<p>15:8- see on Acts 26:22.</p><p><em>And God, who knows the heart</em>- The only other time these words occur is on the Lord's lips in Lk. 16:15, warning the Pharisees that God knows their hearts. And Peter is saying these words to Pharisees who now had believed in Jesus (15:5). He's reminding them, perhaps, of who they had been, of what corrupt hearts they had once had. The Lord had known all about that, but worked to accept them and draw them in to His fellowship. And the same Lord knew the hearts of sincere Gentiles, and was seeking to save them too.</p><p><em>Did bare them witness</em><i>, giving them the Holy Spirit, even as He did to us</i>- This is legal language. It's as if God is being called as a witness, and the exhibit provided is the fact that He gave the Holy Spirit to the Gentile converts as a sign of their acceptance- before they were even baptized, and without requiring their circumcision. But who, then, was the judge? The brethren there present at that meeting. And the whole question was therefore wisely presented by Peter as effectively judging God. And in fact that is what any of us are doing by questioning which believers in Christ are acceptable with God. We are relegating Him to a witness, and placing ourselves in His place as judges. This idea is continued in :10: &quot;Why do you now put God to the test?&quot;, the Greek meaning to examine or scrutinize. This would then continue the legal metaphor- with the suggestion that it is quite inappropriate to examine the exhibit of God's acceptance of Gentiles in this way.</p>