nor destroy a man because he was a Gentile. Yet in regard to “the whole race viewed as lying on a level,” he maintained that God has a right to exercise the prerogatives of a sovereign, and to have mercy on whom he will have mercy. The doctrine may be thus stated:
(1) The barrier between the Jews and Gentiles was broken down.
(2) All people thus were placed on a level none to be saved by external privileges, none to be lost by the lack of them.
(3) All were guilty Rom. 1–3, and none had a claim on God.
(4) If any were saved, it would be by God showing mercy on such of this common mass as he chose. See Rom 3:22; Rom 10:12; Rom 2:11; Gal 2:6; compare with Rom. 9; and Eph. 1:
Albert Barnes' Notes on the Bible (1834–1885) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
Haydock's Catholic Bible Commentary 1859 · Public Domain On vv35, 36, 37, 39, 40, 42, 44 In every nation, &c. That is to say, not…
In every nation, &c. That is to say, not only Jews, but Gentiles also, of what nation soever, are acceptable to God, if they fear him, and work justice. But then true faith is always to be presupposed, without which, (saith St. Paul, Hebrews xi. 6.) it is impossible to please God. Beware then of the error of those, who would infer from this passage, that men of all religions may be pleasing to God. For since none but the true religion can be from God, all other religions must be from the father of lies; and therefore highly displeasing to the God of truth. (Challoner) --- He that feareth him, and worketh justice. So he call the prayers, alms-deeds, and charitable works of this Gentile Cornelius. (Witham)
George Leo Haydock (1774–1849), Haydock's Catholic Family Bible and Commentary, 1859 edition — public domain. Excludes Psalms (Douay-Rheims chapter numbering differs from Protestant) and Deuterocanonical books (Catholic canon only).
Robert Jamieson, A. R. Fausset & David Brown 1871 · Public Domain On vv34, 35, 36, 37, 38, 39, 40, 43, 44, 45 Peter opened his mouth--(See on Mat 5:2).
Peter opened his mouth--(See on Mat 5:2).
Of a truth I perceive--that is, "I have it now demonstrated before mine eyes."
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that God is no respecter of persons--Not, "I see there is no capricious favoritism with God," for Peter would never imagine such a thing; but (as the next clause shows), "I see that God has respect only to personal character and state in the acceptance of men, national and ecclesiastical distinctions being of no account."
Jamieson, Fausset & Brown — Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible (1871) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.
Daniel D. Whedon 1874 · Public Domain On vv34, 35, 36, 37, 38, 39, 41, 42, 43, 44, 45 2. Uncircumcised Converts receive the Holy Ghost and Baptism,…
2. Uncircumcised Converts receive the Holy Ghost and Baptism, Act_10:34-48.
34. I perceive—What had always been true; though through Jewish prejudice he had never before realized it. He had believed that no one who never beard of Judaism could be saved; just as many believe now that no one who never heard of Christianity can be saved.
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No respecter of persons—A true judge applies the law without regard to whom it severely cuts. He regards the principle irrespective of the person. Wherever a responsible man exists, the temper of heart is, or has been, in his power, so that he might obtain grace if he would. So that in whatever age, land, or dispensation the man exists, God, without respect of persons, gives him his fair opportunity for salvation.
Daniel D. Whedon (gen. ed.), Commentary on the Old and New Testaments (1874–1909) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges 1878 · Public Domain On vv34, 35, 36, 37, 38, 39, 40, 41, 42, 43, 45 34–43. Speech of Peter to Cornelius and his friends
34–43. Speech of Peter to Cornelius and his friends
34. Of a truth I perceive that God is no respecter of persons] i.e. I am now fully convinced, from what I have heard of God’s angel appearing to Cornelius and from the connection of that vision with my own, that God is making Himself known to all the workers of righteousness whether they be Jews or Gentiles.
The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges (gen. ed. J. J. S. Perowne; Cambridge University Press, 1878–1918) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Ellicott's Commentary for English Readers 1878 · Public Domain On vv34–45 (34) Of a truth I perceive that God is…
(34) Of a truth I perceive that God is no respecter of persons.—In regard to all distinctions of social rank, or wealth, or knowledge, Peter had seen in his Master that absence of “respect of persons” which even His enemies acknowledged (Mat_22:16; Luk_20:21). St. James lays stress on that element of character, within the same limits, as essential to all who seek to be true disciples of the Christ (Jas_2:1-7). Both, however, needed to be taught that the same law of an impartial equity had a yet wider application, that the privileges and prerogatives of Israel, whatever blessings they might confer, were not to be set up as a barrier against the admission of other races to an equal fellowship in Christ. God had accepted the centurion. It remained for His servants to accept him also. It is instructive to note that St. Paul reproduces the same thought in nearly the same phrase (Rom_2:11).
A Bible Commentary for English Readers, edited by Charles John Ellicott (1878–1897) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Pulpit Commentary 1880 · Public Domain On vv34–45 And for then, A.V.
And for then, A.V.
Vers. 34-48. The great surprise.
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How seldom do things turn out as we expect! What frequent proofs we have that God"s thoughts are not as our thoughts, nor his ways as our ways! And yet we are always making iron cages in which we think to confine the operations of God"s Spirit, as well as the thoughts of men, and are surprised when either God or men refused to be confined within their bars. The pride of caste is perhaps that which, more than any other one cause, tends to mislead our judgment and to narrow our conceptions. The Jews thought that all God"s grace and favor was reserved for themselves alone. The Pharisees thought that true holiness was confined within the still narrower circle of their own sect. The Romanist conceives of salvation as tied within the four corners of the Church of Rome. Each narrow sect thinks of itself as being exclusively the people of God. Even various parties in the Church can hardly think of grace being found in any party not their own. The great truth that burst upon Peter"s mind, that God is no respecter of persons, is one which we are all very slow to admit. Peter and his companions learnt it with astonishment when the Holy Ghost fell upon the mixed multitude in the house of Cornelius. They were, perhaps, half surprised at their own liberality in sitting in the same room with the uncircumcised soldiers of the Italian cohort, when lo! all difference between them was swept away in an instant, and, to the utter amazement of the condescending Jews, those Gentiles spake with tongues and magnified God. They had received the very same gift of the Holy Ghost which the Jewish disciples had received on the day of Pentecost. They were on an equal footing with them. The middle wall of partition was fallen to the ground. There was not any longer Jew and Gentile, bond and free they were all one in Christ. "One body, and one Spirit, even as they were called in one hope of their calling; one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all, who was over all, and through all, and in all." It was a great surprise, but it was a great and new discovery of the hidden mind of God, a blessed manifestation of the width of that saving grace which embraces all who believe those glorious truths which Peter opened his mouth to declare to the assembled company.
Vers. 34-43. Discourse of Peter at Caesarea.
I THE EQUAL JUSTICE AND LOVE OF GOD. He is no respecter of persons. The conditions of acceptance in his sight are everywhere and for all men the same, viz. reverence and rightness of moral conduct. Does this imply, it matters not what a man believes, so long as he fears God and does what is right? Certainly, belief is not immediately under the control of the will. But indirectly it so far is that we are bound to keep our minds open to the light, and to seek some belief that may guide conduct. The truth is that the reverence and the moral rectitude spoken of cannot exist apart from the root of faith in a supersensual order and Divine Law. Indifferentism is not recommended nor excused. But the truth that it is only the genuine qualities of the heart, the real disposition of the will, not external associations nor advantages of birth, which constitute true worth in God"s sight. And any other principle of Divine dealing than this would shock the conscience as unjust.
II RECAPULATION OF THE GOSPEL.
1. It was a good message of peace sent to the sons of Israel. He says nothing about natural religion and the universal conscience, on which St. Paul dwells in the Romans. The gospel is pre-eminently a message by man to man; by a selected people as ministered to the race. It was diffused through the Holy Land, and its substance was well known.
2. Its substance Jesus: his person, his sanctified character, and his mighty deeds. His life of perpetual beneficence, his healing of those under the bondage of disease and of ignorance. It was manifest to men that God was with him, setting the seal of power upon his character and deeds.
3. The existence of living witnesses to those truths. The apostles were witnesses of the facts in the physical world on which Christianity was founded. Christian teachers and Christian men now are witnesses of the facts in the moral world which are eternal, and which interpret the physical facts.
4. The death and resurrection of Jesus. The suffering and the triumph of love; here lies the very kernel of the gospel. This triumphant Christ has been made manifest to chosen witnesses to his close companions and intimate associates during his earthly life. And they have a commission to make proclamation of these truths to the people, and to testify that he is appointed Judge of the living and the dead. Finally, the gospel has the confirmation of prophecy; and all who believe on him may receive the remission of their sins. Here, then, is a useful summary of the gospel.
(1) Peace through Jesus Christ, who has lived, suffered, and risen for men.
(2) This is a message to all men, and a call to salvation.
(3) Its aim is universal human blessedness. J.
God is no respecter of persons.
A great truth exemplified in fact becomes like a new revelation. What Simon Peter perceived in the setting of real life he had often acknowledged before. It was the application that was requisite. Difference between holding a truth and being held by it.
I A CONDEMNATION OF SELF-RIGHTEOUSNESS. Not person, but his own Divine righteousness does he respect. The acceptance of the sinner is not a personal favor, but a manifestation of that which is perfect the righteousness of Christ. Ritualism supposes God capable of being turned aside from his perfect justice. The intolerance of bigotry. Class distinctions in the Church. Priestcraft.
II A CONDEMNATION OF UNBELIEF, in the form of distrust and despondency. Nothing acceptable in self-reproaches except as they are sincere and accompanied with active efforts to do his will.
III THE MOTTO OF THE CHRISTIAN AMBASSADOR, whether in carrying the message to the degraded classes of our own population or to the heathen. One gospel for rich and poor, cultivated and uncultivated.
IV THE NOTE OF THE TRUE CHURCH. That which will not recognize the universal brotherhood of men will not be the Church of the future. Coincidence of providential teaching with the teaching of the Bible. The world will acknowledge no form of Christianity which respects persons. The history of the last century showed that a false Christianity produces atheism. R.
Vers. 34, 35. Believers outside Judaism.
Several important and interesting cases, taken from the old Scripture histories, may serve to illustrate this conviction which now came to St. Peter, and found suggestive expression in our text. The point of his testimony is that the one living and true God of the whole earth has been and is graciously concerned in the religious life of the human race as a whole, apart from any special revelations which he may be pleased to make to any portions of the race. From the religious point of view, the "God of the whole earth must he be called.
I MELCHIZEDEK IN THE PATRIARCHAL PERIOD. We know very little about the religious condition of Palestine in the days of Abraham. Hastily we say that doubtless the Canaanite idolatries absolutely prevailed, for "the Canaanite was then in the land." But the figure of Melchizedek is, as it were, thrust into the Scripture narrative as if on purpose to correct such hastily formed notions. Abraham is clearly the elect of God, separated from his Chaldean surroundings in order to witness to the great truths of the Divine unity and spirituality. And yet, coming into the lard that was promised to his descendants, he finds believers in the Most High God, presided over by a king-priest, to whom Abraham feels that he must pay homage and give tithes. It has been well said that "when Abraham received the blessing of Melchizedek, and tendered to him his reverent homage, it is a likeness of the recognition which true historical faith will always humbly receive and gratefully render when it comes in contact with the older and everlasting instincts of that religion which the "Most High God, Possessor of heaven and earth," has implanted in nature and in the heart of man, in "the power of an endless life. So, in the very starting of Judaism, in the very lifetime of its founder and father, we find God directing our attention to real and acceptable religious life outside the Abrahamic election.
II BALAAM IN THE PERIOD OF THE JEWISH WANDERINGS. Without attempting to form a full judgment of Balaam"s religious standing, we must admit that he was a prophet of God, to whom God made communications; and whatever may have been his religion, it was certainly distinct from Judaism. "In his career is seen that recognition of Divine inspiration outside the Jewish people, which the narrowness of modern times has been so eager to deny, but which the Scriptures are always ready to acknowledge, and, by acknowledging, admit within the pale of the universal Church the higher spirits of every age and of every nation.
III JOB AT THE TIME OF THE NATIONAL CLIMAX There is little room for doubting that, whenever Job himself may have lived, the book bearing his name was written in the Solomonic age, and represents the religious sentiments of that time, And the book represents the man Job as good, perfect, upright, fearing God, and eschewing evil; but he is not a Jew, he is an Arab chief or the wealthy prince of some city in distant Uz; the very selection of such a hero for the story plainly showing belief in vital godliness outside the Jewish limits. Not a trace of Mosaic religion has been found in the book, and therefore it is evident that the writer accepts the fact that true and acceptable piety may exist apart from the Mosaic covenant.
