Acts #29 - A New Family

Acts 10:9-23a (NIV)
Read by: Amanda Koch

If someone you consider an enemy sent an invitation for you to come to their house, what would it take for you to respond?

Today on Daily Read, Peter receives just that. Cornelius has been prompted by the LORD to send for Peter in Joppa, asking him to come to his house. We learned yesterday about Cornelius and the power and influence he had, and how the Jews in Judea would feel anything but trust for roman officers.

What's more is that, not only does this invitation fly in the face of any self respecting Jew during the Roman occupation, the fact that Cornelius is a gentile will put him on the outside of ritual purity laws for a jewish person to enter his house. Jews like Peter, even the ones who had come to follow Jesus as LORD, were used to seeing their identity and belonging to the family of God as marked out by their observance of strict food laws, circumcision, and sabbath observance.

So when Peter sees in today’s passage a vision about eating animals that break with purity laws, it’s not about a moral code as much as it’s about how one belongs to the people of God. This passage is not focused on purity codes being undone, it’s focused on the boundary lines of who belongs to God’s family being radically redrawn around Jesus and the work of the Holy Spirit.

So as you listen to today's passage, bring to mind a people or a community with whom you would struggle to associate.

----------REFLECT----------

1. What moment from this passage most caught your attention?

2. Some read this passage as the moment Jews became exempt from kosher food laws. But this passage isn’t about bacon. It’s about the innate goodness of all that God has made. It’s about welcoming people you would never associate with into your life, and into their place in God’s story as integral members of the family of God… If you were Peter, who would your Cornelius be?

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3. The divisions that exist in the church today are no better than the Jew-Gentile divide. We mistrust one another, each of us tend to fail in recognizing and stewarding the dominance that our identities afford us. In what ways could your church, your small group, or your chapter step outside of the way things are and into the ways things could be in the family of God?

----------GO DEEPER----------

Bible Project: Acts 1-12 Overview >>

InterVarsity Press Selections: Acts >>

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