10:14
Peter was horrified at the thought, for it would mean eating food that was “impure and unclean”, it would go against all his Jewish upbringing. “Surely not, Lord”. The book by Bruce contains some discussion questions, and one is whether “No” and “Lord” are contradictory. The technical answer is yes they are, but the question is not a sensible one. There are several instances in the Bible of faithful people initially objecting to God’s command (Abraham, Moses, Ezekiel, Peter immediately come to mind). There will be times when God’s command offends us. God knows this will happen, and it is best for us to be honest with God. The outcome will be that we realise we are wrong and it is our thinking that needs to change, not God’s! But pretending to agree when we don’t is likely to store up trouble for the future.
10:15,16
Peter heard the voice again, saying “Do not call anything impure that God has made clean”. And this happened three times. In Mark 7:18,19 we read that Jesus declared all foods clean. Now it is widely held that Mark’s gospel was largely based on the recollections of Peter, and this would be entirely consistent with what we read here. Peter now understood Jesus’s words in Mark 7. It is important that we do not misinterpret the events. There are those who would apply the same principle to the moral teachings of the Old Testament, in particular in relation to sexual morality. There are no grounds for this at all. As Jesus said, the food laws were dealing purely with an external matter. He then goes on to list the “true sins”, and this includes sexual immorality (Mark 7:20-23).
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