Again a voice came to him a second time, “What God has cleansed, no longer consider unholy” (Acts 10:15).

We know that God does not change (cf. Malachi 3:6; Hebrews 13:8); however, many commit the non sequitur fallacy by presuming that because God does not change, His laws also do not change. His laws certainly do change. After all, just the fact that there was a time, when there was no Law, proves His laws change. In our passage today we learn that God, the Giver and final Enforcer of the Law, can declare what was once unclean to now be clean. Jesus exercised the same authority (cf. Mark 7:19). Jesus even declared that He was the Lord of the Sabbath Law (cf. Luke 6:5).

Here is what we must understand. The One who has the absolute authority to make the law also has the authority to change the law. This is also why God could replace the Old Covenant Mosaic Law with the New Covenant Law of the Spirit of Christ:

For if there had been nothing wrong with that first covenant, no place would have been sought for another... By calling this covenant “new,” he has made the first one obsolete; and what is obsolete and outdated will soon disappear (Hebrews 8:7,13).

God does not change in His nature. He does not lie (cf. Numbers 23:19). He is absolutely faithful (cf. Deuteronomy 7:9; 1 Thessalonians 5:24). He does not break His promises, for to do so, He would be changing His nature. But that God gave Adam and Eve one Law, then Moses another Law, and then Christians yet another Law, each within their respective dispensation of God's grace, does not alter God's essential nature one iota.

What is more, not only can God change His laws, He is also above His laws. In other words, they do not apply to Him. He can order the massacre of Amorite children, but no one can hold Him to account for breaking the law against murder. It is not murder for God. He who brought people into the world is always justified in taking them out. There is no unrighteousness in God because He always lives to define what righteousness is. To know good is to know God, for God is good (cf. Psalm 136:1). We are bound to follow His laws as the creature is bound to its Creator, as the weaker is subject to the Stronger.

Friends, let us not allow ourselves to diminish God in our hearts. He is more than our Savior. He is our Creator; and more than this, He is the Maker of all things, the First Principle, before Whom there is nothing else; He is the only uncaused Cause. As such, there is nothing better for us to do than to worship Him and to align our lives after His revealed will for us. Let us never fall into the folly of judging what God says or does, but as we have believed, so let us completely trust and obey Him.

AI-Expanded Reflection

Peter’s vision in Acts 10 does not end with an abstract lesson about food. Its meaning unfolds as Gentile visitors arrive, Peter enters Cornelius’s house, and the Spirit comes upon the hearers. Peter himself explains that God has shown him not to call any person common or unclean (10:28). The vision participates in the opening of the mission across a boundary Peter had regarded as religiously decisive. God’s cleansing action requires a change in Peter’s conduct toward people, not merely a revised opinion about a menu.

The original correctly distinguishes God’s unchanging character from the claim that every covenantal arrangement remains identical throughout history. Scripture describes promises, commands, and administrations given at particular moments and fulfilled or transformed in relation to Christ. Hebrews 8 explicitly speaks of a new covenant. Faithfulness does not require God to repeat every earlier arrangement indefinitely; it requires him to remain true to his character and promises as his purpose unfolds. A command’s setting and intended duration therefore matter for interpretation.

However, divine authority should not be described as arbitrary superiority, as though whatever the strongest being chooses becomes good without relation to character. The original itself affirms that God cannot lie and remains faithful. Those affirmations are essential. Scripture presents his judgments as righteous and his authority as inseparable from who he is. Human inability to stand above God does not make moral language meaningless. We know his goodness through his self-revelation, supremely in Jesus Christ, rather than by treating sheer power as the definition of righteousness.

The reference to ancient conquest introduces questions that Acts 10 is not trying to answer. Such texts require attention to their historical and canonical setting and cannot authorize private violence today. A claim that God once commanded a judgment gives no individual permission to imitate it on personal conviction. Peter’s own present instruction moves toward welcome, listening, and recognition of grace among people he previously kept at a distance. That narrative direction should govern the application rather than being overshadowed by a generalized defense of unlimited coercive power.

