Acts 10:34-43

Peter's Speech.

Acts 10:34 f. declares that Peter regards the persons before him, though not Jews, as fit to enter the Church and share in the promises. The word for respecter of persons is a new one; for the notion, see Luke 20:21; Romans 2:11; Galatians 2:6; James 2:1. God does not judge of men by their outward appearance (1 Samuel 16:7), and their nationality belongs to the outward part of them which God disregards. It is implied that those before Peter belong to a nation which ordinary Jewish sentiment regards as not acceptable to God: but he has learned differently, and agrees with Paul (Romans 2) that it is doing righteousness that counts with God and not circumcision.

Acts 10:36 f. The sentence is difficult as it stands. It is necessary to take the word in Acts 10:36 and the saying or rather the matter or event in Acts 10:37 as denoting the same thing, and both governed by the verb you know. It was to the children of Israel that the word was sent in Jesus Christ. The hearers know what it was; then follows a description of Christ's ministry. It began after John's baptism (Acts 1:22), its scene was Galilee and Judæ a, where Jesus of Nazareth, anointed by God with the Holy Spirit and with power, fulfilled His wonderful career. All this the hearers know; of all this Peter and his fellows are witnesses. The crucifixion is mentioned without any doctrine being based on it, as in Acts 2:23; Acts 3:15, etc. The resurrection on the third day followed and redressed it, vouched for by the intercourse with Jesus of the chosen witnesses (Acts 1:22). The speech ends (Acts 10:42 f.) with a statement of what the Saviour ordered His apostles to preach (Acts 1:8); it resembles the creed of 1 Timothy 3:16 and 1 Peter 4:5. They are to preach Him as judge of the living and the dead. The passages thought of, where all the prophets witness to Him, will be specially those which speak of forgiveness of sins, of the gathering of the flock to their own pasture, of restoration and redemption.