¹¹”And behold, at that moment three men appeared at the house in which we were staying, having been sent to me from Caesarea. ¹²The Spirit told me to go with them without misgivings. These six brethren also went with me and we entered the man’s house. ¹³And he reported to us how he had seen the angel standing in his house, and saying, ‘Send to Joppa and have Simon, who is also called Peter, brought here; ¹⁴and he will speak words to you by which you will be saved, you and all your household.’”

Continuing his narrative, Peter points out the confluence of the vision and the sudden and timely arrival of three men from Caesarea—no mere coincidence! The details show Luke’s quality of historical research: it was three men who came to him, and six men who went with Peter to Caesarea, so the traveling party from Joppa to Caesarea was ten in all. Such detail is not the makings of a myth, but a careful retelling by Peter and also Luke as he records it for us in Acts. And we take it that the six men who accompanied Peter were with him now in Jerusalem as he gives his report.

Peter asserts an important point in his report: the entire event came about from God, not from his own initiative or reasoning. God gave the vision, and the Holy Spirit directed him to go to Cornelius. He had misgivings, as would be expected, but the directions were clear: any hesitation or resistance must give way to obeying the Spirit. No further explanation was given.

Even the phrase “we entered the man’s house” conveys the step-by-step movements. Peter would not hide, minimize, or dodge the facts. The core issue could not be avoided, nor did Peter want to avoid it. Yes, Peter, a respectable Jew, had entered a Gentile’s house and eaten with him there (Acts 11:3), and he did not deny it—the Judaizer had heard right. Further, although Peter didn’t explicitly say this, Cornelius had extended an invitation for him to stay for “some days,” which we can assume Peter accepted (Acts 10:48).

What is fascinating at this juncture in his report is that Peter uses Cornelius’ testimony of the angelic message he received as supporting evidence of God’s involvement in the whole event. He doesn’t use Cornelius’ name but refers to him only as “the man.” What was important was not his name but his ethnicity: he was a non-Jew! Surely, to most Jews, a Gentile’s testimony about an angel’s message would provide weak support, but Peter sees it as genuinely from God. And the message to Cornelius was about salvation. There is nothing here about becoming a Jew first, or circumcision, or the Law of Moses. The door has been opened to the whole world for the message of salvation through grace.

Lord, thank You that salvation by grace has no ethnic limitations.