Acts 11

¹ Now the apostles and the brothers who were throughout Judea heard that the Gentiles also had received the word of God. ² So when Peter went up to Jerusalem, the circumcision party criticized him, saying, ³ “You went to uncircumcised men and ate with them.” ⁴ But Peter began and explained it to them in order: ⁵ “I was in the city of Joppa praying, and in a trance I saw a vision, something like a great sheet descending, being let down from heaven by its four corners, and it came down to me. ⁶ Looking at it closely, I observed animals and beasts of prey and reptiles and birds of the air. ⁷ And I heard a voice saying to me, ‘Rise, Peter; kill and eat.’ ⁸ But I said, ‘By no means, Lord; for nothing common or unclean has ever entered my mouth.’ ⁹ But the voice answered a second time from heaven, ‘What God has made clean, do not call common.’ ¹⁰ This happened three times, and all was drawn up again into heaven. ¹¹ And behold, at that very moment three men arrived at the house in which we were, sent to me from Caesarea. ¹² And the Spirit told me to go with them, making no distinction. These six brothers also accompanied me, and we entered the man’s house. ¹³ And he told us how he had seen the angel stand in his house and say, ‘Send to Joppa and bring Simon who is called Peter; ¹⁴ he will declare to you a message by which you will be saved, you and all your household.’ ¹⁵ As I began to speak, the Holy Spirit fell on them just as on us at the beginning. ¹⁶ And I remembered the word of the Lord, how he said, ‘John baptized with water, but you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit.’ ¹⁷ If then God gave the same gift to them as he gave to us when we believed in the Lord Jesus Christ, who was I that I could stand in God’s way?” ¹⁸ When they heard these things they fell silent. And they glorified God, saying, “Then to the Gentiles also God has granted repentance that leads to life.” ¹⁹ Now those who were scattered because of the persecution that arose over Stephen traveled as far as Phoenicia and Cyprus and Antioch, speaking the word to no one except Jews. ²⁰ But there were some of them, men of Cyprus and Cyrene, who on coming to Antioch spoke to the Hellenists also, preaching the Lord Jesus. ²¹ And the hand of the Lord was with them, and a great number who believed turned to the Lord. ²² The report of this came to the ears of the church in Jerusalem, and they sent Barnabas to Antioch. ²³ When he came and saw the grace of God, he was glad, and he exhorted them all to remain faithful to the Lord with steadfast purpose, ²⁴ for he was a good man, full of the Holy Spirit and of faith. And a great many people were added to the Lord. ²⁵ So Barnabas went to Tarsus to look for Saul, ²⁶ and when he had found him, he brought him to Antioch. For a whole year they met with the church and taught a great many people. And in Antioch the disciples were first called Christians. ²⁷ Now in these days prophets came down from Jerusalem to Antioch. ²⁸ And one of them named Agabus stood up and foretold by the Spirit that there would be a great famine over all the world (this took place in the days of Claudius). ²⁹ So the disciples determined, every one according to his ability, to send relief to the brothers living in Judea. ³⁰ And they did so, sending it to the elders by the hand of Barnabas and Saul.

Some years ago a friend of mine asked me to take a ride with him.  He took me to an old, largely empty house in this small rural town in South Georgia.  Inside the house there were a number of boxes containing books.  He informed me that he wanted me to look through the books, taking whichever titles I wanted.  As it turned out, my friend had been the pastor of the man who lived in this house and had become the executor of the man’s estate before his passing.  The man had no family to speak of and so the books were at my friend’s disposal.

As I looked through the boxes I was immediately struck by the weight of the titles and subjects.  Many were books on philosophy and many on theology and church history and biblical studies.  Curious, I asked my friend who exactly this man had been.  He explained to me that he had taught philosophy at a small liberal arts college in an adjoining town and had also spent some time as a pastor.  He went on to tell me a story that struck me then and now as tragic and deeply saddening.