IV NAAMAN AND NINEVEH IN THE TIME OF THE NATIONAL DECLINE. We place these two together, but they may be treated separately. Naaman is a Syrian, but God"s prophet makes no difficulty about recognizing the sincerity of his religion, and he requires of him no conformity to Jewish regulations. The Ninevites are penitent before the one living God, and their repentance is even set on record as an example to the willful Jews. So again and again did God, in the olden times, correct the exclusiveness of his people"s feeling, and force them to think of him as the God of the whole earth. And when our Lord Jesus came among men as the Divine teacher, we find him also correcting the same exclusive spirit by blessing Roman centurions, Samaritan villagers, and Syro-phoenician women; commanding that his gospel should be preached to the whole world; sending Paul "far hence unto the Gentiles;" calling Cornelius into the fellowship of the redeemed; saving the eunuch of an African queen; and moving Paul to witness for the universal redeeming love of God, in Athenian agora and before Roman tribunals. That the heathen had some religion God did not make a reason for withholding from them his fuller revelation; neither should we so argue. Our very sympathy with heathen souls groping for the light should increase our longing to give them what we have in our trust, the "light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ. R.T.
The Pulpit Commentary (1880–1919), ed. H.D.M. Spence-Jones & Joseph S. Exell — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Biblical Illustrator 1887 · Public Domain On vv34, 36, 38, 39, 44 Then Peter opened his mouth and said, Of a…
Act_10:34-35
Then Peter opened his mouth and said, Of a truth I perceive that God is no respecter of persons.
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God the rewarder of them that diligently seek Him
I. To show by what marks we shall know whether we ourselves, and others, are sincere in the fear of God.
1. The first mark of sincerity in the concerns of religion is having carefully endeavoured to find our duty. For if we take a matter of this importance upon trust, and leave custom and fashion to choose our opinions, we must confess that we are very fortunate if we are in the right. Interest and indolence are always on the side of giving in to popular systems. If loss of esteem and authority attend embracing any opinion, men examine timorously, and are afraid of evidence; and when reason begins to strike, then they ask themselves, Have any of the rulers of the people believed on Him? They creep and fix their sentiments upon others, and like the ivy, never ascend higher than that which chance has given them for a support. But the foundation of Protestantism and Christianity is another method of examination: we must throw aside the world and all the consequences that may attend it, and have our thoughts wholly on our duty. We must empty our minds of every favourite prepossession, and receive the kingdom of God like little children; have no opinion of our own, and no desire that either this or that doctrine or action should be true and our duty; but only that we may know what is truth and our duty. No person can pretend that he has not abilities, because all that is required is that they use the abilities they have. If with an honest and teachable heart they desire to do the will of God, His promise and His goodness are engaged that they shall know the truth in everything, on which their everlasting happiness depends. And if we find difficulties in performing this duty, and ourselves liable to mistakes, it ought to fill us with modesty and diligence, with mutual forbearance and charity, and then our very errors may be useful.
2. The second mark by which we may judge whether we are sincere is by working righteousness, and doing everything we know to be our duty. The end of faith is practice, and the only thing valuable in knowing our Masters will is that we may obey Him. We may therefore comfort ourselves with being sincere in our fear of the Lord, if we join a religious performance of the duties we know with our endeavouring to go on to perfection. And we religiously perform our duty if we are virtuous in secret, as well as in the eye of the world. We must perform the whole of our duty if we truly fear God, and not choose some darling folly to indulge in secret, and flatter ourselves that He hideth away His face and will not see it. We must throw aside at once all our vices, and caution most against that we are most willing to palliate and excuse, and be in every known instance obedient. It is true indeed that God has given us no commands but what is our interest and present happiness to obey; but if we perform them upon the low motives of convenience only, they are the actions of a man of prudence, but cease to be the offices of religion or Christian graces.
3. The third mark of sincerity in our fear of God is expressing our zeal for things in proportion to their real value.
4. Another mark by which we may manifest a sincere fear of God is our being charitable to those who differ from us in our sentiments.
5. The last mark I shall mention, by which we may know our sincerity in seeking for the will of God, is by the methods we use to convince others of the truth of what we ourselves embrace and believe
II. Which brings me in the second place to show why this virtue entitles us to the favour of God.
1. And first, it is all that we can possibly perform. The text tells us that God is no respecter of persons, and therefore He must have put it into every mans power to please Him: but He hath given them nothing besides their whole abilities, and therefore, if these are employed with honesty and fairness, God can expect no more. The knowledge which is sufficient to recommend a poor man, obliged to take care by his industry for the subsistence of his family, may be inexcusably little in those who are raised above such low solicitudes and enjoy leisure and improvement.
2. The second reason why this is so pleasing to God is because it will improve our natures. God who created man to communicate happiness to him, must be pleased to see him advance to all the perfection and felicity He gave him capacities to enjoy.
3. The last reason why this sincere fear of God, expressed by diligently inquiring after His will, is so pleasing to Him, is because it will always teach us those things which are most truly useful and worth knowing. This discourse may be thought liable to one objection, viz., that if sincerity is the only thing required to make us acceptable to God--and that may belong to men of every religion--therefore all religions are equal. But to answer this objection, which would have never been thought so much as plausible, had it not of late been so often, and with so much delight, repeated, if it be granted that men may support their lives by herbs and acorns, would it not be a strange conchasten to infer from thence that we esteem a country which produces that food only equal to one flowing with milk and honey? Yet the case is exactly the same and exposes the absurdity of the objection.
III. The conclusion I would draw from what I have said, suitable to the design of the day, is this, that thence we may learn to soften our conduct toward all well-disposed men that differ from us. (Thomas Rundle, LL. B.)
God no respecter of persons
Here we have one of the many strong contrasts between God and man.
I. Why God is no respecter of persons as man is. Because--
1. Mans estimate is of very limited compass as to the number of persons taken account of--Gods is universal. Men can take account of but very few persons for either respect or contempt. Look at the multitude of the inhabitants of a great city, or province, what a great majority of them we can have no individual estimate of at all! And then, think of a nation--and the whole world. There are, indeed, a few distinguished persons who have a character in the estimate of a great part of the civilised world, but what a diminutive number do these make! But God has His estimate of every person of the entire race.
2. The whole world of mere exteriors is as nothing to God. Man is the dupe and idolater of them all over the world. Nothing so mean or bad, but if a fine appearance can be thrown over it, it becomes as a god to him. But God estimates men in their intrinsic qualities. What an infinity of superficial shows part off from them under that inspection! What a different thing must man appear when all these are fled! And if men could be presented thus to one another, what would become of most of the human gods of human idolatry? The feebleness of our vision cannot do this entirely. But it is true, also, that we are far too willing to be imposed on by the delusive show of the world.
3. Men are respecters of persons from self-interest. They are looking up to certain men, and thinking what advantages they can confer. It were but trifling to show how the Divine Being can be under no such influence in His estimates.
4. Men respect persons because others do, without well knowing any other reason why. As a number of persons collected at a spectacle will quickly draw a multitude, so let an individual come to be accounted of importance by a portion of society, and the rest soon follows. God has no opinion in the universe to regard but His own. What is it to Him that one diminutive creature after another adds its slender intellect in affirmation of the judgment of a crowd? In every view, He is infinitely superior to the influence of all the causes by which men are made to be respecters of persons.
II. Contemplate this Divine superiority in reference to several of those things which command mens highest respect. We all see how men are affected towards persons of--
1. Great wealth. What deference--what attention to what is said--what prompt compliance! Suppose the impression a man not known to be rich makes shall be simply that of his apparent personal qualities--his dispositions--his sense--his manners. And suppose it then to become suddenly known that he is very rich, what a difference! A very considerable degree of misconduct or vice does not put the rich down in society. They can at once defy opinion, and be sure of obsequiousness. What a state of human sentiments is this in the sight of God! He is no respecter of persons.
2. High station in what is called birth, rank, and power. In former times (and in many parts it is so still) the multitude have regarded this class as actually being of some mysteriously higher order of human nature. Still there is quite enough respect to gratify their utmost pride--pompous titles of honour, a vast parade of state and ceremony. The ground is cleared for them, in society, wherever they appear; their mere will, or caprice, is considered as authority, without requiring a reason; the worship of God itself is deemed to be vastly honoured if they deign to pay it some formalities of attention. Every conceivable palliation is adduced, by force, in their behalf, to extenuate the grossness of sin; and pompous funeral celebrations are given them when they die. Now turn the thought to God. Think! If He had any partiality like this, what would become of His government? What would then have been His dispensations in Egypt, in Babylon, in Judaea? What would then be the condition of the oppressed, when they cry and appeal to Him? He looks on all these distinctions as the mere transitory accidents of the mortal condition. He requires the same self-abasement, and repentance, from all these loftier persons, as by the meanest--or they reject them at their peril. And His great messenger, Death, makes, as it were, melancholy sport of all these robes of grandeur.
3. Great mental endowment. And this is different from the others, in being a more intrinsic quality. And from that cause, and from its being less obvious to vulgar apprehension, it has nothing like so many idolaters. Nevertheless, it has always been an object of perverted regard. Every epithet appropriate to divinity has been applied. There are, at this hour, many enthusiastic admirers of human talent, who are despisers of God! In behalf of men of great talent there has been and is a disposition to suspend or abrogate the most essential laws of morality. And short of such an extreme, respect of persons may be excessive. There are persons who have no relish for truth, but as displayed in the style of genius or eloquence; as if the grave matter were nothing, and the decorations were all. There are some who habitually indulge contempt for all who are not distinguished by mental superiority, of whatever excellence otherwise. But think of Him! What is all this in His sight? The Being whose intellect pervades all things. What is the greatest human intellect compared with the least angelic spirit? What may even that spirit be, compared to the most elevated created mind? What is that--what are all minds together, as compared with the mind of God? (J. Foster.)
God no respecter of persons
Here we note--First, Peters acknowledgment of his former mistake, in which are three things.
1. The preface. Then Peter opened his mouth--a Hebraism indicating that he is about to speak something weighty on mature deliberation (Mat_5:2; Psa_8:2; Psa_78:2.)
2. The means of his conviction. Of a truth I perceive--a phrase used of those who are persuaded to change their opinion on full conviction.
3. The error that God was such a respecter of persons that He would not reveal Himself to any but Jews. Here we see--
(1) That Gods people may err. Peter had read the prophecies about the calling of the Gentiles, and had received Christs commission to disciple all nations. So we often hear the truth expounded and yet perceive it not. Therefore we had need to be careful lest we be ignorant of an obvious truth.
(2) That the godly, when convinced, confess their errors. Controversies would soon end if we could learn Peters modesty. Second. Peters positive assertion of the truth now learned.
I. What is respect of persons? Regard for that outward condition whereby one differs from another.
1. Gifts of the body. It is not the strong or the beautiful that are accepted of God, but the good and holy.
(1) He is strong in a spiritual sense, not that overcometh another man, but that tameth his own flesh (Pro_16:32) and vanquishes temptation (1Jn_2:14).
(2) So not beauty but grace makes us amiable in the sight of God (1Pe_3:3-4).
2. Gifts of mind. Learning, etc., may make us more serviceable in the world, but do not commend us to God (Gen_3:1; 1Co_3:18).
3. Gifts of estate, rank, quality. The blood of the poor is of the same colour as of the rich (Act_17:26). Social distinctions have no weight with God (1Co_1:26; Job_34:19; Rev_20:12). So with bond and free (1Co_7:22; Eph_6:9; Col_3:25).
4. Nationality. Some peoples lie nearer the sun than others, but they are all alike near the Sun of Righteousness (Gal_3:28).
5. Religious profession and privileges. Cornelius was a good man, but wanted circumcision, and was accepted, while many a carnal Jew was rejected (Rom_2:9-11). If by outward profession there be a people nearer God than others, they have the privilege to be first rewarded if they do good, but to be first punished if they do evil.
II. In what sense is this denied of God?
1. He is no respecter of persons in His government. This is forbidden to man (Lev_19:15); and so denied of God (1Pe_1:17). God may be considered as a righteous Governor and as a free Lord. In the latter capacity He may do as He seeth meet. Hence of His free mercy He called the Gentiles, and gives the grace of His gospel to one and not to another (Mat_20:15). We can plead no right either by merit or purchase. On the other hand God governs man by a law, and judges according to that law (Cf. Rom_9:16 and 1Co_9:24)
.
2. He is no respecter of persons in His gifts of grace (Mat_11:27).
III. What is the meaning of this qualification? That feareth God and worketh righteousness.
1. Fear is the principle of obedience. Not that this excludes faith in Christ (Joh_15:5; Heb_11:6; Hos_3:5).
(1) Holy fear is of two kinds.
(a) The fear of reverence, which is necessary that we may not offend God (Jer_10:7; Rev_15:4).
(b) The fear of caution, which is necessary to make us watchful against temptations (Heb_4:1; 2Co_10:12; 1Pe_5:8).
(2) Why is this frame of heart pitched upon?
(a) That we may carefully abstain from what displeases God (Gen_39:9; Php_2:12).
(b) Because it produces a diligent endeavour to approve ourselves to Him.
2. Working righteousness is the fruit of this sense of God upon our hearts. This is required--
(1) In respect of God that we may honour Him in the world: for our obedience makes our esteem of Him visible (2 Thessalonians 11, 12; Act_10:2).
(2) It is for our own comfort. When we obey God it leaves an evidence in our consciences (1Jn_3:19; 2Co_1:12; Pro_3:17). Comforts are the rewards of obedient children (Psa_11:6).
