The story of Cornelius’s coming to faith (Ac 10) is one of the happiest stories in the Bible. Here was a man who was neither Christian nor Jewish, he was a God-fearing Roman. He tried to do good. He prayed a lot. But he wasn’t affiliated with any of the established religions.
Cornelius sounds a lot like some of the people who live in your neighbourhood.
One afternoon, he received a vision of an angel who told him that God had noticed his prayers and good deeds. Oddly, the angel didn’t give him the message he needed. Instead, the angel told him how to make contact with a man named Peter, who could give him the message.
That sounds a lot like Saul in our previous story. Again we see how no one in the New Testament comes to faith apart from another human’s help.
Shortly after Cornelius received one vision, Peter received another. Peter’s was an odd one involving a crazy command by God to do something that Jewish Peter thought was a sin. This is what learning theorists call “cognitive and moral dissonance.” God confused and frustrated Peter so that He could teach Peter something.
In this case, God was forcing Peter to reconsider his categories. What is sin? What is out of bounds? Who is too far away?
God didn’t let Peter mull these questions over for very long, though. While he was thinking about it all, the guys from Cornelius’s house showed up. “We’re here to bring you to see our boss.”
Cornelius was Roman — as in Italian. He sent some guys to see Peter. Peter went with them. ’Nuff said, capiche?
When Peter went to Cornelius’s house, Cornelius literally fell at Peter’s feet. He figured Peter had been sent by an angel, that he was a messenger from God or something — maybe Peter expected and deserved special treatment.
But Peter’s response was great. He said, “Stand up, I’m just a regular guy like you.”
That’s just good mental health right there. So many Christians feel unqualified to do the work of evangelism because we feel so normal, so regular, so unspiritual. We’re just regular folks. We’re not “evangelists.” We don’t have big hair or expensive suits.
Peter said, “I’m just a man like you.”
James, the brother of Jesus, would later write, “Elijah was a man just like us. He prayed earnestly that it would not rain, and it did not rain on the land for three and a half years. Again he prayed, and the heavens gave rain, and the earth produced its crops” (Jam 5.17-18).
Elijah was just a man like you. Peter was just a man like you. People like you are the only kind of people God uses.
Prayer
Father, I praise Your Name that You have given me eternal life in Jesus Christ, a new quality of life that is meant to flow out of my inner being and bear lasting fruit in the lives of others. I delight in the liberating truth that I do not need to be an impressive person who has accomplished significant things by the standards of this world. Instead, You use ordinary people to accomplish extraordinary things, because the power of Your kingdom is of an utterly different nature than the powers known to the world. I do not need to be wise, mighty or noble to be used in profound ways by You. I thank You for the many examples in the Bible that make this clear. May I look to You, follow You, know You, discern Your desires for my life and submit my will to Your desires, knowing that You want to bear abiding fruit in and through me.
In Jesus’s name, Amen
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