Acts 10:1-6, 39-48
Cornelius Calls for Peter
1At Caesarea there was a man named Cornelius, a centurion in what was known as the Italian Regiment. 2He and all his family were devout and God-fearing; he gave generously to those in need and prayed to God regularly. 3One day at about three in the afternoon he had a vision. He distinctly saw an angel of God, who came to him and said, “Cornelius!”
4Cornelius stared at him in fear. “What is it, Lord?” he asked.
5The angel answered, “Your prayers and gifts to the poor have come up as a memorial offering before God. Now send men to Joppa to bring back a man named Simon who is called Peter. 6He is staying with Simon the tanner, whose house is by the sea.”
Peter at Cornelius’ House
39 “We are witnesses of everything he did in the country of the Jews and in Jerusalem. They killed him by hanging him on a tree, 40but God raised him from the dead on the third day and caused him to be seen. 41He was not seen by all the people, but by witnesses whom God had already chosen—by us who ate and drank with him after he rose from the dead. 42He commanded us to preach to the people and to testify that he is the one whom God appointed as judge of the living and the dead. 43All the prophets testify about him that everyone who believes in him receives forgiveness of sins through his name.”
44While Peter was still speaking these words, the Holy Spirit came on all who heard the message. 45The circumcised believers who had come with Peter were astonished that the gift of the Holy Spirit had been poured out even on the Gentiles. 46For they heard them speaking in tongues and praising God.
47Then Peter said, “Can anyone keep these people from being baptised with water? They have received the Holy Spirit just as we have.” 48So he ordered that they be baptised in the name of Jesus Christ. Then they asked Peter to stay with them for a few days.
Matthew 8:5–13
The Faith of the Centurion
5When Jesus had entered Capernaum, a centurion came to him, asking for help. 6 “Lord,” he said, “my servant lies at home paralysed and in terrible suffering.”
7Jesus said to him, “I will go and heal him.”
8The centurion replied, “Lord, I do not deserve to have you come under my roof. But just say the word, and my servant will be healed. 9For I myself am a man under authority, with soldiers under me. I tell this one, ‘Go,’ and he goes; and that one, ‘Come,’ and he comes. I say to my servant, ‘Do this,’ and he does it.”
10When Jesus heard this, he was astonished and said to those following him, “I tell you the truth, I have not found anyone in Israel with such great faith. 11I say to you that many will come from the east and the west, and will take their places at the feast with Abraham, Isaac and Jacob in the kingdom of heaven. 12But the subjects of the kingdom will be thrown outside, into the darkness, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.”
13Then Jesus said to the centurion, “Go! It will be done just as you believed it would.” And his servant was healed at that very hour.
The Gospel unites all who look to Christ to deal with their sin
One of the unexpected delights of the Christian Faith for me has been coming to an understanding of the global nature of the church. As a young medical student, I spent some time on placement in South Africa and became part of a lively suburban church there; it was still in the days of apartheid so, of necessity, it was an all-white church. But I was also invited to join a special evening meeting of the Nurses’ Christian Fellowship at the hospital where I was working. It was a mission hospital so most of the nurses were black Africans. Unfortunately, the evening wasn’t quite as uplifting as I had expected as the guest speaker gave an extraordinarily long talk - entirely in Zulu. To this day I have absolutely no idea what he was on about.
Over the years I have met enthusiastic and spirit-filled Christians from across the world - from Malaysia, South Africa, America, Portugal, Austria, France, Ghana, Jamaica. And the thing that strikes me about them is what we sometimes call the ‘bond of faith’ - it’s as if we already knew them when we first met them. We know where they’re coming from in terms of faith and world view. That’s often displayed as a warmth of character and an openness in friendship - what Paul referred to in Phil 2 as:
being like-minded, having the same love, being one in spirit and of one mind
That spirit of trust, love, and unity is very special amongst Christians from across the globe.
But it wasn’t always that way - St Peter had to be educated about that, as we find in our reading from the Acts of the Apostles.
You see, the early church started off exclusively Jewish. At Pentecost, we read that the Holy Spirit was poured out on Jews. Luke tells us that those in Jerusalem were God-fearing Jews from every nation under heaven, both Jews by birth, and converts to Judaism. Pentecost was essentially a Jewish event.