IV. The meaning of the privilege. Is accepted of Him. He that feareth God, etc.
1. Is sure of Gods favour and protection (Php_1:6).
2. God will increase this, for He delighteth to crown His own gifts (Pro_4:18; Pro_10:29).
3. God will perfect it and reward it (Psa_15:2; Psa_106:3). (T. Manton, D. D.)
God no respecter of persons
I. A point newly perceived. Now. That so great an apostle should confess this shows that his Roman chain was not yet made, and that his brother apostles (chap. 11) had no idea of his infallibility. Job in scorn said to some in his time, You are the only men, you perceive all; but Moses did not (Num_15:34), nor Elijah (2Ki_4:27). But Caiaphas perceived all (Joh_11:49); not so Peter here, and Paul (1Co_13:9). Of a truth we perceive Peter comes not near his successor, who perceives all that is to be perceived at once, and gets Caiaphas knowledge by sitting in Peters chair. But it is not only this they differ in. For Peter took Cornelius up (verse 26); his successor lets Corneliuss lord lie. The Samaritan woman said, The Messiah when He is come will tell us all. Yet when He came He said even to Peter, What thou knowest not now (Joh_13:7). I speak this for some who are far enough from Rome but think they perceive all Gods secret decrees. Luther well said that everyone has by nature a Pope within. Even they that believe it not of Rome are easily brought to believe it of themselves. Of a truth I perceive will bear two senses--I perceive that I did not before, or I perceive that the contrary whereof I conceived before. Not to perceive is only to be ignorant, but Peter had held quite contrary. Ignorance is but privative, this positive, and so an error--an error in the great mystery of godliness (1Ti_3:16), a part whereof was preached to the Gentiles. And this error he held in common with his brethren. This only we are to look to, that with Peter we be not wilful, but ready to repent, when shown our error. Then we may conclude that if we be otherwise minded God will show it unto us (Php_3:15).
II. What that point is.
1. Privative--that God is no respecter of persons--i.e., in Greek and Hebrew faces which show themselves first (1Sa_16:6). Under the face we understand the facing; under the person everything that personates and makes personable--country, condition, birth, riches, etc. Men respect all this, but it is nothing to God. Was Peter, then, ignorant of this? No, for Moses had said it (Deu_10:17), and Elihu saw it by the light of nature (Job_34:19). And so Samuel (1Sa_16:7) and Jehoshaphat (2Ch_19:7). The answer is that Peter knew it before, but not as now. We know many things by book and speculation, which, when we come to an experience of it, we say, Yea, I know it indeed, as if we had never known it before. Experimental knowledge is knowledge in truth. Was this Peters knowledge? No; for he, as we, have experience of it daily. God deals His gifts of nature--outward: beauty, strength, etc.--inward: wit, memory, judgment--without respect of persons. He bestows them on the child of the mean as soon as of the mighty. So it is in wealth and worldly preferment (Psa_113:7), and in Gods judgments. And no man had better experience of it than Peter, who, a poor fisherman, was accepted to be an apostle (Gal_2:6). What shall we say then? Though he could not but know this general truth, yet he thought that there were exceptions, not of persons, but of nations, and that of all nations the Jews alone were accepted of God (Amo_3:2; Psa_147:20). This had run in Peters head, but he perceives he was wrong, and that by Cornelius vision compared with his own.
2. Positive. In every nation, etc. Solomon in effect said as much long before (Ecc_12:13).
(1) Feareth and worketh jointly. Not the one without the other--neither fear which works not, nor works which do not come from Gods fear in our hearts. Pharisaic personations, Pauls mask of godliness (2Ti_3:5), Peters cloke (1Pe_2:16) God cannot accept. God Himself told Samuel (1Sa_16:7) that He looks not as man looks. Man looks upon the outside, God looks within. The inwards were Gods part in every sacrifice. He looks first at the heart, and in the heart to the affections; of all affections that of fear; of all fears that of God. How comes God to be feared? We fear evil, but there is no evil in God. Ans.: Not for any evil in Him, but for some evil we may expect from Him, if we fear not to offend Him, by doing that which is evil, which punishment is not evil but just. Paul, knowing the terror of this, persuades men (2Co_5:11). This fear to suffer evil for sin makes men fear to do the evil of sin or to forsake it (Job_1:1; Jon_3:5).
(2) Separately.
(a) First, fear--because it is first; the beginning of wisdom (Psa_111:10). It was the first passion that was raised in Adam (Gen_3:10). Then he began to play the wise man and forethink of the folly he had committed. Fear is a bridle to hold us in or turn us from evil (Pro_3:7). Another reason is, fear is most general. It goes through all--heathens, as is shown in the case of Nineveh; beasts, as in the ease of Balaams ass. And this fear, if it have its full work to make us depart from evil, is wisdom complete (Job_28:28; Ecc_8:12); for of the seven spirits which are the divisions of one and the same Spirit, the last and chief is the Spirit of the fear of the Lord (Isa_11:2). Regard not them who say that this is no New Testament doctrine, for even there it abideth. There it is the dawning of the day (Mal_4:2). It is as the court is to the temple, as the needle that first enters and draws after it the thread that sews all together. Not to fear is the next way to fear. The work of fear is to make us cease from sin; ceasing from sin brings with it a good life; a good life carries with it a good conscience; and a good conscience casts out fear. This for the introduction, and ever after, when faith is entered it is a sovereign means to preserve (Php_2:12; 1Pe_1:17; Mat_10:28). So, then, this fear is not Moses song only (Rev_15:3-4).
(b) But works also. Is God all for within? Accepts He of nothing without? He accepts a good righteous work too if it proceed from His fear in the heart. God would have us begin with fear, but not end there. For neither fear alone nor faith alone is accepted of Him. If it be true fear such as God will accept, it is not a dull, lazy fear, his fear that went and digged his talent in the ground. God will have his talent turned above ground, and not have religion invisible within. And observe that it is not that doeth, but worketh righteousness, i.e., that makes it a trade. Learn it, says Isaiah (Isa_1:17), as one would learn a handicraft to live by; learn it and make an occupation of it, after Christs example (verse 38). This righteousness is described in verse 2.
III. Gods acceptation.
1. He will take them--
(1) Where they be to take; but where they are not He cannot take. Our alms, alas! are shrunk up pitifully; prayer swallowed up with hearing, and feasting substituted for fasting.
(2) But it is said that there is no faith here, without which it is impossible to please God. But would Cornelius have spent his words and chastened his body without some faith? Would he have called upon a God in whom he did not believe? (Rom_10:14). Nay, he must have believed that God is, that He may be sought, and that He will not fail them that seek Him (Psa_9:10; 2Co_8:12). The flax did but smoke, but Christ quenched it not, etc. He took him as He found him, and that in order to bring him nearer the ways of His salvation.
(3) But now, lest one error beget another, take this--that he was, and we shall be, accepted, gives us some heart; and that he was but accepted takes away all self-conceit. It is neither our fear nor our works, but Gods gracious acceptation. God counts them worthy and so makes them worthy. His taking our works of righteousness well in work is their worth. There was another centurion whom the elders of the Jews dignified highly; but he indignified himself as lowly (Luk_7:4-6). So with Job (1:8, 9:15, 10:15). See Eph_1:6. Our work is to get men to do well, but not to ween of their well-doing.
2. To what end accepted. The profession of religion by baptism. (Bp. Andrewes.)
God no respecter of persons
Oh, you say, I am such a little plant; I do not grow well; I do not put forth as much leafage, nor are there so many flowers on me, as many round about me. It is quite right that you should think little of yourself; perhaps to droop your head is part of your beauty. Many flowers had not been half so lovely if they had not practised the art of hanging their heads. But supposing Him to be the gardener, then He is as much a gardener to you as He is to the most lordly palm in the whole domain. In the Mentone garden grows the orange and the aloe, and others of the finer and more noticeable plants; but on the wall to my left grow common wall flowers and saxifrages and tiny herbs such as we find on our own rocky places. Now the gardener has cared for all of them, little as well as great. In fact, there were hundreds of specimens of the most insignificant growths all duly labelled and described. The smallest saxifage will say, He is my gardener just as surely as he is the gardener of the Gloire de Dijon or the Marechal Neil.
Prejudice
Prejudice is one of the greatest enemies to human welfare. Of all the train of mental ills with which we are affected it is one of the most difficult to be eradicated.
1. Prejudice has given protracted vitality to countless social abuses. One of the best remedies for this evil is to inspect closely the grounds of our cherished prepossessions, and to ask, Why do I do this? Why do I feel so?
2. The strongest prejudices are religious. What is given to us by tradition from our forefathers, familiarised to our earliest associations, we can hardly bring ourselves to question or examine, and we often hold as enemies those who differ from us even in minor points. As we generally feel more earnestly about religion, to our prejudices here we may trace all those religious feuds and bitter persecutions which have disgraced the page of history.
3. In the context we have a memorable instance of relinquishment of the strongest possible prejudice, so strong even in a good and noble man that direct Divine interposition was necessary for its removal. Notice--
I. Spiritual excellence, and not the accidents of external condition, alone avails with God. Take some illustrations confirmatory of this from--
1. The Scriptures: e.g., the choice of Abraham, Moses, etc.
2. The dispensations of Providence.
(1) Wealth and power are administered impartially.
(2) Health is equally shared by rich and poor.
(3) Genius: our poets, legislators, inventors, orators, and divines have more frequently emerged from the cottage than from the mansion.
(4) So with the blessings of happiness, life, and age. Death which spares not the hovel spares not the palace, just as the wind fades the cottage flowers as well as the productions of the conservatory.
3. The administration of the benefits of redemption. Not many mighty are called, yet there are some--Wilberforce and Bunyan. Only one door of mercy to all. Whosoever will, etc.
4. The day of judgment and its results. We shall all stand before, etc.
II. Why has God no respect of persons except in relation to moral goodness?
1. Accidents in condition seemingly great to us bear no such relation to Him. This world is like a grain in the balance of His mighty creation. Its revolving centuries are but as yesterday when it is past. He surveys all toils, plans, etc., serenely as the stars look with undisturbed light on mortal things.
2. They are not the essential elements of our being. They spring from birth, etc. They are not the man, and pass away with time.
III. Why does God supremely value spiritual excellence?
1. It is the true basis of worth in every intelligent creature. It is so of angels, and of man as man. In every nation, etc.
2. It is Gods own spiritual reflection, and therefore the true basis of friendship with Him. Gods moral nature must take cognizance of its kindred elements. Here, then, is consolation for all. None are too lowly or poor to be the accepted friends of the Lord of the universe. (J. Foster, B. A.)
On the reception of new truth
1. The main purpose of the Acts is to unfold the broadening spirit and form of the Church of God. It is a history of transition. On its first page the Christ ascends. As the heavens, into which He rises, overarch the whole world, so His gospel spreads its wings for its worldwide flight. Soon the Spirit breathes upon the apostles, and they begin to act under an inspiration as free and wide as the wind that typifies it. On every page some barrier gives way; with every line the horizon broadens. One feels as if sailing in a great ship, under a bounding breeze, out of a narrow harbour into the wide sea.
2. With this change of scene there is corresponding change of personal attitude; conversions not only in character, but in opinion; it is a record not only of repenting and turning, but of broadening. Valuable as this book is as a record of events, it is more valuable as introducing the life of the Spirit, and as showing how the faith of ages develops into liberty and the full life and thought of humanity.
3. The incident before us is a happy illustration of this in its assurance of possible sainthood outside of the Church, yet showing its hard conditions, telling us how the centurions devout aspirations carried him into the realm of vision, and brought upon him an inspiration greater than any that came upon his blind yearnings after righteousness. Here also is a somewhat similar experience of Peter. Sleep is not vacant of spiritual impression. Into that mystery the Spirit may come as unto its own, and say what it could not when the man is hedged about with wakeful and watchful powers. Shakespeare puts the deepest moral experiences of men into their dreams.
4. Notice how God not only enlarges and broadens the views of these men, but does this in the direction of Himself. For there is an enlargement of view that is mere breadth without height; it grows wise over matter and force, creeps but never soars, deeming the heights above to be empty. In preceding centuries the mind shot upward, but within narrow limits. There was no look abroad; nature was simply to be used as found, not studied for further uses. Hence, there was great familiarity with the lore of religion, but dense ignorance of the laws of matter and of human society. Today the reverse is true. It is interesting to note how this tendency pervades classes that apparently do not influence one another: thus the scientific class and the lighter literary class; neither reads the works of the other, yet in each we find the same study of matter and man, and the same ignoring of God and the spiritual nature. Or, compare the man of universal culture with the average man of the world, who reads the newspaper, and keeps his eyes open on the street: the latter knows little of the former, yet we find them holding nearly the same opinions about God and the faith, vague and indifferent; but both are very observant of what is about them. And all this is for some wise end. It had become necessary that man should have a better knowledge of the world, and of his relations to it and to society. Hence his attention is directed thither by a Divine and guiding inspiration, and no thinking man can be exempt from it. The only danger is lest the tendency become excessive, and we forget to look upward in our eagerness to see what is about us. It is the office of Christian thought to temper and restrain these monopolising tendencies and secure a proper balance between them. God fulfils Himself in many ways, lest one good custom should corrupt the world.
5. I have fallen into this train of thought by reflecting how God led Peter away from his small notions of religion, and brought him into a higher and larger conception of Himself. As we read the story we wonder at the readiness and ease with which Peter gave up old habits of thought and entered into new ones. What is the explanation?
