Trusting in God’s Power

Scripture — Acts 10:9–16, 25-28, 34-35 (NRSV)

About noon the next day … Peter went up on the roof to pray. He became hungry and wanted something to eat; and while it was being prepared, he fell into a trance. He saw the heaven opened and something like a large sheet coming down, being lowered to the ground by its four corners. In it were all kinds of four-footed creatures and reptiles and birds of the air. Then he heard a voice saying, “Get up, Peter; kill and eat.” But Peter said, “By no means, Lord; for I have never eaten anything that is profane or unclean.” The voice said to him again, a second time, “What God has made clean, you must not call profane.” This happened three times, and the thing was suddenly taken up to heaven.…

On Peter’s arrival Cornelius met him, and falling at his feet, worshiped him. But Peter made him get up, saying, “Stand up; I am only a mortal.” And as he talked with him, he went in and found that many had assembled; and he said to them, “You yourselves know that it is unlawful for a Jew to associate with or to visit a Gentile; but God has shown me that I should not call anyone profane or unclean.…

Then Peter began to speak to them: “I truly understand that God shows no partiality, but in every nation anyone who fears him and does what is right is acceptable to him.

Devotion

When I was preparing to graduate from college and applying for jobs, I remember having a distinct fear of working for a “non-Christian” organization. Even though I had attended public schools for most of my life and had been involved in a variety of non-faith-based settings and communities, I had only worked for family and friends who were believers. I really wrestled with whether I should apply to Christian non-profits only. Would it be ok to work at a secular workplace? What would I find if I worked there?

For a handful of reasons, one of which was that no Christian non-profit hired me, I ended up working for a small tech company. And to my surprise, I found the owner to be a faithful Christian who sought to embody kingdom values throughout his business. Thinking I had lost my opportunity to work in a faith-based environment, I found one in a place I least expected it.

Like my own experience, Peter’s vision of the heavenly sheet and his encounter with Cornelius exemplify a key truth about faith and work: often, God has been at work redeeming places we think are unclean.

The sheet in Peter’s vision contains all kinds of animals. The use of “all kinds” (panta in Greek) suggests that the sheet contained a mixture of both clean and unclean animals. The main purity category used by both Peter and the heavenly voice is profane (koinos and koinoō). Peter, using the adjectival form, declares he has never eaten anything profane (koinos) and unclean; the heavenly voice, using a verbal cognate, commands Peter not to call profane (koinoō) things God has cleansed. To understand what God is saying to Peter through the vision, we need a good understanding of the concept of profane.

Profane objects, especially food, are unfit for sacrifice or consumption. Even more, holy objects can become contaminated or profaned through contact with unclean or defiled food. For example, when Eleazar the priest refused to eat pork and was tortured to death by gentile oppressors, the author of 4 Maccabees declares: “You did not profane the stomach, which only had room for godliness and purity,** by eating defiled foods**” (7:6).

Another example comes later in Acts when diaspora Jews falsely accuse Paul of profaning (koinoō) the temple by bringing an Ephesian gentile into it (21:28). Though Paul had not done this, if an unclean gentile had entered the holy temple, that would have rendered the temple profane.

Given this understanding of how unclean objects can profane clean ones, Peter’s refusal to obey the command to kill and eat might make sense. He believes the clean animals have become profaned by touching the other unclean animals on the sheet. But it’s important to note that the heavenly voice tells Peter three times not to call objects cleansed by God as profane. In other words, it seems the primary issue is Peter’s ability to identify objects as profane.

Even though Peter’s vision is focused on food, God is working to teach Peter a lesson about people. It is only after arriving at Cornelius’s house that Peter understands the vision and declares, “God has shown me that I should not call anyone profane or unclean” (Acts 10:28). Without this vision and the Spirit’s prompting for Peter to go with Cornelius’s men, Peter would likely have refused to visit Cornelius out of fear that he would become profaned by interacting with a gentile soldier. But, by trusting in God’s cleansing power and engaging with Cornelius, Peter learns that his holiness and purity were not at risk. God had already been at work in the life of Cornelius and his household, cleansing their hearts and ultimately pouring the Spirit on them. Peter leaves his encounter with Cornelius not only maintaining his purity but as a witness to the cleansing work of God on the Gentiles (see Acts 15:7–11).

Although we do not operate with the same categories of clean, unclean, and profane, I believe we can treat jobs or workplaces as inherently unclean even when we have not engaged the people who work in those spaces directly. The story of Peter and Cornelius is a witness to how God is at work in the places we least expect, often with the people we least expect. If we can learn to trust in God’s power to restore and cleanse, then we can enter into any number of workplaces or leadership spaces with openness, curiosity, and confidence.

Find all Life for Leaders devotions here. Explore what the Bible has to say about work at the unique website of our partners, the Theology of Work Project. Reflection on today’s Life for Leaders theme can be found here: Work and Christian Identity (Acts 8-12).