<p>10:35 <i>But i<em>n every nation- </em></i>Peter&rsquo;s grasp of the extent of Christ&rsquo;s Lordship was reflected in the scope of his preaching. He had known it before, but understood it only to a limited extent. It seems that he preferred to understand the commission to preach &ldquo;remission of sins <em>among</em> all nations&rdquo; as meaning to the Jewish diaspora scattered amongst all nations (Lk. 24:47)- notwithstanding the copious hints in the Lord&rsquo;s teaching that His salvation was for literally all men. He preached forgiveness (s.w. remission) <em>to Israel</em> because he understood that this was what the Lord&rsquo;s death had enabled (Acts 5:31). It was Israel who needed forgiveness, because they had crucified God&rsquo;s Son- this seems to have been his thinking. Peter applies the word &ldquo;all&rdquo; (as in &ldquo;to all nations&rdquo;) to his Jewish audiences (Acts 2:14,36; 3:13; 4:10). But he was taught in the Cornelius incident that because Christ is &ldquo;Lord of <em>all</em>&rdquo;, therefore men from <em>every</em> (s.w. &ldquo;all&rdquo;) nation can receive forgiveness of sins (Acts 10:35,36). He makes the link back to the preaching commission in Acts 10:43: <em>all</em>&nbsp;in <em>every </em>nation who believe can receive remission of sins (s.w. Lk. 24:47)- as he was commanded to preach in the great commission. He came to see that the desperate need for reconciliation with God was just as strong for those who had not directly slain His Son; for, Peter may have mused, all men would have held him &ldquo;condemned by heaven&rdquo; if they had been Jerusalem Jews. And he realized that Christ was truly Lord of all, all men, everywhere, and not just of a few hundred thousand Jews. And with us too. The wider and the higher our vision and conception of the ascended Christ, the wider and more insistently powerful will be our appeal to literally all men. Yet Peter had heard the Lord&rsquo;s words, when He had asked them to tell all nations, and when He had prophesied that His cross would draw all men unto Him. And his comment that &ldquo;unto you <em>first</em> God, having raised up His Son, sent him to bless you&rdquo; (Acts 3:26) suggests he suspected a wider benefit from the resurrection than just Israel. But all this knowledge lay passive within him; as with his understanding of the cross, he just couldn&rsquo;t face up to the full implications of what he heard. But it was his recognition of the extent of Christ&rsquo;s Lordship that motivated him to make the change, to convert the knowledge into practice, to throw off the shackles of traditional understanding that had held him from understanding the clear truth of words he had heard quite clearly. An example would be the words recorded in Mk. 7:19 RV: All meats were made clean by Christ. But Peter had to be told: &ldquo;What God hath cleansed, that call not thou common&rdquo; (Acts 10:15). He had to be taught to simply accept the word he loved, with all its implications.&nbsp;We too can skim over Bible phrases and verses, assuming our previous understanding of them is correct.</p><p><em>He that fears Him and works righteousness</em>- A reference to Cornelius as a Gentile God-fearer who did good deeds.</p><p><em>Is acceptable to Him- </em>Whoever truly works righteousness &quot;<em>is</em> accepted&quot; with God right now, as well as at the final judgment. Some faithful men experience condemnation for their sins now, with the result that they repent and therefore at the day of judgment will not receive that condemnation. The language of being 'acceptable' may be a continuation of the language of sacrifice which began with the invitation to &quot;kill and eat&quot; (see on :13). For the same Greek word for &quot;acceptable&quot; is found in Phil. 4:18: &quot;A sacrifice acceptable, wellpleasing to God&quot;.</p>