I. It is in the nature of religious changes that they shall occur suddenly. There may be, there must be, long seasons of preparation, but the transition is instantaneous. Saul goes a-persecuting, and a light above the suns dazzles him into instant submission. The Holy Spirit comes like a rushing wind upon the disciples, and in an hour they are new men. The jailer hears and believes in a night. Luther, while toiling up the holy stairs, holding to salvation by works, drops that scheme on the way, and lays hold of the higher one of salvation by faith. Ignatius Loyola in a dream has sight of the Mother of Christ, and awakes a soldier of Jesus. It is often so. We do not so much grow into the possession of new spiritual truths as we awake to them. Their coming is not like the sunrise that slowly discloses the shapes and relations of things, but is like the lightning that illuminates earth and sky in one quick flash, and so imprints them forever on the vision. Character is of slow and steady growth, but the revelations of truth that inspire character are sudden. A new outlook is gained, and the man is changed, as, in climbing a mountain, it is some sharp turn in the path that reveals the new prospect which inspires the onward march. Some can affirm that it was in a moment that the charm of poetry, the pleasurable consciousness of thought, the passion of love, the dignity of manhood, the obligation of service, the sense of the Divine goodness, came upon them.
II. Peter got sight of larger and more spiritual truths than he had been holding. When what claim to be truths are of equal proportion, we balance them, or try one and then the other; but as soon as one asserts itself as larger and finer we accept it instantly. Peter had been used to believing that God was a respecter of persons, but when he caught sight of the fact that God has no partialities, his true-loving nature rushed at once toward the greater truth.
1. We have an appetence for new spiritual truth, and take to it readily. This does not imply that we are to go about peering into the corners of the universe to find new truths, nor that we are to sit down and manufacture them. Truth already exists; there is now all there ever will be. All we have to do is to take it; to hold ourselves open to it; to do Gods will, and we shall know it. The fundamental Christian idea is God seeking man, not man seeking God. We make but a poor figure when we attempt to think out a religion. It is not a search after God, but a revelation of God. We ourselves can find nothing. The main thing for us to do is to get out of the caves of sin and self-conceit into the open air, where the sun shines and the Spirit breathes.
2. There is also in such truth a self-attesting power that tends to secure instant reception. When one comes to me with a new machine, or a new theory of government, or of matter, or life, I hesitate; but when I see a new disclosure of the Divine love, or a fresh exhibition of humility and patience, or of some new adaptation of Christianity to human society, I at once believe. It is simply another candle brought into a lighted room.
3. This self-attesting quality goes farther and becomes commanding. Peter says, God hath showed me that I should not call any man common or unclean. It is one of the subtle workings of all high truth that it vests itself, as by some instinct, with the Divine attributes.
4. I have had in mind thus far not any new truths, but rather a fresh and expanding vision of other sides of many-sided truth. Strictly speaking, there is no such thing as new truth; but there is such a thing as fresh sight of the truth. We can hardly do anything worse for our moral growth than to hold it in such a way that it may not change its form. Not that one is to hold his faith as in a constant flux, or suffer himself to be blown about by every new wind of doctrine, but rather that he should attain the two-fold attitude of alertness and passivity: passive to the Spirit that is ever breathing upon us, and alert to note and follow the unfolding revelation of God in the world.
III. Having spoken generally, i shall now speak more particularly of some of these truths. To call attention to this intermingling of permanent and changing qualities.
1. Take that of the Trinity. It has another look today from that it wore a hundred years ago. It is the characteristic thought of God at present that He is immanent in all created things, yet personal, the life of all lives, the soul of the universe. With such a conception of God, it becomes easy to see how there should be a Son of man who is also the Son of God, and a Spirit everywhere present and acting--a paternal heart and will at the centre, a Sonship that stands for humanity, a spiritual Energy that is the life of men, and through which they come into freedom and righteousness. This conception of God may be brought into the category of science, and even be required by it.
2. So of the atonement: it has always been putting on new forms and yielding a richer life. It is the most elastic of the doctrines, and we are getting to understand it as containing the law and method of life for every man: He that loseth his life for My sake shall find it.
3. So also of regeneration. It has been held simply as a moral necessity, having its basis in sin; but we are beginning to see that Christ taught it also as a psychological necessity. We must be born again, not merely because we are wicked, but because we are flesh and need to be carried forward and lifted up into the realm of the spirit,--a constructive rather than a reconstructive process.
4. In the same way the doctrine of Divine sovereignty is resolving into the universality of law. Science, with its doctrine of an original, ultimate force, advances more than half way towards this assaulted truth.
5. Or take the doctrine of sin, its inheritance and its relation to the personal will. The doctrine of heredity as found in the pages of science, the doctrine of freedom as found in the pages of philosophy and the observation of life, yield nearly all we care to claim.
6. So, too, of the miracles. Modern intelligence has grown so wide that it embraces both law and miracle in one harmony. No one now defines one as the violation of the other. An assertion of the reign of law does not disturb us so long as we are conscious of the hourly miracles wrought by personality.
7. Take next retribution. It will never be denied so long as men have eyes to trace cause and effect. Just now we are finding out that it is not a matter of future time, but of all time; an eternally acting principle. The true preacher of retribution makes it clear that the wages of sin is death, and emphasises the two features of retribution that alone are effective, its nearness and its certainty.
8. Take the inspiration of the Bible. There is not now, and probably never will be, any generally accepted theory, simply because inspiration cannot be so compassed; as Christ said, Thou canst not tell whence it cometh and whither it goeth. It is the breathing of God upon the soul. We are getting to speak less of the inspired book, and more of the inspired men who wrote it. The revelation, therefore, will have a two-fold character: it will be Divine and human, the one conditioning the other; not an imperfection, but rather the only kind of revelation that could serve our needs, for the line of revelation from God to man must run through the human heart. But without a theory, we are reading the Bible with fuller faith than ever before. The more light we bring to it from nature and study and experience, the clearer its truths stand out; in such light it is becoming its own evidence, and no more needs an apologetic theory than a candle needs an argument for illumination.
IV. But a thoughtful mind will ask, how happens it that christianity has this two-fold feature of a permanent essence and a shifting form? The answer will take him into that world of thought recently opened, the main feature of which is the law of development. The timid may linger on the threshold, but once in, the atmosphere is found friendly. It is not something to be quelled, but an ally to be pressed into service. What it does for every other department of thought it may do for the faith--open another door between the mystery of the external order and the human reason. Recognising this principle, we can read the Old Testament, and need no other explanation or apology than it affords. The sayings of the Christ become principles and revelations of eternal truth. The mustard seed, the leaven, etc., not only fall in with the principle, but attest Christs absolute knowledge of it. It will be noticed that the reception of new truth has been spoken of in two ways that are apparently contradictory: one as quick and as by instant revelation; the other gradual, a growth or development. They are not inconsistent, but represent the two-fold nature of truth as having a Divine source and element and a human ground and element, and the two-fold nature of man as spirit and mind. These methods play into each other. One prepares the way for the other. One is slow, and keeps pace with the gradual advance of society and a like development of the individual. The other is quick, is allied to the mysterious action of the Spirit, which knows not time nor space, and accords with the loftiest action of our nature. I gain knowledge slowly; I gain the meaning of knowledge instantly. (T. T. Munger.)
The outside saints
When we assume the certain exclusion from God of all born subjects of false religions, is not Peters vision as truly for us as for him? The Old Testament denounces idolatry, it is true, but these denunciations were not made to the idolaters, but to Gods own people dwelling in a clearer light. So when we say, There is none other Name, etc., do we not fall into the mistake of not observing that it is those who have heard of the name of Christ, that are put under this ban, and not Pagan people who have never heard of Him? If in every nation he that feareth God, etc., is accepted of Him, how many may there be who never heard of Christ, to whom God is an unknown God, who yet are so far right with God as to be fitly joined with us in the common hope! They compose a Church beyond the Church who, without a gospel, have learned to walk in Gods private light. A glance at certain great first principles would induce the hope that many more than one commonly suspects are harvested for the kingdom.
(1) That God loves all men impartially, having the desire to be loved by all.
(2) That He is never afar off from any, but is putting in them a desire to seek and to find Him.
(3) That the Spirit of God is going through all minds, drawing their inclinings towards the inborn grace that will be in turn His finding of them. My present object is to show how God finds access to outsiders, and engages them in a felt devotion to His friendship, by an examination of Bible examples.
1. Take Enoch. There was no Scripture or Church in his day. He lived a solitary life of walking with God. He was probably derided by his contemporaries, which made it his necessary comfort to live in the testimony that he pleased God. And this was not audible, but was the witness of the Spirit who came in the door of nature set open wider by his faith till finally he became so leavened by the Divine affinities that he was translated.
2. Noah was a preacher of righteousness without a Bible, and there was no person out of his own family who had any care for religion. And the oracle that found him so verified itself as to put him on building the ark; for God, by a process which he could only trust, and not understand, was preparing him to be the father of a better age.
3. With Abraham the Church begins, and yet he is prepared by an outside training. He had no written revelation or organised religion. But he came out a profoundly religious character, from amidst idolaters, so that he could receive a life call at first hand, and take the necessary guidance in that call.
4. Moses was brought up as the son of Pharaohs daughter, separated from his race, and trained in all the learning of the Egyptians, a training which shows itself in all his politics. Then in Midian Jethro, an outside, but grandly religious man, comes to help him in his religious development. So Moses was a virtual outsider till his call in the burning bush.
5. Then take Balaam, the beauty and evangelical richness of whose oracles are inimitable. He was a soothsayer, but while divination had been forbidden to the Jews, it had not been forbidden to the Mesopotamians. And therefore it was only natural that he should mix enchantments with his oracles--just as our astrologers and alchemists sought religious light with mixtures of incantation. He was certainly faithful to his convictions, against the blandishments employed to win his consent.
6. Job is not a Jew, and his book not a Jewish book. Its piety is real, but out of all connection with Bible history. And thus you have one of its most remarkable books of Scripture, a theodicy for after ages, the work of an outsider.
7. Cyrusis one of the best characters of ancient history, and the reason of his conduct towards God and His people is given by Isaiah, who declares that God unseen has holden his right hand, and raised him up in righteousness.
8. At the very opening of the New Testament we encounter the Magi, religiously related to Cyrus, priests of the Merle-Persian religion, watching the stars to spell Gods oracle, and becoming so spiritualised in habit as to be not unfitly honoured by the guidance of a star to Christ.
9. The Syrophoenician woman, whose faith was so heartily commended, was Pagan born, but by some heavenly guidance went to Christ for help.
10. The case of the centurion was like that of Cornelius, about whom Christ says, I have not found so great faith, no, not in Israel. And He did not stop there, I say unto you, that many shall come from the east, etc.
11. I might turn off here to such as Numa, Marcus Aurelius, Plotinus, Plato, and Socrates, and look directly into the workings of the religious nature in many thoughtful men outside revelation, and see their notions of God, their expressed longings for a revelation, their gropings, and almost findings. Their yearnings sometimes put them in a state in which they lay hold of Christ at the very first discovery, even as a starving man of bread.
12. And if we go apart still further--among the savage tribes, we find many traditions that seem almost to have the sanctity of a revelation, and now and then a character assuming the distinctions of genuine piety. So we see that God has had His witnesses in every age of the world apart from His covenant and the institutions of His grace. From all this we may learn the following lessons:
I. We are not to judge that the mere possibility of a revelation outside the Bible supersedes the want of it. That was not the opinion of God when He sent His angel to Cornelius to put him in the way of one who should teach him Christ. The souls most enlightened have sighed for a veritable revelation. Having gleams, almost visions of God, they wanted it the more. Christ, the Bible not wanted! Just as well to be without a revelation! What could show the unsupportable destitution of such a state better than the gropings and only casual findings of hungry millions?
II. Let no one turn the blame upon God that what is so much wanted everywhere is not everywhere given. Doubtless God might rain Bibles, but He must also rain written languages, and the power to read them. And then the readers would want to know how the book grew to be a book, the revelation how revealed. If a Bible could be got up mechanically as showers in the sky it might justly be concluded that all men ought to have it. But it has first to be incarnated, and so revealed through humanity; for truths must be enunciated in persons. Bibles could not be made faster than men are good enough to have revelations made through them.
III. We are not to push the dissemination of this gospel by any false argument that dishonours God. Tell us not that every man ignorant of Christ must perish. Why should we push ourselves to this work of gospelling the world, by putting it on that He has given no possibility of life to millions? Rather let us tell what God is doing for them, what possibilities He opens for them, and how certainly He sometimes gains them to His love. Then as we are so gloriously privileged let us give them our privilege.
IV. Let us have it as one of our most sacred duties to the Bible, not to use it so as to shut ourselves and all that have it away from Gods immediate revelation by it. The external revelation is not given to be a substitute for the internal, but a guide into it. We are to find God after all by an immediate knowledge like all the outside saints, only with the help of the Bible which they had not. The Bible is received only when spiritually discerned: i.e., when it brings us in where God is, to know Him by our faith and love, and have Him in a first-hand knowledge, even as Abraham had, or Job, or Cornelius. If we desire to know Boston, the map of the way will not show it, but will only take us thither, and let us get the knowledge for ourselves. The Bible in like manner tells us how others found God, that we may find Him also. Conclusion: Let us cast a glance into that future life, in which all righteous souls are gathered. Many of them will belong to the class of inside saints, some to the class of outside; the former will have known Christ all their lives and been fashioned by His Gospel and character; the latter will now meet Him perhaps for the first time, and will salute Him as the unknown Friend they had always with them. To meet with these outside saints--outside no longer--how blessed it will be! And what a beautiful variety they will give to the general brotherhood! Other sheep I have which are not of this fold, etc. (H. Bushnell, D. D.)
