Acts 10: God Shows No Favoritism, Go and Welcome

Introduction

"I don't need to convince you that we live in a deeply divided world." That is how Dave Thompson opens this message at Vine Church Surry Hills, part of the series "What If We Really Believed It?" on the book of Acts. Wars in Ukraine and the Middle East, increasingly polarized politics, social media that locks us into echo chambers, tensions even within families: humanity has always divided itself along lines of wealth, origin, education, culture and politics.

Even when we don't hurt each other directly, the preacher admits, a quiet reality remains in each of us: we prefer to keep at a distance those who are not like us. Despite all our progress, our culture has not found a lasting solution to the deep divisions of the human heart. Where can we find hope?

The answer is in the gospel, a good news of hope that shapes our lives right now. And the question of the series comes back: what would happen if we truly believed, with the apostle Peter, that "God doesn't show favoritism" (Acts 10:34)? For Dave Thompson, two things follow: we will go to everyone with the message of Jesus, and we will welcome everyone into the family of Jesus.

Outline of the Message

1. The Diagnosis: A Broken Vertical Relationship

The Bible gives a radical diagnosis: the horizontal fractures between human beings come from the vertical fracture between humanity and God. This broken relationship has seeped into all our other relationships.
Picture the solar system: remove the sun, and the planets drift away or crash into each other in chaos. That is what happens when we remove God from our human relationships.
The remedy: God has restored the vertical relationship through Jesus and his atoning death on the cross. By dealing decisively with human sin at the cross, he unleashed a power that can flow into our relationships with one another.
The preacher dreams of visitors, sometimes dragged to church by Christian friends, being able to say: "I've never been interested in religion, but when I see how you treat each other, and who is here, I can't deny that a power is at work. There is a unity and a love here that I see nowhere else."
To anyone exploring faith, he says: if something in what Jesus said draws you, God may already be at work. He is calling you beyond admiration, into a saving relationship with him.

2. Acts 10, a Turning Point in the History of Salvation

In Acts 1:8, Jesus lays out the route: "You will be witnesses to me in Jerusalem, in all Judea and Samaria, and to the uttermost parts of the earth." In Acts 10, the dam breaks and the good news floods out to the nations.
Until then, the church was almost entirely Jewish, seen by many as a Jewish sect. From this moment on, the doors of the kingdom are thrown wide open to the whole world.
Cornelius, a centurion of what was called the Italian cohort in Caesarea, is devout, fears God along with his whole household, gives generously to the poor and prays regularly. An angel tells him to send for Simon, also called Peter, who is staying in Joppa with Simon the tanner.
"I love geography," Dave Thompson confides. Joppa is no minor detail: centuries earlier, God sends Jonah to carry his message of mercy to Nineveh, a pagan city. Jonah is so disgusted that he heads in the opposite direction, to the west. And where does he board a ship to flee? At Joppa (Jonah 1:3).
Hence the tension in the story: what will this Jewish prophet do with a message of mercy meant for a Roman centurion, "the pagan of pagans"? Will he run away, hide it, or obey?

3. A Double Conversion: Cornelius and Peter

In Acts, the gospel advances through conversions. The previous week, the series covered that of Saul of Tarsus, the last person anyone would have expected. Here, in Acts 10, there is a double conversion.
John Stott says, with a touch of humor, that the main subject of the chapter is less the conversion of Cornelius than that of Peter. Peter is already a Christian, but the implications of the gospel still have to reach every part of his life, especially the way he thinks about and treats non-Jews.
Conversion is not only a past event, nor a box to tick on a census form, nor a ticket to heaven. It is the daily experience of following Jesus: choosing to obey him, living for him and not for ourselves, turning away from the prejudices that afflict us and letting his grace shape our thoughts and attitudes.
Having gone up on the roof to pray, Peter gets hungry. He has a vision: a great sheet comes down from heaven, filled with all kinds of animals, and a voice says to him, "Rise, Peter, kill and eat!" He answers, "Not so, Lord; for I have never eaten anything that is common or unclean." The voice replies, "What God has cleansed, you must not call unclean." This happens three times.
The preacher has fun imagining the sheet: first some chicken and a nice steak, then, looking more closely, a shrimp paella and a pork burger. "No, Lord!" For Peter's religious values, it is a nightmare.
While Peter is still thinking it over, Cornelius's messengers arrive, and the Spirit tells him to go with them without hesitation, because he himself has sent them. God connects the dots: nothing is unclean, and here are men sent by a pagan centurion, so go with them.

