I know and am persuaded in the Lord Jesus that nothing is unclean in itself.— Romans 14:14
Romans 14, Part 3. On the one God welcomed before we did. Read Part 1 here.
Yesterday we saw that the kingdom runs on grace. Today the harder question. If we have received that grace, why do we still refuse certain people?
Paul's word for "unclean" is koinos (κοινός). It means "common," and in Jewish ears "common" meant defiled, the opposite of holy. When Peter refused a vision years earlier, he used the same word: he had never eaten anything common or unclean (Acts 10:14). Our Bibles translate it two ways, so the link is easy to miss. Paul and Peter were talking about the same thing. Paul was not the first to hear that nothing is common in itself. The first man God said it to was on a rooftop, and he said no.
He was not even the first to refuse. One chapter earlier, the Lord had told a disciple named Ananias to go to Saul of Tarsus, and Ananias answered, Lord, I have heard from many about this man (Acts 9:13). Two praying men in two chapters, each with a person he could not imagine God wanting. Each said Lord, and then said no.
Peter’s turn came at noon, on a rooftop, while he was praying and waiting for lunch. He saw something like a great sheet let down by its four corners, full of every kind of animal, clean and unclean together. A voice said, Rise, Peter; kill and eat (Acts 10:13). His answer holds two words that do not belong in one sentence. By no means, Lord (Acts 10:14). The voice came back:
*What God has made clean, do not call common. *— Acts 10:15
It happened three times (Acts 10:16). Peter was not being stubborn for its own sake. He had kept these laws since he was a boy. His refusal felt like faithfulness.
Thirty miles up the coast, a Roman centurion named Cornelius had been praying too. Luke is careful about him: a devout man who feared God with all his household, gave alms generously to the people, and prayed continually to God (Acts 10:2). He would have passed any test of devotion the church could set. And he was a Gentile. No one from the church had crossed his threshold, and no one was planning to.
The vision was never about lunch. Peter understood that by the time he reached Caesarea: God has shown me that I should not call any person common or unclean (Acts 10:28). The sheet had been full of animals. The lesson was about a man.
Most of us can name ours without thinking. The relative who left the faith and came back with different convictions. The person in the other congregation who does everything wrong. The one who hurt us and has since, we hear, changed. We would never refuse God outright. We say, “Yes, Lord, all of them. Not that one.”
And God is usually already at work in the person we have written off. Cornelius was praying before Peter ever saw the sheet.
The story does not end cleanly, and I find that a mercy to the rest of us.
Peter went down the stairs, walked to Caesarea, ate in a Gentile house, and watched the Spirit fall on people he would once have called common (Acts 10:44–48). Years later he was in Antioch, a church full of Gentile believers, eating with them freely. Then visitors arrived from Jerusalem, from the circle around James, and Peter began to pull back from the Gentile tables. Paul names the reason: he was fearing the circumcision party (Galatians 2:12). Not conviction. Fear of what the visitors would think. Others followed, even Barnabas, and Paul confronted him in front of everyone, because a divided table was not in step with the truth of the gospel (Galatians 2:14).
The man who had the vision still flinched. The revelation was true, and the old feeling outlasted it. What held was that every time Peter was corrected, he came back. The man who said no three times on a roof later stood before the whole church and argued for yes (Acts 15:7–9).
None of this means the feeling is fake. Peter’s revulsion was sincere. Ours usually is too. The hurt was real. The difference in convictions is real. Nobody is asking us to pretend otherwise.
But a feeling is not a verdict. We can dream that a friend despises us and wake up angry at the friend. The anger is real. The dream is not. Much of what we feel about a brother works like that. It is real as a feeling and worthless as evidence.
And the same error runs the other way. Some of us have heard God declare us righteous and keep insisting we are not. That too is calling common what God has called clean. Whether the verdict is about a brother or about ourselves, the word has already been spoken. Our part is not to feel differently first. It is to let what He said have the last word over what we feel, and then to go down the stairs anyway.
Paul gives the Romans the same grounds Peter was given. Do not despise the one who eats, and do not pass judgment on the one who abstains, for God has welcomed him (Romans 14:3). God had welcomed Cornelius before Peter reached his door. Peter’s job was to catch up.
There is a Cornelius near me. I suspect there is one near you. The question is not whether the discomfort is real. It is whether we will let the word overrule it.
God had already made him clean. The only question was whether Peter would come down the stairs.
It still is.
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