New Life for Everyone

Acts 11: 1-18

Acts 11:1-18 tells the story of how Peter began to meet and talk about Jesus with people who were not Jewish.  At first, all of the original apostles and disciples of Jesus, the ones who had listened to him, eaten with him and travelled with him, believed that Jesus’ message was for the Jewish people alone. 

Then Peter had a vision in which God told him to accept things that were unacceptable according to Jewish law, specifically, to eat things that were prohibited by the rules of kosher.  At that moment, he received an invitation to go to the home of a gentile (non-Jewish) person who wanted to hear about Jesus, so he went, and he was criticized for going. 

While he was there, he saw that the people of the household were all given the gift of the presence of the Holy Spirit.  He recognized it as the same gift that he and the other disciples had received in the Upper Room on the day of Pentecost.  Peter realized that God was with these people, whom he thought were outside the reach of God’s love.  Here are the final verses of this story (I have added the emphasis):

“And as I began to speak, the Holy Spirit fell upon them just as it had upon us at the beginning.  And I remembered the word of the Lord, how he had said, ‘John baptized with water, but you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit.’  If then God gave them the same gift that he gave us when we believed in the Lord Jesus Christ, who was I that I could hinder God?”  When they heard this, they were silenced. And they praised God, saying, “Then God has given even to the Gentiles the repentance that leads to life.”

If this had not happened, you and I would not be Jesus followers today.  So … Thanks be to God for God’s expansive and inclusive love!