4. Jesus, the Key to Reading the Old Testament

Why this detour through a vision about food? Because here we learn how to read the law of the Old Testament. Skeptics often mock on social media: "You keep the Old Testament's sexual morality, but you happily eat pork and shrimp. You pick and choose what suits you."
Under the old covenant, dietary restrictions and ritual washings were visible boundaries that set Israel apart from the other nations. Israel was called to be holy, set apart, to show the nations what life in a restored relationship with God looks like.
With Jesus, the covenant community is no longer limited to one nation or one bloodline. Jesus himself declared all foods clean (Mark 7, Matthew 15): it is not what goes into the mouth that defiles a person, but what comes out of the heart.
When Jesus confirms universal moral laws, such as sexual ethics, we keep them. When he fulfills ritual markers such as the food laws, their time is over: they are fulfilled.
The red light illustration: a mother waits with her son at the side of the road and holds him back by the shoulders: "Don't go, it's not safe yet." A minute later the light changes: "Now we can cross." Is she inconsistent? No. There is a time for certain practices, according to what God has revealed.

5. First Call: Go to Everyone Without Distinction

Peter understands. He brings Cornelius's messengers into his home and gives them lodging, already breaking cultural norms. Then, at Cornelius's house, he says: "You yourselves know how it is an unlawful thing for a man who is a Jew to join himself or come to one of another nation, but God has shown me that I shouldn't call any man unholy or unclean" (Acts 10:28).
It is hard to measure how big this moment is. For first-century Jews, Roman soldiers are the invaders, the hated rulers.
The application is direct: God sets no limit on those he can save, so we must set none on those we are ready to go to. It is good to share the gospel with friends who are like us, but the gospel pushes us out of our comfort zones, because we all have blind spots.
The preacher's question: if God sent you a sheet, what would be on it? Mashed peas and a retirement village brochure for the elderly people we assume are too old to hear about Jesus? Halal meat for our Muslim neighbors in western Sydney? A businessman's suit? A donkey or an elephant for those whose political opinions make us uncomfortable?
Who are the people you silently assume will never become Christians, or whom, to be honest, you don't really want to see come? Tonight, think of them and pray for them: that they would hear the good news, and that God would change your heart so that you see them as Jesus sees them.
Three practical ideas to choose from before the end of the year: invite a friend, colleague or neighbor to the Tuesday evening "Explore" course, where people share a meal and examine the claims of Jesus; host an international dinner at home with neighbors and Christian friends, after praying together for boldness; join in world mission, for example by praying and giving for a missionary couple, heard the week before, who are leaving for Uganda to teach and train pastors and leaders.
"Even Peter, an apostle who walked with Jesus for three years, needed a divine nudge, three times, to overcome his prejudices." We too will probably need to be nudged, and to help one another in it.

6. Jesus, Lord of All, Judge of All, Savior of Everyone Who Believes

Before the crowd gathered at Cornelius's house, Peter declares: "Truly I perceive that God doesn't show favoritism; but in every nation he who fears him and works righteousness is acceptable to him" (Acts 10:34-35).
Dave Thompson picks out three statements in Peter's preaching: Jesus is Lord of all (verse 36), he is the judge of the living and the dead (verse 42), and he is the Savior of everyone who believes in him (verse 43). Three absolute truths, with one condition on the last.
Jesus is not only "your" personal Lord. He is Lord and judge of every human being, because he is God, the Creator, risen from the dead as Lord of all.
An amusing confession from the preacher, now that his children are grown: he smiles when he sees a toddler stamp his foot in front of his parents and shout, "You're not the boss of me!" It is so far from reality: the parents have the authority and the responsibility. The toddler can stamp his foot, and it changes nothing. We can stamp our feet at Jesus, and he is still Lord.
Adults are not so different, like the "Not my president" t-shirts you see in the United States, on both sides of the political spectrum. No t-shirt or bumper sticker changes reality. Jesus is the rightful king of Christians, Muslims, Jews, secularists and atheists, whether they love him or not. Everyone will answer to him.
Here is the good news, full of grace: the judge came into our world to bear our judgment. Every sinner who recognizes himself as a sinner, like Paul, Peter and Cornelius, and turns to him, finds not a cruel judge but a merciful Savior who offers complete and free forgiveness. And he is no longer on the cross: he is risen.
Even a good man like Cornelius must answer to Jesus. Cornelius is admirable: devout, God-fearing, generous, praying constantly, respected by the other Roman soldiers and by the Jews, powerful, wealthy and yet humble. "I'd like to know him," says the preacher. Was he saved by his moral superiority? "Certainly not," for two reasons.
The context: Acts 9 has just told the story of Saul's conversion, a persecutor who breathed threats and murder against the disciples. If the worst of sinners was saved by grace alone, salvation cannot be a reward for the best.
The content: Peter does not pat Cornelius on the shoulder and say, "Well done, keep praying and giving, and God will accept you." Cornelius needs to hear the gospel, which is why the angel tells him to send for Peter. Peter preaches Christ crucified and risen, and the forgiveness of sins through faith in him alone.
No one is too broken or too bad for the cross to save. And no one is righteous enough or polite enough to enter God's presence without the atoning blood of Jesus.
Cornelius was sincerely seeking God, and Jesus promises that whoever seeks will find: "Knock, and it will be opened for you" (Matthew 7:7). But he discovers that, while he was seeking God, God was already seeking him.

