Acts 10:45-48 - The gift of the Holy Spirit had been poured out

10:45,46

The circumcised believers, i.e. the Jewish believers, were amazed, for they could see the Spirit had come down on the Gentiles.  How did they know this? Because they started speaking in tongues and praising God. There was clear evidence of the presence of the Holy Spirit. The Jewish believers still thought the Jews were special (which in a sense they were, and are, but not in the way that they thought). Earlier (10:34) Peter had said that God does not show favouritism, now they had a clear demonstration of this. This was a shock for both Jews and Gentiles. It is perhaps significant that in 10:45 Luke calls the Jewish believers “circumcised believers”. Circumcision was to be a contentious issue in the early church, and Luke uses the term circumcised here with a view to that.

10:47,48

Peter drew the conclusion that there could be no obstacle to stop the new believers being baptised in water. If God was happy to pour out His Spirit upon them, then the church should welcome them fully into the church. So the new believers were baptised into the name of Jesus Christ. As an aside, in Matt 28:19,20 Jesus tells His disciples to baptise them in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Here Peter simply says “in the name of Jesus Christ”, but to use this as an argument against baptising in the name of the Father, Son and Spirit is frankly silly. Peter remained with them for a few days. Paul was the “apostle to the Gentiles”, but Peter oversaw the first significant conversion of Gentiles. So Paul’s work was building upon what God was already doing, on what the Christ ordained mission of the church was.