Acts 11: No One for the Gentile Believers?
The move away from the Temple, and its constituent worship, must have been difficult for the Jewish believers. They continued to meet in the Temple at Solomon’s Colonnade, and remained anchored to Jerusalem, in opposition to Jesus’s commission, until persecution broke the hold Jerusalem had over them. Yet, we read that many priests believed (Acts 6:7) and Stephen answered with his life the charge that the people of the Way were moving beyond Mosaic law. So, a departure from Jewish practice was inevitable; and it appears that God forced it when they would not move out beyond the womb Jerusalem provided them.
As an aside, God used Saul to force their hand to the plow; Saul’s zeal had the opposite effect he intended—it dispersed the seed of the Good News of Jesus Christ. Equally remarkable is the much different employment of Paul in the carrying the seed of the Gospel into the West. God is amazingly capable of working great and miraculous things in the hearts and lives of His people in order to carry out His settled plans and purposes.
Where the Jewish Christians really stumbled was the inclusion of the Gentiles, the heathen, the barbarians, the strangers, and the outsiders into the Kingdom of God. Rather than restoring the Kingdom to Israel as the disciples had hoped (with the unspoken, but longed for, eviction of Rome and Israel’s enemies), God purposed in Christ to bring near those who were afar off. They stumbled over this; and it was not only the Circumcision [Party] that was scandalized by it—as was seen in Chapter 10 in the prelude to the Holy Spirit falling upon Cornelius and his household.
[Note: “party” is in brackets because that word in not in the Greek text. I find the omission more compelling; and more instructive in setting out how identified they were with their Jewish prejudices. In the Greek, they are the Circumcision. That’s a telling identification, and demarcation—and one that will continue to trouble the church. That specific trouble begins here, but prejudices were already present, most notably between the Jewish Jews and the Hellenistic Jews who had become Christians. That they were joined in Christ did not result in the negation of cultural differences or hierarchies. These prejudices provide us with a warning: our identification with Christ cuts deeply enough, divides precisely enough, as Jesus said (Luke 12:53); we do not need to make our own separations based upon our weights and measures.]
How many witnesses did Simon Peter bring? Six—that would make seven witnesses including himself—three times the required amount of testimony. See Deuteronomy 19:15 (“A matter must be established by the testimony of two to three witnesses.”). He understood full well what the Holy Spirit had done; but he also understood what that “Cornelius episode” would mean “at home.”
Confronted by his own mates, Simon Peter presents the evidence with very little of the conviction he has presented before his opponents. And while the Circumcision [party] falls silent and everyone glorifies God, something is missing. Have you noticed? Luke highlights it, but you have to look for it.
In Acts 11:22, Luke records that the report of the hand of the Lord upon Jews in Antioch, with a great number believing in Jesus Christ, had reached the ears of the church in Jerusalem. They immediately responded by sending Barnabas.
We have read this before. In Acts Chapter 8, when the church in Jerusalem heard that Samaria had received the word of God, they sent Peter and John to them immediately. Acts 8:14. The Jews and the Samaritans were not friendly. The woman at the well was quite careful to remind Jesus that they did not associate with one another. John 4:9. Indeed, Jesus relied upon that prejudice in the parable of the Good Samaritan to sharpen the contrast between a heart warmed and moved by God and a heart numbed by religious practice and entitlement. Even so, Peter and John went—and were sent even, by the other ten presumably.
But, when it comes to Cornelius and his household, full Gentiles, not half-breeds like the Samaritans, no one is sent. That’s shameful especially in light of Jesus’ interaction with another centurion with faith unrivaled in Jerusalem. Luke 7:1-10. That was a lesson that did not adhere to the disciples after Jesus departed to His Father.
The church in Jerusalem never really developed much thereafter to say to the Gentiles—nor does it appear they were inclined to offer much by way of a hand of fellowship other than a few edicts to refrain from things polluted by idols, from sexual immorality, from things strangled, and from .blood. Acts 15:19. That’s not fellowship, of sister and brother. That’s law, not grace—and in the end, they were relieved for Paul to go the Gentiles and to leave them to the Jews. Gal. 2:9.
That short-sidedness is not seen where you would most expect it however. One would have thought Paul would have mounted the biggest objections to the inclusion of the Gentiles into God’s plan of salvation, and yet he was its biggest proponent and catalyst.
God revealed to both Simon Peter (Acts 10) and Paul (Eph. 3:1-7) that the Gentiles were to be clean, or were clean, in Christ Jesus. How they reacted to that revelation, in contrast, is a theme that Luke carries throughout Acts, and one Paul most certainly addresses in his letters to the churches outside of Jerusalem.
What does this say about us? We are human too, with both a mandate from Christ and our bag of prejudices and traditions. But God is moving; the Father is working and Jesus too. See e.g., John 5:17. Are we missing what He is doing? Are we staying behind in our Jerusalem? Is there a Cornelius that we need to attend to?
These are good questions. Thank you, Luke.