7. Second Call: Welcome Everyone into the Family of Jesus

While Peter is still speaking, the Holy Spirit falls on all who are listening. The circumcised believers who came with him are astonished to see the gift of the Holy Spirit poured out on the Gentiles too, who speak in tongues and glorify God, as at Pentecost. Peter concludes: "Can anyone forbid these people from being baptized with water? They have received the Holy Spirit just like us" (Acts 10:47).
Twenty-four hours earlier, Peter would never have shared a meal or crossed Cornelius's threshold. Now they are welcomed as beloved brothers and sisters in Jesus Christ. The walls of hostility come down.
A detail that is easy to miss: why Peter, and not Saul, whom Jesus has just named as the chosen instrument for the nations (Acts 9:15)? Because Peter preached to the Jews at Pentecost, when the Spirit was first poured out. God orchestrates this moment so that the same apostle proclaims the same gospel, with the same outpouring of the Spirit, to the Gentiles.
God wants one church, without division: not one church for the Jews and another for the Gentiles. We are one in Jesus Christ, all on the same level at the foot of the cross. There are no second-class citizens in the kingdom of God.
Easy to recognize in theory, hard to live out. When a newcomer arrives, we notice, without meaning to, the accent, the clothes, the age, the background, and we sort. Believing that God shows no favoritism will help us grow in hospitality: introducing the newcomer to others, checking in the following week, swapping phone numbers, inviting them to our table.
Vine Church is not a big church, but more than a thousand people come for the first time every year. It will take everyone to welcome them. We never come to church thinking it all revolves around us: we are always looking for someone to bless and bring in.
The passage ends with a baptism, God's promise made tangible. The preacher dreams of having to say: "Change the calendar, two baptism days a year isn't enough. We'll need four, five, one a month."

Key Takeaways

Divisions between human beings come from the break with God, and the cross of Jesus restores the vertical relationship that heals the horizontal ones.
Conversion is not a fixed event: like Peter, we need the gospel to transform our prejudices every day.
Jesus is Lord of all, judge of all and Savior of everyone who believes in him. No one is too far from his grace, and no one is good enough to do without it.
Believing that God shows no favoritism pushes us to go with the gospel to those who are not like us.
In the church there are no second-class citizens: everyone should be welcomed as a brother or sister.

Personal Application

If God sent you a sheet like Peter's, which people would you see on it, the ones you silently assume could never become Christians?
Do you count, as Cornelius might have, on your piety or your generosity, or do you rest on the grace of Jesus alone?
Which of the three ideas will you choose before the end of the year: inviting someone to a course for exploring faith, hosting a meal with neighbors, or supporting a mission?
The next time a newcomer walks into your church, what will you do beyond a simple nod before joining your usual friends?

Verses Cited

Frequently Asked Questions

What does "God doesn't show favoritism" mean in Acts 10?

Peter declares it in verse 34 at the house of Cornelius, a Roman centurion. For Dave Thompson, it means that neither origin, accent, social status, age, gender, education nor economic level carries any spiritual weight before God. We become one through faith in Jesus.

Was Cornelius saved because of his piety and his giving to the poor?

No. Cornelius was devout, generous and prayed constantly, but Peter does not tell him "keep it up." He announces Jesus crucified and risen, because the only path to the forgiveness of sins is faith in him. Cornelius was sincerely seeking God, and God was already seeking him.

Why don't Christians follow the Old Testament dietary laws anymore?

These laws were visible markers that set Israel apart from the other nations. Jesus declared all foods clean (Mark 7, Matthew 15): these laws are fulfilled. However, he confirmed the universal moral laws. For Dave Thompson, Jesus is the key to reading the Old Testament.