Acts 11 - Introduction

Chapter 11 The Church At Crisis Point.

In chapter 1 we were told of Jesus command that His apostles go out as witnesses to Jerusalem, Judaea, Samaria and the uttermost part of the earth. Subsequently we have seen how this has partially been accomplished as first Jerusalem and then the surrounding area in Judaea and Samaria, including Galilee, have received their witness. We have even learned how it has gone out to Ethiopia. But in all cases the evangelising has been among the Jews and their adherents. For the church in Jerusalem were still limited in their thinking to the evangelising of their own people, with a few proselytes thrown in. They aimed through Christ to make Jews better Jews in readiness for Christ's second coming.

Of course, Gentiles would be accepted if they turned from being Gentiles and become Jewish proselytes, bathing in order to remove the uncleanness of the Gentile world, being circumcised into the covenant, taking on themselves the responsibility of keeping the Law and the Sabbath, attending at their local synagogue, submitting to the Temple regime, and then recognising in Jesus the Messiah of the Jews and being baptised. But otherwise the Gentile world is excluded. They must be left in their uncleanness.

But then unhappy rumours begin to be spread about. It was being said that one of their leaders, one of the twelve, and a prominent one at that, had entered a Gentile house and eaten with Gentiles, and had then preached there to Gentiles, and baptised them. It appeared as though he was simply ignoring the difference between Jew and Gentile, between ‘cleanness' and ‘uncleanness'. Such a shameful and blasphemous thing was, of course, hardly likely to be fully true, but it would certainly have to be enquired into. We must also remember that many of the Jerusalem Jews would be far stricter than the Apostles, brought up in Galilee where standards were not quite so strict, so that they would find such an idea even more appalling. They would certainly want to call Peter to account. And they would see it as Scripturally necessary. Scripture required that major irregularities be examined into.

The fact that Peter turned up complete with his six witnesses demonstrates that he was expecting to be called to account and had ensured that he had his witnesses with him. He was quite well aware that what he had done would appear to be irregular.