“Acts 10:1-8”

Wednesday, January 06, 2016

“Now there was a man at Caesarea named Cornelius, a centurion of what was called the Italian cohort, a devout man and one who feared God with all his household, and gave many alms to the Jewish people and prayed to God continually. About the ninth hour of the day he clearly saw in a vision an angel of God who had just come in and said to him, ‘Cornelius!’ And fixing his gaze on him and being much alarmed, he said, ‘What is it, Lord?’ And he said to him, ‘Your prayers and alms have ascended as a memorial before God. Now dispatch some men to Joppa and send for a man named Simon, who is also called Peter; he is staying with a tanner named Simon, whose house is by the sea.’ When the angel who was speaking to him had left, he summoned two of his servants and a devout soldier of those who were his personal attendants, and after he had explained everything to them, he sent them to Joppa.”

---End of Scripture verses---

Inasmuch as the book of Acts is largely a record of conversions, it might come as a surprise that a man of the caliber of Cornelius was in need of being converted. It is said of Cornelius that he was “a devout man and one who feared God with all his household, and gave many alms to the Jewish people and prayed to God continually” (verse 2). If you were to ask the typical person walking down the street, or sitting in a church pew for that matter, if Cornelius was in a right relationship with God, I think the answer would be a resounding, “Yes!” He possessed all the qualities and performed all the services that people would associate with eternal salvation. And yet Acts chapter 10 is an account of the conversion of Cornelius and some of his family and countrymen. If merely being a good person was enough for someone’s name to be written in the book of life, then Cornelius was certainly written at the top of the first page! And yet he still needed to hear words by which he and his household must be saved (Acts 11:14), and he need to act on those words.

Verse 1 reads, “Now there was a man at Caesarea named Cornelius, a centurion of what was called the Italian cohort.”      A cohort was a regiment of the Roman military. It has been estimated that in the first century a Roman legion totaled about six thousand soldiers, and each legion had ten cohorts consisting of about six hundred soldiers each. Each cohort was divided into centuries, or 100’s. Each one of those centuries was commanded by a centurion who was roughly the equivalent to a sergeant in our military. These can be interesting details (and hopefully accurate!), but the pertinent fact that the Holy Spirit is drawing our attention to is that Cornelius was a Gentile. Up until this point in the history of Christ’s church and the narrative of the book of Acts, only Jewish people had been taught the Gospel and converted to Christ. The word was now going into uncharted territory and this was such a unique situation that God chose to use the intervention of an angel to usher in this new era of church history (verse 3).

Lord willing, we will look further into the conversion of Cornelius. For now just know that, even though he was a good-deed-doing, God-fearing man, he was not yet a Christian. He still needed to hear the truth about Jesus and obey the Gospel in order to be saved.

For tomorrow please read Acts 10:9-20. God bless.

- Louie Taylor

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