The searching question is whether we allow God’s demonstrated action to correct our inherited boundaries. Peter does not abandon discernment; he recounts the evidence to other believers in Acts 11, and the community comes to recognize what God has done. Obedience can require both courage to act and willingness to explain. We may discover that a practice once treated as a marker of faithfulness has become an obstacle to receiving someone God has welcomed. Trust in the unchanging God then produces change in us. His constancy does not protect every settled habit from examination; it gives us the confidence to follow his revealed purpose when that purpose exposes the limits of our previous understanding.

Saul increased all the more in strength and confounded the Jews who lived in Damascus by proving that Jesus was the Christ; when many days had passed, the Jews plotted to kill him (a paraphrase of Acts 9:22–23). And he spoke and disputed against the Hellenists, but they were seeking to kill him (a paraphrase of Acts 9:29).

This does not sound like the most auspicious way to begin a ministry. Twice, in two places, Paul barely escaped death at the hands of his offended Jewish hearers. It is clear that he used logic and persuasion to prove that Jesus was the Christ in fulfillment of the Jewish messianic hope; yet rather than embracing this truth, they sought to kill him.

Friends, as I have argued elsewhere, there is a real need today for bold, confrontational witness. I believe our preoccupation with the more culturally acceptable "friendship evangelism" has often done little more than water down the Gospel message to pagan acceptability. Tolerance and accommodation are the mantras of our age. Christianity is considered just one of many ways to heaven, and every religion is thought to worship the same God under a different name. Our generation is all about experience and ever further removed from the truth of God's Word.

Friends, I believe growing wickedness and spiritual decline are inevitable, but we can slow that decline in our generation through bold and confrontational witness. Yet I see fewer and fewer pastors embrace this challenge. Instead, I believe many have compromised God's truth for popular preaching that people enjoy, religious platitudes that carry no conviction or consequence, and a political correctness that fills congregations without calling people to holiness.

Where is the boldness of John the Baptist? Or of Jesus, who called out the Pharisees for their hypocrisy and the rich young man for his love of wealth? Or of Peter, who directly accused his countrymen of killing their Messiah? Or of Stephen, who recounted the whole history of his people only to conclude that they had always been stiff-necked and rebellious? Or of Paul, who told the Jews they had judged themselves unworthy of eternal life (Acts 13:46) and told the Gentiles they were ignorant? Today there is hardly any real persecution in America. Perhaps this is because there is hardly any real boldness or confrontation by Christians in America.

AI-Expanded Reflection

Acts 9 shows how the church's most famous persecutor became its most famous missionary, and it is worth noticing the people God used along the way. Ananias of Damascus was afraid to go to Saul — "I have heard from many about this man, how much evil he has done" — yet went, laid his hands on him, and greeted him as "Brother Saul" (9:13, 17). Later, when the Jerusalem disciples were afraid of him, Barnabas "took him and brought him to the apostles" and vouched for him (9:26–27). Paul's bold ministry was made possible by two believers who took risks to welcome him.

Paul's own later reflections suggest that he held boldness and adaptability together. He described himself as having reasoned "from the Scriptures, explaining and proving that it was necessary for the Christ to suffer" (17:2–3), and he wrote that he became "all things to all people, that by all means I might save some" (1 Corinthians 9:22). Christians today weigh relational and confrontational approaches to evangelism differently; many would say Scripture models both — the courage the comment calls for, and patient relationships like those of Ananias and Barnabas that often open the door for it.

Acts 10:15–17 records the voice coming to Peter a second time — what God has made clean, do not call common — and that this happened three times before the sheet was taken up, and that while Peter was inwardly perplexed about what the vision meant, the men sent by Cornelius arrived at the gate.

You would think that after three times he would get it. I am glad that God has claimed even the thick-headed.

AI-Expanded Reflection

The observation is a fair one and Luke seems to intend the humor — he specifies the three repetitions and then says Peter was still perplexed, which is a deliberate piece of characterization rather than incidental detail.