But God never meant the Gospel to stay restricted to the Jews. And as the gospel of Jesus Christ spread, it spread first among the Jews, Acts 2; and then to the Samaritans (who you might say were cousins of the Jewish faith) in Acts 8; and now, in Acts 10, to the Gentiles. And actually, Jesus had already charged his apostles with this three-fold mission in Acts 1:8
But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth." Acts 1:8
You’ll know by now that we’re following a sermon series on various characters in the Acts of the Apostles - and today we come to Cornelius, a Roman Centurion, who with his family was the first Gentile convert to be recorded in the New Testament. So let’s see what happened and what we might learn for our own times. 3 headings
1. An opening of the mind
Then Peter began to speak: "I now realize how true it is that God does not show favoritism but accepts men from every nation who fear him and do what is right. Acts 10:34-35
We didn’t read the whole story of what happened between Cornelius and Peter, simply because it runs for some 48 verses. What we missed out was Peter’s vision which comes in the middle of the passage.
You see, just as Cornelius in Caesarea had his afternoon vision from God telling him to send for Simon Peter, who was 40 miles away in Joppa, so Peter had his own vision. His came the following day. It was noon, and Peter was up on the roof of the house in Joppa. He was hungry and he was waiting to be called down for lunch. And we read that in his vision,
He saw heaven opened and something like a large sheet being let down to earth by its four corners. It contained all kinds of four-footed animals, as well as reptiles of the earth and birds of the air. Then a voice told him, "Get up, Peter. Kill and eat." "Surely not, Lord!" Peter replied. "I have never eaten anything impure or unclean." The voice spoke to him a second time, "Do not call anything impure that God has made clean." Acts 10:11-15
This happened three times. Peter was puzzled by what it meant, but then Cornelius’ men arrived and knocked on the door. At that point Peter had a second vision telling him to go with them to Caesarea. And as he arrived there, the penny dropped for Peter - that he was to preach to this Gentile centurion and his family and to share the gospel with them. As Peter himself says in v28
"You are well aware that it is against our law for a Jew to associate with a Gentile or visit him. But God has shown me that I should not call any man impure or unclean".
And so, as we heard from our reading, Peter explained the good news of Jesus Christ, culminating in the key line:
All the prophets testify about him that everyone who believes in him receives forgiveness of sins through his name." 10:43
Peter found himself pushing against an open door - Cornelius and all his household believed and came to faith in Christ there and then. They became the first Gentile Christians. So what changed in their belief?
2. An opening of the heart
At Caesarea there was a man named Cornelius, a centurion in what was known as the Italian Regiment. He and all his family were devout and God-fearing; he gave generously to those in need and prayed to God regularly. Acts 10:1-2
Cornelius was a good man. He wasn’t a Jew, but equally he doesn’t appear to have worshipped the plethora of gods that were popular with Romans at that time. He was a monotheistic God-fearer, but still, in the eyes of the Jews, a pagan. And his vision came at 3pm - the time of Temple worship for the Jews. We presume Cornelius was praying as he received his vision. He was terrified, but he need not have been - for the angel tells him that
... his prayers and gifts to the poor have come up as a memorial offering before God. 10:4
The language echoes sacrifice and incense - that God is pleased with Cornelius’ devotion and that he will be rewarded. And the reward? That he shall hear what Peter has to say.
And, as we know, Cornelius came to faith through Peter’s message - he and his whole household had their own experience of the Holy Spirit and were baptised in the name of Jesus Christ. But the key point here is that Cornelius has moved from a faith that was about doing to a faith that was about believing. His devotion previously had been all about prayer and giving alms; his motivation was about fearing God.
What does fearing God mean in this context? It’s not about being frightened of God - rather, it’s about being aware of our standing before God. It’s about realizing his holiness and our sinfulness. Realizing how far short we fall from his standards. Cornelius knew that. But he didn’t know what to do about it - he thought he could make up the shortfall by good works and charitable acts.
And that’s the outlook that many share - it’s the outlook of traditional Judaism; and it’s the outlook of Islam. One of the endearing qualities of a true Muslim such as those I have known is their humility - that gentle humility borne of an awareness of their standing before God.
