Summary
Clinging
Acts 10 marks one of the most pivotal turning points in all of Scripture: the breaking down of the wall between Jew and Gentile. Up to this point, only one Gentile—the Ethiopian eunuch—had been brought into the faith. The Jews had long understood the Gentiles as outside the bonds of God's covenant, excluded from his saving plan. What unfolds in this chapter cracks that assumption wide open and sets the gospel on its trajectory to the nations.
The chapter introduces Cornelius, a Roman centurion stationed in Caesarea who commanded one hundred men in the elite Italian Cohort. He is described as a "God-fearer"—one of those Gentiles who believed in the God of Israel and worshiped at the synagogue but had not been circumcised and so were not full converts to Judaism. They sat in the back, regarded as on the way but not yet there. Cornelius receives a vision: an angel tells him his prayers and alms have ascended as a memorial before God, and instructs him to send for Peter in Joppa.
Meanwhile, Peter has his own vision on the rooftop—a sheet lowered from heaven filled with all manner of creatures, with the command, "Get up, Peter; kill and eat." Peter's reaction is sharp: "By no means, Lord! For I have never eaten anything that is profane or unclean." To understand that resistance, it helps to remember that the Law given through Moses came in three parts: the moral law (the Ten Commandments), the political law (which governed Israel as a nation), and the ceremonial law (which governed worship, sacrifice, and the food restrictions that set Israel apart). When Israel ceased to be a nation, the political law passed away. When Christ offered himself on the cross as the final sacrifice, the ceremonial law was fulfilled and set aside—every sacrifice had only ever pointed forward to him. The moral law, however, remains and is reaffirmed throughout the New Testament.
Peter's "by no means" is a refusal grounded in the ceremonial law—and beneath that, something deeper. He is Clinging to the law as a way to justify himself, to keep himself righteous before God. This is the very error the Jews had fallen into: treating the law as the means of self-justification rather than as God's gift to a people he had already claimed. It is the same posture as the elder brother in the parable of the prodigal son, who protests, "For all these years I have been working like a slave for you, and I have never disobeyed your command" Luke 15:29. It is the Pharisee in the temple praying, "God, I thank you that I am not like other people" Luke 18:11. It is even Peter himself—who had already preached Christ crucified and risen before the council Acts 5:29-31—lapsing back into the old reflex of measuring his standing by what he has and has not done.
We do the same thing. We compare ourselves to others and place ourselves quietly in the better camp. We shake our heads at what "they" are doing in the world and miss the log in our own eye. We turn inward to justify ourselves and outward to condemn the neighbor, and all of it is the old appeal to the law to make ourselves right. Peter's vision is God's gentle but firm correction: "What God has made clean, you must not call profane." The barrier is coming down—not because the unclean have suddenly become acceptable on their own merits, but because God himself declares them clean.
There is an old story of a dying man recalling Peter's vision and stumbling on the words, until a friend supplied them: "creeping things." The man smiled and said, "That's how I got in. Because I'm a creeping thing saved by the grace of God." That is the heart of the matter. Christ has borne our sin on the cross, paid our debt, lived the perfect life, and credited his righteousness to us; we have been claimed in the waters of Baptism and washed in his promises. As God pries our fingers off the stone of the law and off our endless attempts to make ourselves right, his scarred and nail-driven hands take hold of us. Having been grasped by him, we discover that we are clinging—not to the law, not to ourselves, but to him.
Video citations
- "Clinging" March 10, 2019 — Would you open your Bible please with me to the 10th chapter of the book of Acts for our study this morning? As we enter the 10th chapter today, we come to one of the most important chapters in the…