By Dane Skelton
What are you known by among your friends? In other words, what are the identifying characteristics that make you, you? As adults most of us are known by our professions, or former jobs. I’m “the preacher” who used to be “a car guy” (and still is most of the time). What sets you apart or makes you unique among your peers? It might be a talent, or a theology you’re attached to. He’s a Calvinist, she’s a singer. Or social / political views: He’s a vegetarian, she’s a conservative. Most of us find some comfort, some level of personal worth by identifying ourselves that way. It helps us know who we are.
Now what if God was to suddenly call you out of that comfortable identity and open a door into a whole new world that you had never considered before? Would you walk through it? That’s what happened to the Apostle Peter in Acts chapter ten. It’s the story of how the gospel was first introduced to a gentile audience. A Roman centurion, a gentile who feared God named Cornelius, is visited by an angel. The angel tells him to send for Peter. At the same time Peter, an observant Jew who ate only kosher food and never entered a gentile home for fear of defilement, has a vision of all kinds of hitherto “unclean,” as defined by Old Testament dietary laws, animals. In the vision the voice of the Lord says, “Rise Peter, kill and eat.” Peter struggles with that command until God says, “Do not call anything impure that God has made clean.”
The point of the story is that Peter is no longer to consider the gentiles “out of bounds” for the gospel. When Cornelius’ servants call for him Peter welcomes them, travels with them to Cornelius and wonder of wonder for a Jew, enters his home to preach. It’s a great story of the spread of the good news.
But the thing that brought me up short was how quickly God expected Peter to exchange his old identity for a new one. The Old Testament dietary laws are key identifying marks of a Jew. They are one of the things that make a Jew a Jew. How hard it must have been for Peter to discard them! You can see it in his response to the vision: “Surely not Lord! I have never eaten anything impure or unclean.” (Acts 10:14). Yet God clearly calls Peter to walk through that door into a new identity. He is no longer simply Peter the Jewish follower of Jesus. He is Peter, the Jew who makes friends with gentiles and even eats and sleeps in their homes.
How can that be? How can God just UNDO two thousand years of Jewish theology and spiritual identity in a single story in the book of Acts? Well, he didn’t undo anything. He fulfilled all of the requirements for holiness and righteousness and purity, things which the dietary and other exclusivity laws were made to illustrate, in the person of his son Jesus Christ. He fulfilled them perfectly and brought them to a conclusion at the cross. Now the holiness, and righteousness, the spiritual purity and identity that mark his people out in the world come not from how they dress or what they eat or where they go or don’t go or who they hang out with. Now it all comes from Christ. (See Colossians 1:19-23).
Peter embraced this radical change because of his identity in Christ. So what is your identity? What have you called unclean that God says is no longer unclean? What door is God calling you to walk through that would have been unimaginable before Christ gave you a new identity?
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