What God Has Cleansed

June 14

I Kings 13-14

Psalm 72:1-7

Proverbs 15:29-30

Acts 10

What God Has Cleansed

“But he became hungry and was desiring to eat.  And while they were making preparations, he fell into a trance and saw heaven opened up, and an object like a great sheet coming down, lowered by four corners to the ground, and there were in it all kinds of four-footed animals and crawling creatures of the earth and birds of the sky.  And a voice came to him, ‘Rise up, Peter, slaughter and eat!’  But Peter said, ‘By no means, Lord, for I have never eaten anything defiled and unclean.’  Again a voice came to him a second time, ‘What God has cleansed, no longer consider defiled.’”  Acts 10:10-15  LSB

While it may seem that this vision was about food, that is not the message God was conveying to Peter.  What God wanted Peter to understand was that God does not consider any person to be unclean based on their nationality, race, gender, or any other outward characteristic and that salvation is not only for the Jews but is available to everyone.  Up until this point, there had been those who were Gentiles who had come to faith in God.  Ruth and Rahab are examples in the Old Testament of people who came from pagan nations who believed in the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob and converted to Judaism.  God told Peter that it is no longer a requirement that the Gentiles become Jews in order to be saved.  Those who believed in Jesus and become Christians do not have to adopt all the rules and regulations of Judaism.  They are no longer bound by the Law including all the specific dietary restrictions, the sacrificial system, and the many laws the religious leaders had added.  Jews considered the Gentile nations “unclean” because they ate foods that had been prohibited and they did not adhere to the strict system of laws of the Jews.  God made it very clear to Peter that what God has cleansed, he should no longer consider defiled. 

This was difficult for Peter to understand and even more difficult for him to explain to the leaders in the new church.  They had grown up in the Jewish faith and had followed the rules their whole lives.  Jesus told them numerous times that He did not come to abolish the law but to fulfill it.  (Matthew 5:17, Luke 24:44)  So if Jesus didn’t come to abolish the Law, didn’t they still need to obey the law and teach the new converts to obey the law as well?  Jesus taught them a new way to understand and apply the law to their lives.  His teaching emphasized the importance of internal transformation and righteousness instead of external compliance and blind adherence to the Law.  He taught them the reason for the Law which was to show them the way to love God and love others.  They didn’t need to go back to following the Law; they needed to allow the Holy Spirit to transform their hearts so that their behavior reflected the change Jesus made in them.  Many of the laws God gave them were to set them apart as God’s chosen people and to protect them from the dangers of following other gods.  That was no longer necessary because God had made salvation available to all who believed in His Son.  What would now set them apart was the Holy Spirit at work in their lives to transform and cleanse them.