The man whose books I was perusing had served as the pastor of a small, rural Southern Baptist church not too far from the church I was pastoring at that time.  My friend told me that in 1956 his friend had gone into the pulpit of that church and preached a message on the practical implications of the cross, one of which being that all people of all races who came to Christ were now part of one family and one Church.  As such, he informed his church, no church should bar anyone entry into membership on the basis of skin color.  This was, as you might imagine, a very controversial sentiment for a pastor to make in the Deep South in the 1950’s.

My friend went on to inform me that after the service the pastor went to lunch and out visiting.  When he returned for the evening service, all of his furniture had been moved out into the front yard and he was handed his last check along with the news that he was no longer the pastor of that church.

My friend told me that the gentleman never preached again.

I keep this man’s books on my shelves.  They have an added meaning to me.  They stand now not only as books but also as living memorials to the convictions of a man who dared to think through what it meant that Christ laid down His life and rose from the grave.  The consistency and courage of his convictions cost him a job, but won him, I am convinced, the favor of the Father.  Surely the Father is pleased when one of His ministers speaks the truth of the gospel to a Church culture that refuses to follow her King into the uncomfortable places.

In every one of this man’s books I put a sticker briefly recounting his story.  That is so I will not forget.  That is so the next guy who is one day thumbing through my box of books asking, “Who was this guy?” will not forget.

I know very little else about the man whose books I now own, but this I know:  he understood Jesus, he understood the cross, and he understood the seismic shift that had to happen in the minds of the first Jewish converts for them to be able to receive into the fellowship of the faith those whom they had been conditioned to view as unwelcomed outsiders and strangers.

There will often be opposition to the extent of God’s grace within the Church.

As we approach Acts 11, let us look at an unpleasant truth square in the face:  there will often be opposition to the extent of God’s grace within the Church.  Remember that in chapter 10, God had brought Peter together with the Gentile God-fearer Cornelius.  God there taught Peter a lesson:  Christ has opened the door for all to come in, even the Gentiles.  Furthermore, it was no longer appropriate for the Jewish believers to view the Gentile believers as unclean or unworthy.  On the contrary, the same Spirit comes to all through Christ, and the Church is therefore charged with the task of incarnating that oneness.

Peter learned this, but the Church at large had not yet learned this.  Thus, when Peter goes back to the mother church in Jerusalem, he finds a people who are none too pleased.

¹ Now the apostles and the brothers who were throughout Judea heard that the Gentiles also had received the word of God. ² So when Peter went up to Jerusalem, the circumcision party criticized him, saying, ³ “You went to uncircumcised men and ate with them.”

Ah!  We see the rub:  Peter had dared to eat with Gentiles.  John Chrysostom pointed out to his congregation that the Jewish Christians in Jerusalem did not ask, “Why did you preach to them?” but asked “Why did you eat with them?”[1]  This was a scandal!  In eating with the Gentiles he had done what no good Jew would do.  He had sullied himself, dirtied himself in table fellowship with the unclean, outsider Gentiles.  This was unacceptable!  We must remember that while these dear people who are questioning Peter had indeed accepted Christ, they had not yet fully thought the matter through.

Peter’s response is rich with pastoral gentleness and wisdom.  He decides that there is nothing to do but tell the incensed brothers and sisters the story of what happened.

