No Partiality

 Second Tuesday of Advent

Today we return to our Acts Bible Study. Please read Acts 10:39-43. Here we have Peter's first sermon to gentiles. Actually it's Luke's summary of Peter's sermon. In this summary Peter touches on all of what he regards as essential for gentiles to know in order to come to faith in Jesus Christ. 

Peter begins by proclaiming that God shows no partiality toward Jews. Jews and gentiles are equal in God's sight. Americans are used to the concept (though often not the reality) of equality. Graeco-Roman and Jewish antiquity harbored no such notions. A casual reading of the most famous writers of the time, the Greek Plutarch and the Roman Cicero will shock our modern consciousness. Greeks and Romans assumed inequality and thought of it as a good thing. Wealth and literacy were the clearest signs of moral superiority. In the Roman Empire only the wealthiest, pure blooded Roman males of the Patrician class could be elected to the Senate, and only the senators were allowed to vote. 

One of the numerous shocking things earliest Christianity promoted was the idea of equality. This idea the Romans found laughable in the first century; threatening, as Christianity grew in the centuries following.

Peter goes on to describe something close to a natural theology. Even gentiles who don't have the scriptures of the Jews can have a natural sense that there is one God, and a natural morality to do what is right in God's eyes. Coming to know Christ will bring them fully into the peace and joy they have only glimpsed before. 

Peter then tells his audience of the spread of Christianity from Jerusalem to Samaria and now into gentile territory in Caesarea. One thing utterly different about Christianity is that it is the only missionary religion of the time. Judaism did not seek converts. You were born a Jew. The Graeco-Roman religions did not seek converts. People found out about them and strove to meet the qualifications to be accepted into one or another of them. Christianity had no qualifications. Everyone was not only accepted but sought after. On the other hand the Roman emperor cult did embrace all subjects of the empire. You were in it whether you wanted to be or not. Christians' refusal to participate in the emperor cult made them a threat to the Empire, even if it was a very small threat in these earliest days of Christianity's growth.

 

Peter then tells of the life of Jesus. Jesus was anointed with the Holy Spirit and power. He did healings. He was crucified. God raised him from the dead. In his resurrected body he ate and drank with the Apostles. He commanded the Apostles to preach. He brings forgiveness. 

 

In our next Bible study we'll see how the crowd reacts to Peter's preaching. One thing that comes through very clearly in the first 12 chapters of Acts, though Luke never explicitly states it, is that Peter is an extremely effective speaker. Stay tuned.

 

Faithfully,

Christian