Acts 11:1-18
New American Bible (Revised Edition)
Chapter 11
The Baptism of the Gentiles Explained.[a] 1 Now the apostles and the brothers who were in Judea heard that the Gentiles too had accepted the word of God. 2 So when Peter went up to Jerusalem the circumcised believers confronted him, 3 saying, “You entered[b] the house of uncircumcised people and ate with them.” 4 Peter began and explained it to them step by step, saying, 5 (A)“I was at prayer in the city of Joppa when in a trance I had a vision, something resembling a large sheet coming down, lowered from the sky by its four corners, and it came to me. 6 Looking intently into it, I observed and saw the four-legged animals of the earth, the wild beasts, the reptiles, and the birds of the sky. 7 I also heard a voice say to me, ‘Get up, Peter. Slaughter and eat.’ 8 But I said, ‘Certainly not, sir, because nothing profane or unclean has ever entered my mouth.’ 9 But a second time a voice from heaven answered, ‘What God has made clean, you are not to call profane.’ 10 This happened three times, and then everything was drawn up again into the sky. 11 Just then three men appeared at the house where we were, who had been sent to me from Caesarea. 12 The Spirit told me to accompany them without discriminating. These six brothers[c] also went with me, and we entered the man’s house. 13 He related to us how he had seen [the] angel standing in his house, saying, ‘Send someone to Joppa and summon Simon, who is called Peter,(B) 14 who will speak words to you by which you and all your household will be saved.’ 15 As I began to speak, the holy Spirit fell upon them as it had upon us at the beginning,(C) 16 and I remembered the word of the Lord, how he had said, ‘John baptized with water but you will be baptized with the holy Spirit.’(D) 17 If then God gave them the same gift he gave to us when we came to believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, who was I to be able to hinder God?”(E) 18 When they heard this, they stopped objecting and glorified God, saying, “God has then granted life-giving repentance to the Gentiles too.”
The Church at Antioch.[d]
Read full chapterFootnotes
- 11:1–18 The Jewish Christians of Jerusalem were scandalized to learn of Peter’s sojourn in the house of the Gentile Cornelius. Nonetheless, they had to accept the divine directions given to both Peter and Cornelius. They concluded that the setting aside of the legal barriers between Jew and Gentile was an exceptional ordinance of God to indicate that the apostolic kerygma was also to be directed to the Gentiles. Only in Acts 15 at the “Council” in Jerusalem does the evangelization of the Gentiles become the official position of the church leadership in Jerusalem.
- 11:3 You entered…: alternatively, this could be punctuated as a question.
- 11:12 These six brothers: companions from the Christian community of Joppa (see Acts 10:23).
- 11:19–26 The Jewish Christian antipathy to the mixed community was reflected by the early missionaries generally. The few among them who entertained a different view succeeded in introducing Gentiles into the community at Antioch (in Syria). When the disconcerted Jerusalem community sent Barnabas to investigate, he was so favorably impressed by what he observed that he persuaded his friend Saul to participate in the Antioch mission.
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