⁴ But Peter began and explained it to them in order: ⁵ “I was in the city of Joppa praying, and in a trance I saw a vision, something like a great sheet descending, being let down from heaven by its four corners, and it came down to me. ⁶ Looking at it closely, I observed animals and beasts of prey and reptiles and birds of the air. ⁷ And I heard a voice saying to me, ‘Rise, Peter; kill and eat.’ ⁸ But I said, ‘By no means, Lord; for nothing common or unclean has ever entered my mouth.’ ⁹ But the voice answered a second time from heaven, ‘What God has made clean, do not call common.’ ¹⁰ This happened three times, and all was drawn up again into heaven. ¹¹ And behold, at that very moment three men arrived at the house in which we were, sent to me from Caesarea. ¹² And the Spirit told me to go with them, making no distinction. These six brothers also accompanied me, and we entered the man’s house. ¹³ And he told us how he had seen the angel stand in his house and say, ‘Send to Joppa and bring Simon who is called Peter; ¹⁴ he will declare to you a message by which you will be saved, you and all your household.’ ¹⁵ As I began to speak, the Holy Spirit fell on them just as on us at the beginning. ¹⁶ And I remembered the word of the Lord, how he said, ‘John baptized with water, but you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit.’ ¹⁷ If then God gave the same gift to them as he gave to us when we believed in the Lord Jesus Christ, who was I that I could stand in God’s way?”

It is an amazing story, and one that needed to be told.  It is the story we read in Acts 10, the previous chapter.  William Barclay noted the significance of the fact that Luke devoted so much space to telling and then retelling this story of Peter and Cornelius.  Barclay concludes, “Luke was right.  We usually do not realize how near Christianity was to becoming only another kind of Judaism.”[2]

This cannot be overstated:  everything hinged on these early Jewish converts coming to understand what was meant by the gospel.  What was at question here was whether or not Christ and Christ alone was sufficient.  What was at question was whether or not believers in Christ also needed to be circumcised and keep the dietary laws, that is, whether or not believers in Christ also needed to be Jews.  It is a question that haunted the early church and it would dominate the writings of Paul.

Again, these were not evil men questioning Peter.  These were followers of Jesus.  However, they were followers of Jesus who were struggling to take on the mind of Christ.  They were growing up in the gospel.  Peter had to do it first, then Peter helped them to do it.  The response of the gathered Church was amazing.

¹⁸ When they heard these things they fell silent. And they glorified God, saying, “Then to the Gentiles also God has granted repentance that leads to life.”

They fell silent, pondering these things.  Then they rejoiced!  “Well, it looks like the Gentiles get to come in too!”

What an amazing, beautiful scene!  The gospel breaks through!  They decide to embrace the radical conclusions of the gospel in action and open their arms to the Gentiles.  This will be a slow and painful process as there was much that had to be undone in their own assumptions, but it had to be done.

The missional life of the Church should be as wide as God’s mercy.

In the light of Peter’s sermon, there was only one unescapable conclusion:  the missional life of the Church should be as wide as God’s mercy.  Who the Lord God invites should be invited…and He invites all! 

¹⁹ Now those who were scattered because of the persecution that arose over Stephen traveled as far as Phoenicia and Cyprus and Antioch, speaking the word to no one except Jews.

Here we see that the maturation of the Church on these questions was slow and, in a sense, in stages.  At this point we have essentially two factions in the Church:  those Jewish converts who still felt that one had to be a good Jew in addition to accepting Christ and those who understood that Christ was Himself the fulfillment of the law and the prophets, and that, in Him, we are rendered clean and righteous and right.  So some continue to preach only to the Jews, but others step out further.

²⁰ But there were some of them, men of Cyprus and Cyrene, who on coming to Antioch spoke to the Hellenists also, preaching the Lord Jesus. ²¹ And the hand of the Lord was with them, and a great number who believed turned to the Lord.

Let us notice that “the hand of the Lord” was with the men and women who took the gospel outside of their comfort zones and proclaimed it to the Gentiles, to outsiders.  This is not to suggest that there were not genuine conversions as a result of the preaching of the group who went only to the Jews, but it is almost certain that this is Luke’s way of highlighting the critical fact that those who made their preaching as wide as the mercy of God were those who held the special blessing of God.  They preached no stunted gospel.  They preached the full, robust, radical, paradigm-shattering gospel of Christ to all!

