Cornelius: The Vision Nobody Expected

“He and all his family were devout and God-fearing; he gave generously to those in need and prayed to God regularly. One afternoon at about three in the afternoon he had a vision. He distinctly saw an angel of God, who came to him and said, “Cornelius!” – Acts 10:2-3 (NIV)

Cornelius was everything that the Jewish religious framework of the first century said he should not have been: a Roman centurion, an officer in the occupying military force, a Gentile by birth and culture and identity, someone from the wrong family, the wrong nation, and the wrong side of centuries of religious separation. And he was praying regularly, giving generously to those in need, and described by Luke as devout and God-fearing. And God sent him a vision.

At the same hour, across town, Peter was on a rooftop praying and received a vision of his own, one that contradicted his deepest religious instincts. A large sheet was lowered from heaven containing all kinds of animals that Jewish law classified as unclean, and a voice said: get up, Peter, kill and eat. Peter refused three times, each time citing the religious training he had carried his entire life. And three times the voice said: do not call anything impure that God has made clean. Then the Spirit said to him: three men are looking for you. Get up and go with them, for I have sent them.

The simultaneity is the point. At the exact moment Cornelius’s men were arriving at the house where Peter was staying, God was already completing the preparation of the man He needed to send to Cornelius. The Spirit does not send His messengers to encounters they are not ready for. He prepares both parties simultaneously, working from opposite ends of the prejudice toward the middle, until both are positioned for the encounter that neither would have sought on their own.

This is one of the most important principles in the book of Acts for understanding how the Spirit operates in contexts of genuine cultural, ethnic, and social division: He is always ahead of our prejudices. By the time Peter arrived in Cornelius’s house and began to understand what God was doing, the Spirit had already been at work in Cornelius for long enough to make him a man of genuine prayer and genuine generosity. The person you assume is the furthest from God may be the person God is closest to. The Spirit does not consult our assumptions before He moves.

Peter’s famous conclusion in Cornelius’s house is both the theological climax of the encounter and one of the most radical statements in the entire New Testament: I now realise how true it is that God does not show favouritism but accepts from every nation the one who fears him and does what is right. Peter had believed in a God of grace for years. He was only now discovering the full geographic scope of that grace.

Today, identify an assumption you carry about who is beyond the reach of the gospel, a person, a demographic, a community, a culture. Bring that assumption honestly before the Spirit and ask Him to show you what He is already doing in the situation you have already written off. He is probably already there. He was always ahead of you.

Prayer

Father, show me my Cornelius, the person or community I have assumed is beyond the reach of your Spirit, that you are already working in. Correct my prejudices the way you corrected Peter’s, not through argument but through encounter. I want to stop calling impure what you have already been making clean. In Jesus’ name, amen.