Devotional Acts 10: Peter's Vision and Gentile Salvation Reflection on Acts 10: the encounter between Peter and the centurion Cornelius, the teaching that God is not partial, and the value of spiritual discernment. Topics: Devotional, New Testament.

Devotional Acts 10: Peter’s Vision and Gentile Salvation

Today’s devotional is found in the book of Acts, chapter 10, and this is what happened.

Synopsis: In this chapter, a centurion of the Italian regiment is praying to God in the afternoon when an Angel of God comes to him in a vision to order him to send his messengers to Joppa to ask Simon Peter to come back with them. Because the centurion feared God, he did exactly as he was instructed. Upon arriving in Joppa, Simon Peter had a vision where something resembling a large sheet was falling from heaven. The Lord asked him to kill and eat these animals. But since Simon considered some of them unclean, he did not want to do what the Lord asked him. However, the Lord spoke to him a second time, telling him not to call unclean what God has cleansed (Acts 10:15). After the messengers arrived at the house of the other Simon, where Simon Peter was staying, the Holy Spirit told Peter to go with them. They told him about the vision of Cornelius, the centurion, and Peter went with them to Caesarea. As soon as Peter arrived in Caesarea, he saw the crowd of people waiting for him in Cornelius’s house. When Peter entered the house, he told them: “You know that it is unlawful for a Jew to associate with or visit a Gentile. But the Lord has shown me through the vision that I should not call anyone impure or unclean.” Then Cornelius also recounted his vision to Peter, saying that God wanted them to listen to what he had to say to them. Finally, Peter preached the gospel of Jesus to them, after which they received the Holy Spirit, and Peter suggested that they be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ.

Observations

These were my observations:

1. God does not show partiality, but is the God of all. In his vision, Peter had considered some of the animals that appeared to be impure or unclean. But later, through his dialogue with the Lord and the voice of the Holy Spirit telling him to go with the men searching for him, he realized that nothing God has cleansed is unclean—not even the Gentiles. Only after meditating on his vision and realizing firsthand how thirsty the Gentiles in Caesarea were to drink from the Word of God did he understand that God is the God of all. It is enough to accept and believe in Jesus for the process of purification by the Holy Spirit to begin. Afterwards, these very people who belonged to the world are transformed into saints of God.
2. We must always pray and meditate on the visions we receive. Peter had a vision from God that was not necessarily easy to understand. He did not comprehend why the Lord was asking him to kill and eat animals he had previously been forbidden to eat. It required spiritual discernment, dialogue with God, the intervention of the Holy Spirit, and interaction with Cornelius to finally understand the purpose of his vision. This is very important because sometimes we receive God’s will in our visions or through other people, and we do not always have the spiritual discernment to perceive it. Therefore, we must remain humble and continuously dependent on God to understand if something is truly His Will and what His purpose is.