Charles Ellicott Commentary Acts 10:28

"and he said unto them, Ye yourselves know how it is an unlawful thing for a man that is a Jew to join himself or come unto one of another nation; and [yet] unto me hath God showed that I should not call any man common or unclean:" — Acts 10:28 (ASV)

Ye know how that it is an unlawful thing.—Peter speaks from the standpoint of traditional Pharisaism rather than from that of the Law itself; but the feeling was widely diffused, and showed itself in forms more or less rigorous wherever Jews and Gentiles came in contact with each other. The strict Jew would not enter a Gentile’s house, nor sit on the same couch, nor eat or drink out of the same vessel. (Compare Note on Mark 7:3-4.) The very dust of a Gentile city was defiling. The Hindu feeling of caste, shrinking from contact with those of a lower grade, driven to madness and mutiny by “greased cartridges,” presents the nearest modern analogue.

God hath shewed me that I should not call any man common or unclean.—The Apostle had, we find, at last learned the lesson which the vision had taught him, in all the fullness of its meaning. Humanity as such had been redeemed by the Incarnation and Ascension, and was no longer common or unclean, even in the most outcast Gentile.

God was willing to receive all men. Sin alone was that which separated men from Him. Impurity was thought of as a moral, not a physical taint, and men were taught to see even in the sinner the potentialities of a higher life.

He, too, had been redeemed, and might be justified and sanctified. Therefore, honour and reverence were due to him as to one in whom the image of God was not utterly effaced and might be restored to brightness.

It is interesting, in this connection, to note Honour all men (1 Peter 2:17). It is obvious that the pride of class, resting on mere differences of culture and showing itself in acts and words of contempt, is, from one point of view, even less excusable than that which at least imagined that it rested on a religious basis. From another perspective, however, it is less inveterate and therefore more easily curable.