After Cornelius, the centurion, explains the angelic visit that prompted him to send for Peter, it drives home to Peter the point God was making with the sheet full of animals: the Lord is not the Lord only of the Jews. Salvation is offered to all people.
I love Peter's response: "I now realize how true it is that God does not show favoritism." (Acts 10:34, NIV)
If you had asked Peter a week before all this started if God showed partiality in his dealings with his creation, it's a fair guess that he would have said, "No, of course not - God does not show favoritism!"
But now? Now he sees "how true it is".
He has reached a much deeper level of understanding.
Here are a few other translations of Peter's epiphany:
"I see very clearly" (NLT)
"Truly I understand" (ESV)
"In truth I perceive" (NKJV)
"I most certainly understand now" (NASB)
In other words: "I finally get it."
When the Holy Spirit is poured out on Cornelius and his entire Gentile household, the text says "the circumcised believers who had come with Peter" are "astonished".
It seems that Peter himself is not astonished. He gets right to baptizing them.
Because now he gets it.
No comments:
Post a Comment