And along with Cornelius, our Muslim friends hope to deal with their sin and shortcomings in the same ways - by prayer (5 times a day); by giving alms; and of course supplemented by pilgrimage to Mecca, and by the annual Ramadan fast. Just as with Cornelius, it’s a faith of doing - always hoping that your actions are good enough.
But what Peter taught - and what the Christian gospel is all about - is that this devotion can never be enough, such is the gulf between us and God. We can never work our way to God by good works. But in Christ there is a solution:
.. the prophets testify about him that everyone who believes in Jesus receives forgiveness of sins through his name." 10:43
Forgiveness is the unearned, free gift of Jesus - we look to him to make up the shortfall by his death in our place on the cross. It is he who takes the punishment that should have been ours - he who takes the sting of guilt and death. Suddenly for Cornelius it made sense - he could never be good enough for the God he feared, but Jesus was good enough in his place. His heart - and the hearts of his whole household - were opened and they believed.
3. An opening for the Spirit.
While Peter was still speaking, the Holy Spirit came down on all those who were listening to his message. The Jewish believers who had come from Joppa with Peter were amazed that God had poured out his gift of the Holy Spirit on the Gentiles also. For they heard them speaking in strange tongues and praising God’s greatness. Peter spoke up: "These people have received the Holy Spirit, just as we also did". Acts 10:44-47
It was Pentecost Sunday all over again. And I think that’s very deliberate on God’s part - for this fresh outpouring of the Spirit confirmed that this gospel is for Gentile as well as Jew - uncircumcised and circumcised - all are equal in God’s sight. The Gentiles were having their own Pentecost experience. And actually, something similar happened to the Samaritan believers earlier in Acts.
So should we expect similar manifestations to happen routinely when people come to faith in Christ? Or was this just a one-off gift of the Spirit to demonstrate this sort of stepwise expansion of the Gospel?
I’m just reading a biography of the preacher George Whitefield, who was a Gloucester lad who was central in the great Evangelical Awakening that swept the UK in the 1740s. Whitefield found himself preaching to huge crowds in the open air - upwards of 20,000 or more - and similar Pentecost experiences happened at many of his addresses as people responded in faith.
Two other preachers who were closely involved in that same awakening were John and Charles Wesley, Anglican ministers whose teachings eventually gave birth to the Methodist Church. Listen to this account from Charles Wesley’s diary for March 1740. You might recognize the place names where Wesley was preaching:
Saturday March 29th, 1740. I came to Westcot; found Mr. Morgan hungering and thirsting for righteousness. They desired me to expound the lesson, St. Paul’s Epistle to Philemon… the Spirit was present in his demonstration. Brother Maxfield felt it; and told me, he knew Mrs. M. had received the blessing.
The following day Idbury church and churchyard were full. I showed them wherein holiness consisted; answered their objections, dividing to them the word of truth, both law and Gospel. Many were pierced to the dividing asunder their soul and spirit. One woman the commandment plainly slew; and she was carried off in a fit. O that all hardened sinners were so wounded in spirit! We hasted back to Westcot; where I preached the pure Gospel from the good Samaritan. Surely he was in the midst, pouring in his oil and wine. I adjourned to Mr. Morgan’s. His house was crowded as a Minister’s ought to be.
We can’t prescribe how the Spirit will be dispensed; but clearly these Pentecost experiences still happen from time to time when God has work to do, even in places like Idbury and Westcote! They aren’t just something confined to the Acts of the Apostles. But however, the Spirit is manifest - with spectacle and drama, or with a quiet warmth in the heart, be assured He is poured out on all who receive Christ.
The conversion of Cornelius was the first step in the spread of the Gospel across the whole Gentile world. And it lays the foundation for the world-wide church, being like-minded, having the same love, being one in spirit and of one mind
It showed that for those early believers on Pentecost Sunday, for those first Samaritan believers, for Cornelius and his family and the Gentiles who followed on; for Wesley’s congregations in Idbury and Westcote in 1740; and for us in our day, the prophesy of Joel is still fulfilled:
"And afterward, I will pour out my Spirit on all people. Your sons and daughters will prophesy, your old men will dream dreams, your young men will see visions. Even on my servants, both men and women, I will pour out my Spirit in those days.
And everyone who calls on the name of the LORD will be saved Joel 2:28-32