The law of Christian enlargement
I. It has been made an objection to christianity that it involves a system of religious privileges limited, for some two thousand years, to a single nation: and although the New Testament proposes a more catholic plan, still it makes itself responsible for the Old. How is this consistent with the benevolence of a God whose love is wider than the world?
1. Long before this separation of Israel, God declared that it was not a permanent law. At the very moment when the selection began, an explicit prediction was carefully annexed to it that it would be expanded into a grand brotherhood of the world. Abraham, in whom the special calling began, was the very man to whom the Lord said, that among his descendants there should be a seed, a certain wonderful Son, in whom all the nations of the earth should be blessed. That mysterious Shepherd-king of the whole human flock was to have a Hebrew mother (Gal_4:4), so as to connect the special preparation with the universal blessing: but that He might be free of every possible human restriction, His Father was to be the Father of all that live. The promise in Genesis is as broad and as catholic as the preaching in the Acts.
2. Is there anything in this selection that justifies it? Why does a missionary gather in a score or two of children, out of hundreds, into a school, leaving the rest for the time untaught? When a Christian merchant wants to benefit paganism, why does he choose out one or two native youths of bright parts and send them to England for an education, instead of scattering spelling books among the heathen houses? When you want to introduce into a manufacturing interest an improved machinery, why do you send a single student to the best engineering school instead of exhorting the agents and masters of the mills to improve themselves in that department of science? The principle is that of selection and concentration, for the sake of a general benefit, and such is the nature of the human mind and of human society that practically this is the better and shorter way. Now, when Moses was lying all unconscious of it in the little rush basket in the Nile, the great problem was how to stop the race from going any further wrong, and how to turn it about, and get it ready for the setting up of a Divine order. And this was to be done not by thrusting in of an arbitrary revolution which would simply set the outward works all right, but would leave the springs of spiritual life--love, choice, energy, faith--all untouched. The thing wanted was to bring in and set up these grand interior holy forces in the soul. God took, therefore, the practical way. He chose out one nation, and sent it to school to learn the prophetic rudiments of Christianity and to make ready a people prepared for the Lord. This is the key to the scheme. Was not the plan magnificent? Can the best critic or the shrewdest objector suggest a wiser? And when we take a view of the whole Old Testament history, with all its strange incidents, its erring heroes, and faulty saints, intermingled with its splendid virtues, its sublime loyalty, its eloquence and poetry, and its supernatural prophecies, is it not a very poor thing indeed to carp at an unexplained passage here and there, or to sneer and cavil at some half-veiled feature in the majestic working out of the design? And all this while the original intention was never forgotten. When the Jew should have been drilled and taught, the Gentiles would be gathered in. No sidereal motion in astronomy, no regularity in celestial cycles and orbits wilt be more sure than the rising, in the due time, of the Epiphany star--A light to lighten the Gentiles, and the glory of My people Israel.
3. Another explanation to relieve the alleged narrowness of the Jewish religion is its constant progress as it goes on. With the intensest hostility to everything foreign; with an intolerance and superciliousness all the more tenacious because bound up with their religious scruples, there was ever a mighty hope of the breaking down of all international walls, and the gathering in of all to an equal share with themselves in the peace and glory of the Messiahs dominion. The strain grows louder and more confident all along till, in Malachi, we have it resounding in that sentence, to which the famous saying of the great orator, where the morning drum beat of the British Empire circles the earth, is but a feeble figure: From the rising of the sun, even unto the going down of the same, My name shall be great among the Gentiles, etc.
II. Give a few moments to a use of St. Peters words which will bring them down to ourselves. In every nation he that feareth God, etc.
1. The sense here is not theological, but popular; so that they are wide of the mark who suppose that the apostle means to take back all that he preached of every mans need of repentance and faith. He means this:--In every nation, now that Jesus Christ has come, there is an equal access to the open door for every tongue and tribe and people. The Pentecostal signs mean nothing less. There are no external disqualifications, and no internal incapabilities for being saved. Fearing God and working righteousness is the ground of acceptance, not meritoriously, into heaven, but into the privileges and helps of the Church as the school for heaven. Christ died for all. The Church is Catholic. And while St. Peter spoke, on the Gentiles also was poured out the gift of the Holy Ghost.
2. So the Word and Spirit of Christ go on constantly filling out our small measures of charity and hope--breaking up our petty judgments, enlarging our sympathies for all classes. We have a great many personal and private limitations.
(1) The circle of our own purely personal interests. Christ, by the Cross of His sacrifice, makes a constant remonstrance against these; and unless we catch His spirit, and give up self for service, we can be none of His.
(2) The circle of the family. This is a little wider, but often only a little. We may only see ourselves, and love ourselves, in our children. But our doctrine requires us to see whether our absorption in our own domestic pleasures restricts our sympathies for strangers.
(3) The circle of our own social set--a very dangerous as well as subtle enemy to true spirituality and nobleness. All the mutually admiring and complacent members just reflect each others prejudices, study to please each others whims, and so, of course, must stop growing in all that constitutes greatness of heart. Then there is the circle of business engagements, where the slave of mercantile ambition, or routine, sacrifices home, church, and his higher life for the poverty that is starving him.
(4) The circle of patriotic attachments. Scarcely yet--Christian as we claim to be--has the idea of the brotherhood of nations entered into the statesmanship, much less into the politics and legislation, of even civilised man.
3. We are not to suppose that Epiphany signifies to us a mere sending out of a few missionaries to foreign countries. Done earnestly and heartily, that is worth doing, and, the more we do it, the more Christian-like we become. Men may say they prefer to give their missionary money nearer home, where they see what becomes of it. But remember that it is by setting up standards and beacons, Christianising a few here and there, even when results look small, that a great testimony to Christ is finally given. (Bp. Huntington.)
He that feareth Him, and worketh righteousness, is accepted with Him.--
Piety and virtue both required by the gospel
Religion consists of two constituent branches--faith and practice.
1. The fear of God, in the most extensive sense of it, denotes the whole of piety; all those devout affections of soul, reverence, love, gratitude, and truth; and all those external acts of worship, prayer, and praise, which we are bound to pay to the Supreme Being.
2. Righteousness, in its most general meaning, signifies the whole of moral virtue; and to do works of this kind is not barely to abstain from acts of injustice and oppression, but to abound in offices of kindness and humanity.
I. Piety without virtue, faith without morality, falls short of the christian character, and will not be accepted by the Supreme Being. There is no part of religion more binding upon mankind than justice and beneficence. From our situation in society, in the midst of our fellow creatures, dependent on one another, we are taught to cultivate humanity as the most useful virtue in life. From our Christian obligations we are bound to practise universal benevolence, not merely as an ordinary virtue, but as the distinguishing quality of a true Christian. What, then, shall we think of the immoral devotee, the man of prayers without good works? He wants the most godlike disposition of heart, and the most substantial virtues in life. He wants the distinguishing character of a Christian, and an indispensable qualification for eternal glory. His devotion is either a hypocritical appearance assumed to impose upon the world, and to serve his own ends; or it is only a transient glow of devotion raised occasionally in the mind, which, like the morning cloud and the early dew, soon passeth away; or, which is oftener the case, it is the superstitious observance of a mistaken and corrupted mind, which would substitute a form of godliness in place of virtue. True piety is a principle which regenerates the heart and reforms the life.
II. Morality without piety, good works without faith, a regard to society without the fear of God, is equally insufficient to salvation. There is no sentiment of mind which is more deeply founded in nature and reason than a sense of God and of religion. Devotion is no enthusiastic rapture. It is only the exercise of affections which form a part of our constitution, and are essential to the human mind. We are formed by nature to admire what is great, and to love what is good. You treat great men with marks of respect. And is no reverence due to the greatest of all beings, to the King of kings, and the Lord of lords? You profess esteem for worthy characters, and have you no regard to the infinite perfections of the Divine nature? To remain unmoved at the view of infinite goodness implies the utmost degree of corruption. Such a person must, indeed, be far from the kingdom of God. Depravity of heart, however, is not the only crime of the mere moralist, the man of good works, without faith. His discharge of the moral duties, upon which he values himself, must be exceedingly defective. A sense of what is right, a regard to honour, and the instinct of benevolence, may work upon mens minds, and engage them to do many good actions. But those natural principles are too weak to resist the force of corrupt passions. Such is our propensity to vice, and so numerous the temptations to sin, that far stronger restraints are necessary. Accordingly, the man of mere morality is always inconsistent in character. If it be fair on one side it is strained on the other. Though he practise some virtues which deserve to be applauded, he is guilty, at the same time, of vices which tarnish his reputation; and thus, while he is confessedly devoid of piety to God, he is defective in justice and charity to men.
III. The sufficiency when united. The union of these amiable qualities forms the character, not only of the respectable man, but of the true Christian. Fear God, and keep His commandments, for this is the whole duty of man. The true Christian, the man who fears God, and works righteousness, is not merely entitled to acceptance through Christ. He is also qualified for the enjoyment of future glory. His charity joins him to man; his piety unites him to God. (A. Donnan.)
Acceptance of God
There is no argument here in favour of heathenism.--it is rather an argument in favour of Judaism. Corneliuss character was not the result of classic culture, but of classic culture supplemented by Divine revelation. Seeing, then, that he was accepted of God before his conversion, why not let him and others like him alone? Simply because they cannot let themselves alone. They are still conscious of a painful void in the heart, which only God in Christ can fill. To be accepted of God is not the only desire of the heart; man wants to be perfected. Judaism would enable a man to be accepted; but it could not make the comers thereto perfect. For the law made nothing perfect, but the bringing in of a better hope did. This, then, is the reason why Cornelius needed the gospel--the gospel alone could fill the desires of his heart and perfect him in goodness. And what aspect of the gospel did Peter present to him? First, that God in Christ came to seek man, to do him good. In this Christianity differed from all the heathen religions. The latter always represent man seeking God but never finding. One of their own writers was at last obliged So exclaim--Man cannot find God, God must therefore find man. Read the Bible and you discern in every page, not man seeking God, but God seeking man. But Peter not only spoke of the Saviours life, he dwelt also upon His death. Other religions declared what man ought to do for God; this religion declares what God has done for man. The preaching of the gospel thus tended to revolutionise the world. The world, so to speak, is thrown off its centre. In ancient astronomy the sun revolved around the earth: in modern astronomy the earth revolves around the sun. We see a corresponding change in the science of religion. Compare the end of the chapter with the beginning. The beginning tells us what Cornelius did for God--he prayed, he fasted, he gave alms:--that is the groundwork of all ancient religions. The end tells us what God did for Cornelius--He sent His Son Jesus to live and die, that through His name whosoever believeth in Him should receive remission of sins: that is the groundwork of the Christian faith. (J. Cynddylan Jones, D. D.)
The glorious doctrines
I. The absolute impartiality of God. The words God is no respecter of persons--
1. Do not teach--
(1) That God pays no regard to men. The deist would have us believe this; reason, consciousness, analogy, and the Bible, however, refute it.
(2) That God looks upon men indiscriminately--regards them merely in the mass. No; He looks on each individually.
(3) That God bestows blessings on some which He denies to others; although this is true, for He has given to each some distinguishing blessing of mind, body, or estate.
2. They do teach that God does not respect persons--
(1) In the same sense that man does. Mans respect for persons is--
(a) Very limited. How little man knows of his race. God knows the millions.
(b) Very superficial, whereas God looks at the heart.
(c) Selfish, whereas Gods is beneficent.
(d) Popular. Man respects those whom the multitudes applaud.
(e) Adventitious. It is because of what man has rather than what he is.
(2) In the sense of disturbing for any the settled conditions of happiness. The conditions of physical, mental, and moral health are the same to all.
(3) In the sense of limiting His salvation to any particular class. This is what the apostle means here. Gods provisions of mercy are for the world.
(a) The merits of the atonement are sufficient for all.
(b) The force of moral motive is adapted to all.
(c) The agency of the Spirit is available to all.
II. The necessary element of moral goodness. He that feareth God, etc.
1. The fear here, of course, is not the servile, but the filial; it is the fear of a love which casts out all slavish feeling. The word stands here, as elsewhere, to represent that state of mind which God requires from every man. It is a fear that worketh righteousness. It must be of such a character as inspires and secures right conduct in relation to God, man, and the universe. There is a fear toward God that worketh nothing. It just touches the soul occasionally and goes off in a sigh. There is a fear that worketh wrong--a superstitious feeling that leads to an unnatural and intolerant life. The fear that worketh right is alone the genuine thing; it is the essence of moral goodness.