They preached it in the city of Antioch.  John Polhill calls Antioch “a natural setting for the Gentile missions,” pointing out that Antioch “was the third largest city in the Roman empire” with a “population of some 500,000 to 800,000” which made it third to Rome and Alexandria.[3]  It was therefore a critical population center and a strategic one.  They preached boldly and passionately in this great city.  As a result, many are saved…and as a result of that, the Church once again has to think through what to do.  So they send a representative.  This is not unusual.  They did the same when Philip took the gospel to the Samaritans.  But who they sent is most telling.

²² The report of this came to the ears of the church in Jerusalem, and they sent Barnabas to Antioch. ²³ When he came and saw the grace of God, he was glad, and he exhorted them all to remain faithful to the Lord with steadfast purpose, ²⁴ for he was a good man, full of the Holy Spirit and of faith. And a great many people were added to the Lord. ²⁵ So Barnabas went to Tarsus to look for Saul, ^26a-b and when he had found him, he brought him to Antioch. For a whole year they met with the church and taught a great many people.

They send Barnabas.  Why?  Because this great man had already demonstrated a capacity to take his cross well beyond the comfort zone into the unsettling but exhilarating fields of the grace of God.  He had done this earlier by putting his arm around Paul while everybody else was shrinking away in fear.  He was a man who embraced when others were tempted to shun.  But Barnabas’ embrace was not one of mere sentimentality.  It was one of rock solid conviction.  It was because he understood Jesus that Barnabas embraced Paul and helped bring him into the church.  It was because he understood Jesus that Barnabas was now sent to Antioch to embrace this most unexpected Gentile believer.

Tellingly, upon seeing what had happened in Antioch, Paul went and brought the one person who could also understand:  Paul.  How unbelievably beautiful!  This former Pharisee of the Pharisees understood better than most what it was to be an unlikely convert.  He had experienced the awkwardness of the suspicious eyes of the Church.  He knew what it was to be drawn to a Church that did not quite know what to make of his presence.

So these two champions go to Antioch.  They go and they stay and they live and they teach and they grow together in the grace of the Lord Jesus!

^26c And in Antioch the disciples were first called Christians. ²⁷ Now in these days prophets came down from Jerusalem to Antioch. ²⁸ And one of them named Agabus stood up and foretold by the Spirit that there would be a great famine over all the world (this took place in the days of Claudius). ²⁹ So the disciples determined, every one according to his ability, to send relief to the brothers living in Judea. ³⁰ And they did so, sending it to the elders by the hand of Barnabas and Saul.

In Antioch, they are first called Christians.  The believers were called “Christiani” in Antioch.  Barclay points out that “-iani” means “belonging to the party of” and that the name Christiani would have meant something like “These Christ-folk.”[4]  It was not, initially, a compliment.  It was almost certainly a slight from outsiders.  Tellingly, however, the Church embraced the name seeing in it a more than apt description of who they were.

For our purposes, it is noteworthy to consider how the name “Christian” itself helped to break down the divisions between the Jewish believers and the Gentile believers.  It did so by removing the front-end qualifier and grounding the Church’s identity in Christian alone.  “These Christ-folk” were no longer Jewish Christ-folk or Gentile Christ-folk.  They were just Christ-folk.

It is possible that in so calling the believers Christians, the outside world inadvertently helped them embrace the only path to unity available to them.  They were now simply Jesus people, and, in Christ, the old distinctions melt away.  Paul would later put it beautifully in Galatians 3:28 when he would write, “There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is no male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.”

You are all one.

We are all one.

A great Christian from yesteryear, Gregory of Nyssa, once powerfully spoke of the reality of the leveling effect of everybody being called “Christian.”

Our good Master, Jesus Christ, bestowed on us a partnership in his revered name, so that we get our name from no other person connected with us, and if one happens to be rich and well-born or of lowly origin and poor, or if one has some distinction from his business or position, all such conditions are of no avail because the one authoritative name for those believing in him is that of Christian.[5]

“All such conditions are of no avail.”

Why?

Because Christ has triumphed not only over sin, death, and hell…but also over our divisions.

We are one in Christ.

Be one in Christ.