⁹. . . Peter went up on the housetop about the sixth hour to pray. ¹⁰But he became hungry and was desiring to eat; but while they were making preparations, he fell into a trance; ¹¹and he saw the sky opened up, and an object like a great sheet coming down, lowered by four corners to the ground, ¹²and there were in it all kinds of four-footed animals and crawling creatures of the earth and birds of the air. ¹³A voice came to him, “Get up, Peter, kill and eat!” ¹⁴But Peter said, “By no means, Lord, for I have never eaten anything unholy and unclean.” ¹⁵Again a voice came to him a second time, “What God has cleansed, no longer consider unholy.” ¹⁶This happened three times, and immediately the object was taken up into the sky.

Often buildings in Israel were constructed with rooftop living space, a cooler living area during hot months. Peter went there during a time of prayer and fasting. Surely these spiritual disciplines are included in the NT invitation to follow the example of the apostles (see 1 Cor. 11:1, Acts 13:2, 14:23).

Significantly, both Cornelius and Peter received a supernatural intervention: the centurion saw an angel speaking in a vision, while God spoke to the apostle in a trance. Neither of these can be explained away as psychosomatic or emotional disturbances, nor is this a Christian myth that arose over time. Luke recorded the testimony of eyewitnesses and verified the stories (Luke 1:1–4, Acts 1:1–3).

Peter was startled by what he saw, being a Jew who abided by the strict dietary rules of the Law that forbade eating certain kinds of food—including what he saw in the vision. A sheet was lowered from “heaven,” pictured here as physically “above.” Heaven is not a physical place that is literally “above” from the standpoint of earth—what would that even mean on opposite sides of a spherical planet? The Bible pictures heaven for us as spatially being above, to indicate its other-worldliness and superiority. The point is that this vision was coming from God Himself, and He is laying down a new way of things.

Just seeing this vision would be confusing enough, but the command for Peter to eat the “unclean” food sent Peter into a knee-jerk reaction: “By no means, Lord.” We remember Peter saying similar things before (Matt. 16:22). The lesson came three times, loud and clear. Essentially, God was telling him, “That which was formerly unclean is now clean. What you could not eat before, you are free to eat now. In fact, I command you to eat!” This would seem odd if that was all this was about. But God was preparing the apostle Peter to meet Cornelius—the wall separating the Jew and Gentile was now demolished (see Eph. 2:11–22 where the apostle Paul spells out this truth). This would be a difficult truth to accept. But accept it, Peter and the church must do.

Lord, help me accept all those whom You accept, as equals in Christ.