<p>10:15- see on Acts 10:35,36.<br /><i>And a voice came to him again the second time: What God has cleansed<em>- </em></i>The unclean animals which Peter saw in the vision represented all the Gentile world (Acts 10:15,28). They had already all been potentially &ldquo;cleansed&rdquo; by the blood of Christ, but He was dead in vain, the cleansing achieved for nothing, unless the likes of Peter took the message to them. The more and the wider and the more powerfully we do this, the more we enable the cross of Christ to be victorious, to achieve its end, the more &lsquo;worthwhile&rsquo; as it were was the Lord&rsquo;s sacrifice.</p><p><em>Do not call common- </em>The fact we can be guilty of causing others to stumble means that we can limit God's gracious plan for them. By refusing to preach to the Gentiles, Peter was &lsquo;making common&rsquo; what God had potentially cleansed (Acts 10:15 RV). We can spiritually <em>destroy </em>our brother, for whom Christ died (Rom. 14:15); we can undo the work of the cross for a brother who would otherwise be saved by it. We can make others sin (Ex. 23:33; 1 Sam. 2:24; 1 Kings 16:19).</p><p>Peter was told not to call or make common that which God had potentially cleansed; but the Greek is always elsewhere translated to defile or to make unclean. &lsquo;Don&rsquo;t make unclean what God&rsquo;s made clean&rsquo; is the idea. By refusing table fellowship to people, we are proactively making them unclean- we are treating them as if the cleansing work of Christ has no possible connection to them. And so often, people end up acting and believing according to how others act toward them in such matters of spirituality. They simply walk away from the table from which they were excluded, and from all that is represented upon it&hellip; That is the observed reality in thousands of cases. David felt that being cast out of the community of Israel was effectively saying to him &quot;Go, serve other gods&quot; (1 Sam. 26:19). Nobody probably ever said those actual words to him, but this verse captures well how people so often read rejection from the people of God- they do indeed tend to go off and serve other gods. It is those who cast them out who will have to answer for having caused their stumbling.</p>