2. This is that in a man which God respects and accepts wherever found. He does not accept a man because of his birth, country, or particular form of worship, or because of his Judaism, Gentilism, or Christianity. He that is right, whether he be a Socrates or a Paul, a Cornelius or a Peter, is accepted of Him. The Bible is full of this truth (2Ki_22:19; Psa_34:18; Psa_52:15-19; Deu_10:12; 1Sa_15:22; Hos_6:6; Mic_6:8; Mat_5:8).
III. The mediatorship of Christ (verse 36). The Word, i.e., gospel, is Gods instrument to generate this rectitude of soul. Peter shows that Christs mission--
1. Was Divine in its origin.
2. Was redemptive in its purpose.
3. Was universal in its aspect.
4. Involved His death on the Cross, and His resurrection from the dead. (D. Thomas, D. D.)
Gods plan, and our part in it
To study the unfolding of the Divine plan is one of the greatest occupations that can engage the mind of man. It engages the student of nature. It is the pursuit of the devout historian, to whom the track of human history appears spread out as a river from its source to its mouth. It is above all the study of the Christian, who, Bible in hand, loves to muse on that wonderful development of the Divine plan which, through page on page of psalm, and prophecy, and history, has wrought out the wealth of meaning that lay enshrined in that earliest promise given to man between his fall and his expulsion from the gate of Paradise. The chapter Item Which our text is taken possesses extreme interest because it records a marked stage in the development of the Divine plan.
I. The Divine plan is coincident with human need. While Peter thought on the vision, the Spirit said unto him, Behold, three men seek thee, arise, get thee down, and go with them. The point to notice is that these three men were representatives of the great heathen world--etc., they were not acquainted with what is known as revealed religion. One was a devout soldier, the other two were household servants of a Roman officer, who commanded one of the choicest regiments in the Roman army. We are thus confronted with the whole question of the heathen needs. There are men whose goodness is unquestionable who reason thus, The gospel is the ordained means of salvation and the only means; now it is clear that the heathen, having never heard the gospel, cannot believe it, therefore they cannot be saved. Now, this line of reasoning cannot be true. Even if it were argued as consistent with Gods justice, it could not be shown to be consistent with His pitiful goodness, to condemn them to suffer for the ages of the ages, if there were no way of salvation for them but the holding of definite convictions about the person and work of One who had never been revealed to them.
1. Nationality is of no account to God. The Jew thought that salvation was for him alone.
2. It is also clear that God deals with men according to their light. Our Lord drew a clear distinction between the servants that knew and those that knew not their Lords will.
3. It is also clear that God can give credit for the quality of mans moral attitude. After, on one occasion, upbraiding the cities in which His mighty works had been done, our Lord went on to say, If the mighty works done in you had been done in Tyre and Sidon, they would have repented long ago in sackcloth and ashes. He here tells us what would have been. Now, this intimate knowledge of the moral condition of man, of the quality of the soul, and of the way in which it would act, is an essential qualification of the Judge of all men. It enables Him to deal not with the results or manifestation of character, but with its essence. I go into the market, and on a barrow I see some spring flowers. An experienced friend says, Buy them. On inquiring I find the price enormous. What! I whisper to my friend, Are they worth so much? Yes, he replies, if you plant them in your hothouse, or beneath a sunny wall, they will bloom and fruit thus and thus. His knowledge of what they may do under certain conditions justifies me in buying the unsightly bulbs at an extravagant figure. Now, it is so that our Lord deals with men. He thinks, not so much of their creed, or even of their actions, but of their moral nature, and of what they may or might become, if favoured by certain soil, and sun, and rain. And if in the twilight of heathenism the soul has yet attained but a sickly growth, the Lord will still set a high value on it, and if He sees that in the full light of the gospel it would have equalled the moral nature of the best, He will put it on a level with them. We cannot too much insist on this, that our Master knows the moral nature of each, and what it would do under more favourable circumstances, and He judges us not by what we say or do, but by what we are. He knows how much of our failure to put to the credit of ignorance, and how much to the essential stupidity and stubbornness of our hearts.
4. It is also clear that God has not left Himself or His truth without witness in the heathen world.
5. It is also clear that no man is saved apart from the death of Christ.
6. It is clear also that the acceptance of men, whether Jew or Gentile, is only possible to faith.
7. But if this be the case with the heathen, why send them the gospel? For two reasons. First, because what they have cannot satisfy the noblest spirits. Cornelius is said to have prayed to God alway. For what did he pray? Evidently for what he had not got, for light and grace and power, for the fulness of Gods salvation. Outside of Christ there is no certain knowledge of the love of God, of forgiveness of sin, or of eternal life; the heathen can only guess at the best; he longs to know that God is love, that sin may be forgiven, and that there is a future life. And for further light and teaching on these momentous subjects, the heathen world sends its representatives to knock at the door of the Christian Church. But there is a yet more imperious demand which sends them there, referred to in the expression, Words by which thou shalt be saved. Great as is the yearning to know, there is a still stronger one to be. The one demand of the noblest souls was for power--power to salvation, power to resist sin, power to fulfil the noblest yearnings of the soul. And this is the burden of our message to the heathen today. We do not deny to them visions of God, intuitions of truth, lofty unselfishness, morality, prayer; but we affirm that they lack power, power unto salvation. But, secondly, the heathen for the most part are not represented by Cornelius. They have not faith. They do not live up to their light. They fail to do justly, love mercy, and walk humbly with God. They do not fear God and work righteousness. They are sunk in sin, from which they show no inclination to arouse themselves. In this case they have to be saved from the results of their own evil choice. They must be awakened, convicted of sin, led to repentance. There is no doubt, therefore, as to the need of man, and we adore the grace of God that His plan has been coincident with it. It is always so. Nature and Providence work as a double hinge. The fish do not seek insects in the summer afternoon, which do not flutter over the silver surface of the pool. Birds do not seek for fruits and berries which are not strewn through the woodlands.
II. The Divine plan can only be wrought out through human cooperation. In each stage of its unfolding it has been so. When from amid the recreant race of man God was desirous to select one family to become the depository of the sacred trust, He called Abraham from kindred and country, and prepared him by special trials for his high commission. When the progress of the Divine purpose seemed to be arrested by the captivity in Egypt, He took up the broken thread in Moses, the faithful servant. And at each successive crisis there was a David or a Hezekiah, an Ezra or a Nehemiah to carry it forward; as in the torch bearing of the old Greek games. And thus it has been in all subsequent ages, as the plan of God has taken some new phase there has ever been a Paul, an Augustine, a Luther, a Wesley, a Carey, through whom it has wrought. By men the will of God has been done on earth, as it is in heaven. This is the one passionate yearning of all true hearts, to know whether they are carrying out Gods plan. There is plenty of work which is being done in the world which is abortive. Great beginnings, poor endings. This line of thought suggests some very serious reflections. It is clear that Gods plan is not as yet realised. And what sort of men are they through whom He will work? Ah, Peter shall furnish the illustration. There was plenty of human nature about him. But with all the peculiar idiosyncrasies that marked this foundation stone from all the rest in the foundations of the New Jerusalem, there was that devotion to the Lord and Saviour, that love for prayer, that openness of heart to the Divine Spirit, that willingness to obey, that absence of assumption, which lifted the prostrate soldier to his feet with the words, Stand up, I also am a man; which are the prime notes of any soul to whom God will reveal His purpose, and by whom He will effect it. Is this thy state of heart? Then wait at Joppa, however obscure the place, and tiresome the delay. Nourish thy heart with prayer and meditation. Dare to wait though all men bid thee begone. If the vision tarry, wait for it.
III. The evolution of the Divine plan is always accompanied by the outpouring of the holy ghost. Plan and power always go together. While Peter yet spake these words, the Holy Ghost fell on all them that heard the word. There is no need to expatiate on our need of the Holy Ghost, and that need is two fold, first as respects His influence on the worker, then as respects His cooperation in the work. There is a mysterious something in the worker who is endued with the Holy Ghost, which you can neither define nor imitate (F. B. Meyer, B. A.)
The individual not overlooked in the mass
This is not an answer to the question, Are there few that be saved? It only states the conditions of being acceptable to God. This is not a saying which the profane and prayerless may take comfort in, for it speaks of the acceptance only of those who are reverent toward God. It is not a message of peace to any who are selfish, unjust, or immoral, but to those only who work righteousness toward their fellow men. It does not say there is no difference between religions; that Christianity and the worship of heathen temples are just alike in the sight of God. It simply says that God is indifferent to national lines, and accepts an obedient heart and life in one nation as readily as in another. It does not follow that men are just as likely to be devout and righteous in one land as in another. Race, training, associations, occupation, do influence character. God never overlooks the individual in the mass of which he is a part. God regards biography more than history. If your son or daughter has gone to some new region or strange city, you are more concerned in your childs welfare than in the history of the place. General and individual forces appear everywhere interworking in human life, yet can be broadly distinguished everywhere. History occupies itself with general movements under the impulse of physical conditions, or tides of public feeling. Biography is concerned with the development of individual character in the midst of these general forces. History is vaster than biography. Social life makes individuals part of an organisation. History is more and other than the sum of the lives of its actors, as a twisted rope has more strength than the sum of its strands. History is vaster than biography. Yet on the other hand we cannot explain the character and lives of individual men and women by the social and physical conditions into which they are born and among which they develop. In the later centuries, at least, race has been a stronger element than climate in determining the course and development of history, the English stock showing its superior vigour in all the zones, though not, it must be confessed, in all the arts. The superiority of race to physical conditions is not, however, the highest point of mans dignity. Peter saw a more glorious sunlit summit of truth when the Holy Spirit was poured out upon the family of the Gentile Cornelius. He saw that the individual is more even than race and environment, more than the fated development of inherited characteristics under the influence of these or those external conditions. Each soul is a living unit, responsible to God and under Gods particular regard. Race, climate, and the movements of surrounding life affect every individual. Yet is the individual supreme. Shall Joseph because he is in Egypt say, It avails nothing to worship the God of my fathers in this strange land? If Joseph had taken the colour of his surroundings, where had been his honour as the deliverer of his people, and who had saved Egypt from the famine? If Moses had become a courtier in Pharaohs court, or a hermit in Arabia, who had led Israel out of Egypt? That God is thus a Father and never overlooks the individual in the mass, is a truth of the greatest practical importance to us. God never uses men as a chess player does his pawns--to win a victory for himself without regard to the pieces used. The chess player moves his pieces here or there for the sake of the game. God rules and overrules the affairs of history for the sake of individuals. The earth was made for man. Institutions, as the family government, and the like, have been established of God, not for their own sake but for their share in promoting the welfare of individuals. No individual need ever be in despair because the drift of life about him is toward evil and the multitudes are swept on by the current toward ruin. Fear God and work righteousness, and you shall be acceptable to God. The evil drift of life about us is never a sufficient excuse for evil living or neglect of Christian duty on our part. We may not be responsible for the general tendency of life in our time or community, but we are responsible for the way we individually behave in the current. The ship master must sail for his port whichever way the currents run. The more adverse the currents, the more resolutely must he hold the helm. The chance for a Cornelius to be acceptable to God, while in the brutal army of Rome, lay in the individual power to be different from his surroundings. It does not signify much in respect to individual character to be swept along in general movements, whether of religious fervour, of temperance enthusiasm, or of patriotic zeal. What most signifies both in manifesting and developing character, is the individual movement apart from that which is general. We are of such high estate in Gods image that every individual can be more than his surroundings. It is just in such times that righteousness most shines out in contrast with evil-doing, and the strength of reverent faith grows stronger by the very lack of anything short of God to cling to. The hope of religion in the world, the hope of every reform and of all progress, lies in the superiority of the individual soul to its surroundings, in the vital power of individual character. If men must be formed by their surroundings, no generation could ever break away from the corruptions of the past. But men are individual centres of power. So you and I are called to fear God and work righteousness, whether others hear the Divine call or forbear. We may make our own calling and election sure, and we may by Gods blessing turn the current of the time to piety and righteousness. (W. E. C. Wright.)
The Biblical Illustrator, edited by Joseph S. Exell (c. 1880s–1900s) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
B. W. Johnson 1891 · Public Domain On vv34, 36, 39, 42, 43, 44, 45 34, 35. Then Peter opened his mouth. The same…
34, 35. Then Peter opened his mouth. The same preacher who, on the day of Pentecost, declared the conditions of salvation to the Jews now declares them for the first time to the Gentiles. To him Christ gave the keys (Matt. 16:19) of the kingdom, and with them he opened its doors to both Jew and Gentile. I perceive that God is no respecter of persons. It has just dawned on him that Jew and Gentile are on the same footing in God's sight. Those who fear the Lord in any nation, of any race, will be accepted.
B. W. Johnson's The People's New Testament with Notes (1889–1891) — public domain. Electronic text from the Christian Classics Ethereal Library (CCEL) ThML edition.
The Preacher's Complete Homiletical Commentary 1892 · Public Domain On v34 Act_10:34. The word for respecter of persons, προσωπολήπτης, is…
CRITICAL REMARKS
Act_10:34. The word for respecter of persons, προσωπολήπτης, is found only here in the N.T., though προσωποληψία occurs in Rom_2:11.
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Act_10:35. Accepted with Him.—Better, acceptable to him. Though applied to Cornelius prior to his hearing the gospel, this did not imply that before and without a believing reception of that gospel Cornelius was in an absolute sense justified, forgiven, and accepted (see Act_10:43). What is here taught is not indifferentismus religionum, but indifferentia nationum (Bengel).
