Biblion Bible Commentary
Read the introduction to Acts · About this commentary
God is no respecter of persons
Acts 10:34-43
34 Peter opened his mouth and said, “Truly I perceive that God doesn’t show favoritism; · WEB
Peter's sermon opens with a discovery he has just made about God and closes on the one name through which anyone is forgiven.
Truly I perceive that God doesn't show favoritism. The verb is one of dawning realization, and the sermon begins by admitting that the preacher has learned something this week. The phrase behind it is a Hebrew idiom for receiving a face — for deciding a case by who is standing in front of you — and it is what judges were forbidden to do Deuteronomy 10:17. Peter has just discovered that the rule God gave to judges describes God.
The next sentence has been made to carry more than it says, so it repays care: in every nation he who fears him and works righteousness is acceptable to him. Read as a statement that sincerity in any religion saves, it would contradict the sermon it introduces, since Peter is about to preach a specific name and the room is about to be baptized into it. Read as it stands, it says something else and something Cornelius needed: a man's nation does not put him outside the range of God's welcome. The whole point of the sentence is the words in every nation.
That the reverence was not by itself sufficient is stated plainly when Peter reports the day afterward: the angel promised Cornelius words by which you will be saved, you and all your house Acts 11:14. A man whose prayers God had accepted for years still had to hear about Jesus, and God went to considerable lengths to get someone to his door. Acceptable, here, means welcome to be heard — and God does not leave such a person unvisited.
The sermon proper is the shortest full one in the book and it is aimed at people who know the outline already. You yourselves know what happened, which was proclaimed throughout all Judea, beginning from Galilee. Even in Caesarea the events were public knowledge. Peter is not introducing a new story but explaining one they have heard about.
What he supplies is the interpretation. God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Spirit and with power, who went about doing good and healing all who were oppressed by the devil, for God was with him. That single sentence is the ministry summarized, and its verbs are gentle — doing good, healing — in a house belonging to a man whose profession was force.
Then the death, in the same blunt formula used before the council: they killed him, hanging him on a tree. Then the resurrection, with a qualification Peter does not soften: God gave him to be revealed not to all the people, but to witnesses who were chosen before by God. The risen Christ did not appear indiscriminately, and the church's case has always rested on selected testimony rather than on universal spectacle. The credential offered is homely and physical: they are those who ate and drank with him after he rose from the dead.
The last two sentences set the terms. He is appointed by God as the Judge of the living and the dead — which is the sharp end, and it is said to Romans who answered to Caesar. And all the prophets testify that through his name everyone who believes in him will receive remission of sins. The universal word arrives at last: everyone. Peter never reaches his conclusion. The Spirit interrupts him at the word believes.
held with reason What this mark means