Acts 11:3

saying, Thou wentest into men uncircumcised, and didst eat with them.

From the entire account of Luke in the Acts it is evident that the inspiration of the apostles pertained to their office of teaching only, and that they had no unusual powers of penetration and enlightenment otherwise. Thus the apostles, together with the other members of the congregation in Jerusalem, knew nothing of Saul's change of heart and therefore mistrusted him, chap. 9:26. And here the apostles as well as the brethren in Judea labored under the handicap of a foolish and uncharitable prejudice. The report came to them that the Gentiles, by the ministry of Peter, had received the Word of the Lord. It was a matter, not of joyful astonishment, but of serious apprehension to them. When Peter, therefore, came up to Jerusalem, returning from the lowlands of Caesarea and the Plain of Sharon, those of the circumcision, not the Jews as distinguished from the Gentiles, but the strict Judaizing Christians of Jerusalem, probably such as had been priests or had belonged to the Pharisees, contended or disputed with him, they reproached him with the fact that he had entered, on terms of equal footing and intimacy, into the home of uncircumcised men, of heathen people, and had even eaten with them, the implication being that he might easily have partaken of food which was unclean to Jews and thus have defiled himself. That the Gospel should be preached to the Gentiles also, that such as did not belong to the race of the Jews should be accepted in the kingdom of the Messiah, was against all usage and feeling of the Jewish Christians. The fact that the prophets, not once, but often, had prophesied of the entry of the Gentiles into the kingdom of Christ, Isaiah 60:3; Isaiah 49:6, seems to have escaped their minds; they had not understood these passages properly, they had to learn gradually. Note: There are many verses, passages, and sections in Scriptures which even believing Christians cannot grasp and understand at once. Even after Christ has been accepted, the enlightenment proceeds very slowly. If the Christians, however, will but continue to search, God will, step by step, lead them more deeply into the knowledge of the truth. And thus even such passages as are offensive at first reading will gradually receive their proper setting in relation to the Bible as a whole. Only we must make all parts of the revelation of God serve that one great fact, the justification of all sinners through faith in Christ Jesus, then the arrangement and the relative importance of the various parts of Scripture will follow as a matter of course.