Act_10:36. The construction of the next three verses is uncertain. Either
(1) the word τὸν λόγον (Act_10:36) should be connected with “I perceive,” καταλαμβάνομαι (Act_10:34) and Act_10:46 taken as in apposition to Act_10:34-35 (De Wette, Ebrard, Lange, Alford); or
(2) τὸν λόγον should be regarded as in apposition to δικαιοσύνην (Ewald, Buttmann, Nösgen, Zöckler); or
(3), and perhaps the best way (Kuinoel, Meyer, Wendt, Winer, Overbeck, Lechler, Holtzmann, and others), the word (Act_10:36) should be construed with ye know (Act_10:37), the word being described by the three clauses standing in apposition—(a) which God (or He) sent unto the children of Israel, etc. (Act_10:36); (b) that word (or, that saying) which was published, or (as in Luk_2:15) that affair which took place (Act_10:37); and (c) (the subject of that saying, also in the accusative) Jesus of Nazareth, etc. (Act_10:38).
Act_10:39. Whom also they (indefinite) slew and hanged (rather, having hanged him) on a tree.—Speaking to the Gentiles, Peter does not specify the agents as when addressing the Jews (Act_2:23; Act_3:14; Act_4:10; Act_5:30).
Act_10:41. Bengel, placing the clause “who did eat and drink with Him” in a parenthesis, explains it as pointing to the intercourse of the apostles with Christ before His death; it obviously, however, alludes to their fellowship with Him after His resurrection (Luk_24:43; Joh_21:13).
Act_10:42. Judge of quick and dead.—Not of the righteous and the wicked merely (Olshausen), but of those who shall be alive at His coming, and of those who shall have fallen asleep (Act_17:31; 2Ti_4:1; 1Pe_4:5).
Act_10:47. Can any man forbid the water?—The question suggests what was probably the case, that the primitive practice was to bring the water to the candidate rather than the candidate to the water.
Act_10:48. He commanded them to be baptised.—Most likely by another than himself, a practice afterwards followed by Paul (1Co_1:14). Peter only completes by outward form what God has already in inward essence, by communicating the Holy Ghost, effected—viz., the admission of Cornelius and his company to the Christian Church.
HOMILETICAL ANALYSIS.—Act_10:34-48
Peter’s Sermon in Cornelius’s House; or, The Gospel preached to the Gentiles
I. The audience.—Cornelius and those assembled with him (Act_10:27; Act_10:33).
1. Devout. Cornelius was so, and so most likely were his kinsmen and his friends around him (Act_10:2).
2. Intelligent. Already they possessed some acquaintance with the main facts of gospel history (Act_10:37).
3. Serious. A solemn sense of the Divine presence rested on their spirits (Act_10:33).
4. Humble. Prepared for the reception of the message, they were ready to accord it obedience. A good model for every congregation when it comes together to listen to the preaching of the Word. (See “Hints on Act_10:33.”)
II. The preacher.—Peter. Having already been honoured to preach the gospel to his kinsmen according to the flesh, homeborn and foreign Jews (Act_2:14), he now enjoyed the privilege of publishing the truth in the hearing of a company of Gentiles. This he did—
1. With much solemnity, as if realising the importance of the occasion—an idea conveyed in the words “Then Peter opened his mouth” (compare Act_8:35).
2. With peculiar tact. Not reminding them of their heathen origin, or saying aught to impress them with a sense of their inferiority, but crediting them with deep religiousness and even Christian intelligence (compare Paul’s treatment of the Athenians: Act_17:22).
3. With great fulness, setting forth in an address, of which, doubtless, only an outline has been preserved, the main facts and doctrines of gospel history and teaching (Act_10:36-43).
4. With spiritual power. Which may be inferred from the fact that all who heard the Word believed and were baptised (Act_10:44).
III. The sermon.—
1. Its exordium A statement which showed the preacher to be no narrow-minded bigot, but possessed of a mind open to receive “light from heaven” whensoever it was graciously vouchsafed; as well as tended to disarm the prejudice of his hearers and ingratiate himself with them. In this respect the fisherman apostle might be profitably followed by preachers of to-day. The truths contained in the statement were two:
(1) That God was no respecter of persons. A truth known to holy men of God before Peter’s day (2Sa_14:14; 2Ch_19:7; Job_37:24), but not understood by Peter till revealed by God through the vision lately given (Act_10:28), which reminds us that many truths which have been revealed are not yet fully understood. A truth afterwards insisted on by the apostle (1Pe_1:17), and by Paul (Rom_2:11; Eph_4:9; Col_3:25), and signifying that God in dealing with men, whether in providence or in grace, in judgment or in mercy, takes no account of such accidents as nationality, birth, rank, wealth, power, or other temporal or material circumstance, but has regard solely to manhood and character.
(2) That in every nation piety and goodness were equally acceptable in His sight. What Peter meant by piety and what by goodness he explained. The root of all piety he discovered in the fear of God (Psa_111:10), and the essence of all goodness in working righteousness (1Jn_3:7). Wherever these existed, the individual possessing them, though not justified on their account (Act_10:43; Rom_3:20), was acceptable in God’s sight as one to whom belonged the qualification necessary for admission into the Church of Christ (see “Hints on Act_10:35”).
2. Its contents. A brief summary of the facts and doctrines of the gospel, embracing—
(1) The earthly ministry of Jesus, which began in its complete independence and unrestrained activity after John’s ministry had closed; which had been divinely raised up and directed to the children of Israel, of which the burden had been peace (Eph_2:17), and which, commencing in Galilee, had been published throughout all Judea; for which Jesus had been anointed with the Holy Ghost and with power (Luk_14:18), and which had been exercised in going about and, through the power of God who was with Him, doing good and healing all that were oppressed of the devil (Mat_4:23; Luk_4:36); the character of which had been witnessed by Peter and his colleagues in the apostleship, and the end of which had been a violent death and hanging on a tree (Act_10:36-39).
(2) The resurrection of Jesus, which was effected by the power of God on the third day after His crucifixion, and attested by His being openly shown or made manifest, not to all the people, but unto witnesses chosen before of God—viz., to the apostles and others of the brethren, “who did eat and drink with Him after He rose from the dead” (Act_10:40-41).
(3) The second coming of Jesus to judge the quick and dead (Rom_14:9; 2Co_5:10), to which office He had been ordained of God (Act_17:31; Joh_5:22), and about which He had Himself commanded them, the apostles, to testify unto the people, the Jews (Act_10:42). That the summary of Christian truth here put into Peter’s mouth was not a second century embellishment has received most remarkable confirmation, not only from Pliny’s letter (A.D. 112), but also from the recently discovered apology of Aristides (A.D. 125), both of which show that Christian Churches so widely apart as Bithynia and Athens accepted the very tenets here set forth.
3. Its application. Contained in the statement that, according to the unanimous testimony of Old Testament prophecy, through His name whosoever believed should receive remission of sins (Isa_53:11; Zec_13:1).
IV. The Result.—
1. All those who heard the word believed. Though not stated, implied. Cornelius and his companions, without exception, received the word into honest and good hearts (Luk_8:15). It is certainly a great sermon—great in the best sense—which converts all who hear it.
2. The Holy Ghost fell on all them who believed. Upon all Cornelius’s household. The supernatural endowment, which descended on them while the apostle was yet speaking, revealed itself in the usual way, exactly as it had done at Pentecost, through speaking with tongues (Act_10:46).
3. Those who received the Holy Ghost were baptised. Those believers of the circumcision who had come with Peter were profoundly astonished to hear Gentiles speaking with tongues; but they could not resist the apostle’s argument when he asked, “Can any man forbid water?” etc.
Learn.—
1. The heaven-sent preacher should always speak his Master’s message with boldness.
2. The best sermon is that which has most of Christ in it.
3. The Holy Ghost knows no distinction between Jew and Gentile.
4. Those who have received the essence should not be denied the sign of salvation.
HINTS AND SUGGESTIONS
Act_10:34. God no Respecter of Persons.
I. Expose some false constructions of the text.—
1. It is not true that God does not love one man more than another. He loves with a special affection all who believe in the Lord Jesus Christ. Cain and Abel.
2. It is not true that God does not bestow on one man what He withholds from another. Natural gifts, social advantages, religious privileges, spiritual blessings.
3. It is not true that God does not admit one man to heaven while He excludes another. Some are cast out.
II. Explain the real meaning of our text.—
1. God does not respect persons on the grounds on which men are treated with partiality by their fellowmen—wealth, birth, genius. His preferences are determined by other considerations, although these cannot always be ascertained.
2. God does not respect persons as He Himself did under the former dispensation. The Jew has no monopoly of the blessings of the gospel. As Christ died for a men without distinction, so salvation through Him is to be offered to all, and shall be bestowed on all who believe in Him.
(1) Rejoice in the impartiality of God.
(2) Avail yourselves of the impartiality of God by embracing the common salvation.
(3) Imitate the impartiality of God.—G. Brooks.
Act_10:34-35. God no Respecter of Persons.
I. What the proposition does not mean.—
1. That God is indifferent to diversities in human character.
2. That all religions are equally acceptable in God’s sight.
3. That belief in Christ is not required for salvation.
4. That all men will eventually be saved.
II. What the proposition does mean.—
1. That the essence of religion consists in fearing God and working righteousness.
2. That God is indifferent to external distinctions between man and man.
3. That all who possess the inward characteristics of religion are equally well pleasing in God’s sight.
4. That all men who are thus religious belong to His Church, irrespective of nationality or other accidental circumstance.
On the Reception of New Truth.—Here is Peter, with the traditional spirit of an Oriental, violating the apparently natural order, and passing at once under a new set of ideas. What is the explanation?
I. It seems to be in the Nature of religious changes that they shall take place suddenly.—There may be, there must be, long seasons of preparation for any moral change, but the transition is instantaneous. It is the law of revelation.
II. His change was due to the fact that he had got sight of larger and more spiritual truths than he had been holding.—Peter had been used to believing that God was a respecter of persons, but when he caught sight of the fact that God has no partialities, but accepts all men who work righteousness, his truth-loving nature rushed at once toward the greater truth.—Theodore Munger.
Act_10:36. The Lordship of Jesus Christ.
I. Its basis.—His redeeming work.
II. Its extent.—All things and persons.
III. Its purpose.—Salvation or peace.
IV. Its perpetuity.—Till the time of the end.
V. Its authority.—Derived from the Father.
Preaching Peace; or, Publishing Good Tidings of Peace.
I. The Messenger of peace.—Jesus Christ.
II. The basis of peace.—His atoning work.
III. The terms of peace.—Faith.
IV. The blessing of peace.—Remission of sin.
V. The fruit of peace.—Holiness.
Peace to the Far Off and the Near.
I. What it is.—It means sometimes friendship or reconciliation; and sometimes the state of soul resulting from these. O man of earth, is this peace yours?
II. What it is not.—It is not mere indifference. The frozen lake is calm; but that is not the calm we desire. It is not the security of self righteousness. That a hollow security. It is not the peace of prosperity, or pleasure, or earthly ease. There is the world’s peace.
III. Where it comes from.—It does not come from self, or sin, or the flesh or the world. Nor does it come from the law, or our own goodness, or our prayers or religiousness. It comes directly and solely from Jesus Christ; from Himself, and from His cross; from Him as Jesus, from Him as the Christ.
IV. How we get it.—Our text says it is “preached” to us; or more exactly, “the good news of it are brought to us.” The pacifying, consciencepurging work is done; and God has sent us His account of it.
V. What it does for us.—
1. It purifies. No peace, no purity.
2. It liberates. The possession of this peace is the liberty of the soul. Without peace we are in bondage and darkness.
3. It satisfies; it fills the soul; it takes away weariness and emptiness.
4. It animates. Till peace takes possession of us we are sluggish in the cause of God. Peace makes us zealous, brave, self-denied; willing to spend and be spent, to do and suffer.—H. Bonar, D.D.
Act_10:38. “Who went about doing good.”
I. A significant testimony.—Spoken by an eyewitness, authenticating the gospel records of the life of Christ.
II. A deserved eulogy.—History has preserved the names of individual princes, to whom she gives the title of benefactors: thus are held in memory a Ptolemæus Euërgetes, a Titus, “the joy and delight of all mankind”; but of what “benefactors” (Luk_22:25), must not the name and reputation dim and pale before that of the Sovereign of God’s kingdom?
III. A loud call.—To unswerving faith in Christ as the promised Saviour, the crown and ornament of humanity, God’s highest revelation.
IV. A constant spur.—To a love which yields itself without condition to such a loving Saviour, and henceforth knows no greater joy than, though at a distance infinite, to follow in his footsteps.—Oosterzee.
“God was with Him.”
I. Providentially.—As with all.
II. Spiritually.—As with those who fear Him.
III. Efficiently.—As with prophets and apostles working through Him.
IV. Essentially.—As with none else, being one with Him in substance and in power, holiness, goodness, and truth.
The History of Jesus of Nazareth.