Worth noting what Peter was being asked to overturn. This was not a minor scruple but a dietary discipline that had marked Jewish identity for centuries, that faithful Jews had died rather than violate under persecution, and that Peter had kept his whole life. His reply to the voice is that he has never eaten anything impure — which is offered as an argument, not an excuse. Slowness here looks less like dullness than like the ordinary difficulty of being asked to reverse something one has been right to hold.

The timing is also Luke's point. Peter is still turning the vision over when the knock comes, and the meaning arrives through the men at the gate rather than through further reflection. Understanding follows the encounter rather than preceding it, which is roughly what happens in the rest of the chapter too.

Saul was still breathing out murderous threats against the Lord's disciples. He went to the high priest and asked for letters to the synagogues in Damascus so that if he found any who belonged to the Way, men or women, he might take them prisoner. As he neared Damascus a light from heaven flashed around him; he fell to the ground and heard a voice asking why he persecuted Him (a paraphrase of Acts 9:1–4).

And at Caesarea there was a man named Cornelius, a centurion of the Italian Regiment. He and all his family were devout and God-fearing; he gave generously to those in need and prayed regularly. One afternoon he had a vision and distinctly saw an angel of God, who called him by name (a paraphrase of Acts 10:1–3).

Was Saul the only murderous opponent of the church in Jerusalem? Yet he was the one given this vision of Christ. Was Cornelius the only God-fearing Gentile? Yet God visits him with a vision and sends Peter to him.

Scripture does teach that God shows no favoritism — but that means He does not favor the rich over the poor or the learned over the unlearned. It does not mean He chooses everyone for a given service. His election is not based on human standing.

AI-Expanded Reflection

The argument from particularity is a real one and the two examples are well chosen. Neither man had a claim, and neither is presented as having been selected for merit — Saul least of all, since Luke has just described what he was on his way to do.

On the passages themselves: both Saul and Cornelius are called to a role as much as to salvation, and the commissions are specific — Saul to the Gentiles and their kings, Cornelius to be the household through whom the Gentile mission became undeniable to Jerusalem. That God distributes assignments unequally is not seriously disputed by anyone. Paul's own image of the body assumes it.

Worth noting what Peter says when he arrives at Cornelius's house: he now understands that God shows no favoritism, but accepts from every nation the one who fears Him and does what is right (Acts 10:34–35). The phrase the comment discusses is Peter's conclusion from this very episode, and the thing he had to unlearn was a restriction rather than a universality.

Paul experiences his conversion dramatically. He was a Pharisee, a Roman citizen, and a persecutor of Christians — and Jesus chooses him as messenger to the Gentiles.

Saul was still breathing out murderous threats against the Lord's disciples, and asked the high priest for letters to the synagogues in Damascus so that he could take as prisoners any he found who belonged to the Way, men or women. Near Damascus a light from heaven flashed around him; he fell to the ground and heard a voice asking why he persecuted Him. He asked who was speaking, and the answer came that it was Jesus, whom he was persecuting — and he was told to get up and go into the city, where he would be told what to do. Later the Lord told Ananias to go, because this man was His chosen instrument to proclaim His name to the Gentiles and their kings and to the people of Israel, and that He would show him how much he must suffer for His name (a paraphrase of Acts 9:1–6, 15–16).

A few things stand out. First, Jesus tells Saul that persecuting Christians is persecuting Christ Himself. As we testify to the good news, we are God's hands, feet, and mouth, and rejection of us is rejection of God. Second, Jesus tells Ananias He has selected Paul as His chosen instrument.

AI-Expanded Reflection

The identification in verse 4 is the theological center of the scene and is easy to move past. Saul had never met Jesus; he had been arresting people in Damascus and Jerusalem. The question is not why he persecutes Christians but why he persecutes me. Paul spends the rest of his life working out the implications of that sentence, and it surfaces in his language about the church as Christ's body — a metaphor whose logic he may have received on this road.

Worth noting also what Ananias is told and what he is not. The commission is stated, and so is the cost: I will show him how much he must suffer for my name. The suffering is not a later development or a sign that something went wrong. It is included in the call from the beginning, which is a different way of framing hardship than treating it as an interruption of God's plan.