Tom Wright on Acts 10

I've found Tom Wright especially helpful on these passages:

Tom Wright: “People today sometimes refer to this present story [of the conversion of Cornelius in Acts 10] as a sign that, within the New Testament, there is a recognition that ‘all religions lead to God’, or even that all religions are basically the same. This is certainly not what Luke intends, and both Cornelius himself and Peter himself would have been shocked at such a suggestion. The reason Cornelius was a devout worshiper of Israel’s God was precisely that he was fed up with the normal Roman gods and eager to follow what seemed to him the real one. It is not the case, then, that God simply ‘accepts us as we are’. He invites us as we are; but responding to that invitation always involves the complete transformation which is acted out in repentance, forgiveness, baptism, and receiving the spirit.” (Acts for Everyone part 1, p164)


Peter’s message in vv34ff is a message all about God and what he has done

NT Wright’s points:

God sent the message of peace (v36)

God anointed Jesus (v38)

God was with him (v38)

God raised him from the dead (v40)

God chose us as witnesses (v41)

God told us to preach (v42)

God ordained Jesus as judge (v42)

“… the opening line of Peter’s speech, ‘God has no favourites.’ [Acts 10:34]… doesn’t mean that God runs the world as a democracy, or that he simply validated and accepts everyone’s opinion about everything, or everyone’s chosen lifestyle. It means that there no ethnic, geographical, cultural or moral barriers any longer in the way of anyone and everyone being offered forgiveness and new life. That is a message far more powerful than the easy-going laissez-faire tolerance which contemporary Western society so easily embraces. Cornelius didn’t want God (or Peter) to tolerate him. He wanted to be welcomed, forgiven, healed, transformed. And he was.” (p170)


Acts 11:14 – “Luke clearly does not suppose that Cornelius was ‘saved’ already and needed merely to be informed of the message about Jesus as an interesting addendum to the ‘salvation’ he already possessed.” (p174)