A Biblical Theology of Mission (Petrine Mission Trip, Acts 10 & 11)

Evangelizing Samaritans was pretty radical, but evangelizing Gentiles was off the chart. Philip’s outreach to Samaria was groundbreaking, but Peter’s outreach to Gentiles was revolutionary. It took an amazing act of divine persuasion of Peter to get him to go and a remarkable act of divine outpouring to confirm its success.

The vision God gives Peter, telling him to eat unclean animals and not to call unclean what God has called clean, is absolutely startling for Peter, a Jew who has never violated the dietary restrictions God gave the Jews. Something had to break the Jewish perspective of Gentiles as unclean and untouchable, and therefore unevangelizable. Peter wisely takes several Jewish believers with him to visit Cornelius, needing a witness to what God was doing.

The conversion of Cornelius and his household as evidenced in them receiving the Holy Spirit and speaking in tongues, made it clear that God had accepted these Gentile believers without them becoming full-fledged Jews (Cornelius was a God-fearer, a convert to Judaism but not circumcised). The new converts were baptized because one could not dispute that God had brought them to faith in Jesus.

The conclusion is not specifically drawn here, but the decision of the later Jerusalem council that Gentiles do not have to become Jews in order to be saved is proven here. No circumcision is required, no new dietary restrictions. Spirit baptism serves to mark these men and women as fully embraced by Jesus Christ. They are not unclean ritually and certainly not spiritually.

It is no doubt Peter’s example that leads the church in Antioch to begin evangelizing Gentiles and what motivated Paul to fulfill his calling as apostle to the Gentiles (Acts 11:19-26).