I. His Divine mission.—Sent by God.
II. His personal qualification.—
1. Anointed with the Holy Ghost.
2. Clothed with supernatural power.
3. Attended by the Divine presence.
III. His philanthropic career.—
1. Its benevolent character. Doing good, and healing all that were oppressed of the devil.
2. Its extensive circuit. He went about; not restricting Himself to one town or province.
3. Its unwearied continuance. He went about manifestly without cessation,
IV. His tragic end.—“Whom they slew and hanged on a tree.” A violent, undeserved, substitutionary death.
V. His triumphant resurrection.—“Him God raised up.” The proofs of His resurrection: eating and drinking with the apostles.
VI. His sublime exaltation.—“Ordained to be Judge of quick and dead.”
VII. His culminating glory.—“Through His name whosever believeth in Him shall receive remission of sins.”
Act_10:39. The Death of Christ.—A study in apologetics.
I. Its early occurrence.—After a brief ministry of three (or two) and a half years. Out of a life so short, followed by a death so soon, what great results could be expected to flow? Yet no life or death has moved the world like that of Christ.
II. Its shameful form.—Slain and hanged upon a tree, like the vilest of malefactors. Out of an end so ignominious, what hope of posthumous fame could spring? Yet Christ’s death has attracted more attention and been more widely and permanently remembered than any other that has occurred.
III. Its undeserved character.—For no crime or sin of His own, proved or unproved, but for a life spent in holy fellowship with God, and in benevolent ministries among men. In this respect standing apart from that of any son of man who has ever died either before or since. Impossible that in such a death no greater significance could be than in that of ordinary mortals.
IV. Its age-long remembrance.—When Peter spoke of it to Cornelius it was little more than ten years old. The world had scarcely had time to forget it. But nineteen centuries have rolled away since then, and its memory is still green. In all countries men are thinking and speaking of the decease which was accomplished at Jerusalem. The question therefore rises, what was there about this death of Jesus of Nazareth that makes the world unable or unwilling to forget it?
V. Its extraordinary influence.—Christ Himself predicted that if He were lifted up from the earth He would draw all men unto Him (Joh_12:32), and let it be accounted for as one will, the fact is true that the death of Christ has ever since it occurred been one of the most potent—conjoined with the resurrection, the most potent—factor in the onward development of human history.
VI. Its amazing significance.—In this alone lies the explanation that a death so early, so shameful, so undeserved, so long remembered, so profoundly influential, could have taken place, that it was the death:
1. Of an Incarnate God.
2. In the room of sinful men.
3. As an atonement for their sin.
4. As a means of effecting their sanctification; and
5. In order to secure for them eternal life. It is these considerations which give to Christ’s death its unique position and power.
Act_10:41. Eating and Drinking with the Risen Christ.
I. A proof of Christ’s resurrection.
II. An evidence of believers’ salvation.
III. A foretaste of the saints’ glory.
Act_10:36; Act_10:43. The Threefold Office of Christ.
I. Prophetical.—Preaching peace.
II. Priestly.—Remitting sin.
III. Kingly.—Ruling all.
Act_10:43. His (i.e., Christ’s) Name.
I. Divinely attested.—“To Him give all the prophets witness.”
II. Widely published.—“He commanded us to preach unto the people and to testify.”
III. Highly exalted.—Raised up and established above every name.
IV. Certainly saving.—Procuring forgiveness for all who believe.
V. Constantly enduring.—Since the gospel was designed not for one age but for all the ages.
Act_10:43. The Great Blessing of the Gospel.
I. Its nature.—Remission of sins.
II. Its channel.—Through Jesus Christ.
III. Its recipients.—All who believe in Him.
IV. Its condition.—Faith in Him.
V. Its certainty.—Witnessed by the prophets.
Act_10:45. The Gift of the Holy Ghost.
I. Its nature.—The inhabitation of the soul by the Spirit of God.
II. Its effect.—In some, divers gifts; in all, holiness and eternal life.
III. Its recipients.—Those who believe and obey the word.
IV. Its sign.—Baptism.
Act_10:44-48. The Conversion of Cornelius.
I. Prepared for by his religious condition.—
1. His character before conversion.
(1) A devout man, who
(2) feared God,
(3) cared for the godly training of his house,
(4) practised philanthropy, and
(5) prayed to God always.
2. His need notwithstanding of conversion. This may seem to be contradicted by Peter’s statement in Act_10:34. Explain
(1) what Act_10:34 does not and
(2) what it does mean (see “Hints”).
II. Brought about by a threefold instrumentality.—
1. By the providence of God. Who had
(1) brought Cornelius into contact with the Jewish people and their worship;
(2) awakened in his heart dissatisfaction with the gods of Rome and eager longing for a purer religion;
(3) led him to Cæsarea where he heard the gospel; and
(4) sent Peter to Joppa, where he was easily found by Cornelius.
2. By the ministry of angels. In his own and Peter’s visions.
3. By the preaching of the word.
III. Sealed by the gift of the Holy Ghost.—
1. The signs. Tongues.
2. The significance. An earnest of the inheritance.
IV. Attested by baptism.—The ordinance of Christ to be observed by believers.
Act_10:47-48. The Administration of Christian Baptism.
I. Hindrances to its reception.—
1. The absence of faith. The individual who is not prepared to profess faith in Jesus Christ has no claim whatever to be admitted to baptism.
2. The presence of open sin. Though a professed believer, the individual who lives in scandalous sin is in an unfit state for partaking of this holy ordinance.
3. The want of adequate knowledge. The person who has not yet attained to a clear understanding of the nature and significance of baptism is not a proper subject for its reception.
II. Qualifications for its reception.—
1. The qualification in God’s sight. Endowment with the Holy Ghost. Baptism ideally considered is not a means of imparting the Holy Ghost, but a sign and seal of the Holy Ghost’s presence.
2. The qualification in man’s sight. An outward profession of faith, attested by visible saintship or a corresponding walk and conversation, accompanied, as above stated, with adequate knowledge.
The Preacher's Complete Homiletical Commentary (gen. ed. Joseph S. Exell; Funk & Wagnalls, c. 1892) — public domain (pre-1929). A full-Bible homiletical/sermon-outline anthology covering 65 of 66 books (2 John is absent from the source module). Text from a community e-Sword module.
William B. Godbey 1900 · Public Domain On vv38, 44 38. “Jesus who is from Nazareth, how God anointed…
38. “Jesus who is from Nazareth, how God anointed him with the Holy Ghost and power, who went about doing good and healing all those who were oppressed by the devil, because God was with him.” You see from these Scriptures that Cornelius was by no means a novice in the gospel, but had enjoyed the ample Opportunities of that wonderful Pentecostal age, I trow having frequently heard Peter and the other apostles. His justification is abundantly confirmed in Act 10:34-35: “ . . .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 of him.” It is only Satan’s counterfeit religion that tells a man he can work righteousness, before he gets it from God in his heart. A man must have a farm in order to work it. Put a farmer on a naked rock in mid ocean, and he will never work a farm. John says: “He that worketh righteousness has been born of God.” Hence we see Cornelius was accepted of God and had been born of God. He was a very enthusiastic leader of a holiness band, not in the experience of sanctification, but gloriously justified and earnestly seeking it. Peter was not sent to get him converted, for he was not only a devout servant of the Lord, but a Gentile disciple of Christ, vigorously pressing on to entire sanctification. Peter’s mission was to preach the gospel of holiness, get him and all of his people sanctified, and admit them into the gospel church, conferring on them all rights and privileges of bona fide membership. Eliminating the cumbrous routine and superfluous ceremonies of Gentile proselytism, an institution recognized and honored fifteen hundred years ago, the Christian Church began all Jews, soon receiving an influx from the Gentile world, destined to increase simultaneously with the depletion of the Jewish element, thus working out a radical revolution and becoming a Gentile organization in a century. As Peter had preached the inauguratory sermon of the gospel dispensation to the Jews, it was equally pertinent that he should do the same to the Gentiles. Hence his revival at Caesarea was the Gentile Pentecost, lifting the flood-gate of entire sanctification and bona fide membership in the gospel church to the Gentile world.
William B. Godbey, Commentary on the New Testament (1896–1900) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
J. W. McGarvey 1914 · Public Domain On vv34–45 34, 35. The scene before Peter enlarges his conceptions…
34, 35. The scene before Peter enlarges his conceptions of the purpose of God; for he now sees that his mission is designed not for the benefit of Cornelius alone, but for a large number of his Gentile friends; and if for all these, then, there is to be no further national limitation to the gospel. He gives utterance to this conception. (34) " Then Peter opened his mouth and said, In truth I perceive that God is not a respecter of persons; (35) but, in every nation, he that fears him and works righteousness is acceptable to him. " This expansive thought was sufficient to burst asunder all the exclusive bonds of the Mosaic institution, and should be sufficient now to explode the equally injurious theory of an arbitrary predestination of certain men and angels to their eternal destiny. It is a positive declaration that God respects not persons but character. To fear him, and to work righteousness, and not any other distinction between persons, is the ground of acceptability with him.
J. W. McGarvey (with Philip Y. Pendleton), Commentaries on the New Testament (The Fourfold Gospel, 1914; Acts; and the epistles) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
C. I. Scofield 1917 · Public Domain On vv35, 43, 44 (See Scofield "Rom 10:10").
righteousness
(See Scofield "Rom 10:10").
The Scofield Reference Bible (1917 edition), notes by C. I. Scofield — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Paul E. Kretzmann 1924 · Public Domain On vv34, 39, 44 The first part of Peter’s sermon:
The first part of Peter’s sermon:
v. 34. Then Peter opened his mouth and said, Of a truth I perceive that God is no respecter of persons;
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v. 35. but in every nation he that feareth Him and worketh righteousness is accepted with Him.
v. 36. the Word which God sent unto the children of Israel, preaching peace by Jesus Christ: (He is Lord of all:)
v. 37. that Word, I say, ye know, which was published throughout all Judea, and began from Galilee, after the baptism which John preached;
v. 38. how God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Ghost and with power; who went about doing good, and healing all that were oppressed of the devil; for God was with Him.
Under such ideal conditions, with an attentive, eager audience, it must have been an unusual pleasure to preach the Gospel. And Peter made the most of the occasion. Solemnly he began his address by stating that he now of a truth comprehended and understood fully that God is not a respecter of persons, literally, that He does not look upon the face of people. The outward face, form, and bearing of people do not influence the judgment of the Lord. In every nation of the world he that truly fears the Lord, that has his heart turned to Him in confident faith, and performs righteousness, shows by his entire manner of living that the fear of the Lord actuates him in all his doings, he is acceptable to God. This inclusive statement swept aside the confining bonds of the Mosaic covenant, and proved to be the keynote of the entire mission-work of the Church from that time forth. The reception of the salvation merited by Jesus Christ is no longer conditioned by nationality, but by the condition of the heart. The call to redemption is extended to all men, regardless of color, race, and language. After this great introductory, fundamental truth had been stated, Peter could launch forth into his favorite subject, the Gospel of Jesus Christ. He told his hearers that they already knew three facts. They knew the Word which had been sent to the children of Israel as a Gospel-message from God, bringing the good and glorious news of peace through Jesus Christ. The latter Peter, in a parenthesis, distinguishes from the ordinary prophets and apostles, the servants of the Word, as the Lord over all, thus declaring His deity. They furthermore knew, he tells them, the historical fact that the Word concerning Jesus was made known, published, by Himself, in His prophetical ministry, beginning from Galilee, after the baptism which John preached. And they finally knew about the person of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, namely, that God Himself anointed Him with the Holy Ghost and with power, who then traveled through the country doing good, performing miracles as the Benefactor of mankind, and healing all those that were kept in subjection by the devil, as the Lord and Master, before whom the spirits of darkness must bow; for God was with Him. These facts, with which his hearers were familiar in whole or in part, Peter impresses upon them as facts whose knowledge is necessary for salvation. Note that Peter emphasizes the deity of Jesus also in the last statement, which says that the two unchanged natures are united in the person of Christ.
Paul E. Kretzmann, Popular Commentary of the Bible (1921–1924) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
unfoldingWord translationNotes 2017 · CC BY-SA 4.0 On vv34, 36, 39, 42, 44 Connecting Statement:
Connecting Statement:
Peter begins speaking to everyone in the house of Cornelius.
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Then Peter opened his mouth and said
"Peter began to speak to them"
Truly
This means that what he is about to say is especially important to know.
God does not take anyone's side
"God does not favor certain people"
anyone who worships and does righteous deeds is acceptable to him
"he accepts anyone who worships him and does righteous deeds"
worships
The word "worships" here has the sense of deep respect and awe.
translationWords
Peter
nation
righteous
unfoldingWord translationNotes — © Distant Shores Media and the Door43 World Missions Community, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Source: git.door43.org/Door43/en_tn.
Tyndale Open Study Notes 2022 · CC BY-SA 4.0 On vv34, 36, 43, 44 10:34-35 God shows no favoritism: See Deut 10:17; 2…
10:34-35 God shows no favoritism: See Deut 10:17; 2 Chr 19:7; Job 34:19; Luke 20:21; Rom 2:11; Gal 2:6; Col 3:25; 1 Pet 1:17. The application of this principle is the meaning of Peter’s vision (10:9-16). • In every nation he accepts those who fear him and do what is right: See Rom 10:11-13.
Tyndale Open Study Notes — © Tyndale Open Resources, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Text via the HelloAO Bible API.