James Buchanan
At the time of Christ’s advent, there was the same diversity of opinion and character among the Jews as there is among ourselves at the present day, and the men to whom He preached were very differently prepared for the gospel of the kingdom. There were Sadducees then, as there are sceptics now, who doubted or disbelieved the truth revealed by Moses and the prophets; there were Pharisees then, as there are formalists now, who rested in the form of godliness while they denied its power; there were Pilates, who asked, “What is truth?” and Gallios, who “cared for none of these things”.
But there were others whose hearts the Lord had touched and who waited, in faith and hope, for “the consolation of Israel”. Among the Jews we read of Zacharias and his wife Elizabeth, “who were both righteous before God, walking in all the commandments and ordinances of the Lord blameless”; and Mary the mother of Jesus, whose song breathes the spirit of genuine piety, when she exclaimed, “My soul doth magnify the Lord, and my spirit hath rejoiced in God my Saviour”; and Simeon, of whom it is said that “the same man was just and devout, waiting for the consolation of Israel: and the Holy Ghost was upon him”; and Anna the prophetess, “a widow of about four score and four years, who departed not from the temple, but served God with fastings and prayers night and day, and spake of [Christ] to all them that looked for redemption in Jerusalem”; and Nathaniel, of whom our Lord Himself said, “Behold an Israelite indeed, in whom is no guile!”
Among the Gentiles, we read of Cornelius, a Roman centurion, “a devout man, and one that feared God with all his house, who gave much alms to the people, and prayed to God alway”. In him we have a precious example of the spiritual life which still existed in the bosom of the Jewish Church, and of the blessed fruits which had sprung from the faith of the Old Testament. Even when their national character had sadly deteriorated and the scribes and Pharisees had made the commandment of God of none effect by their traditions, there was still among them a blessed remnant who cherished the faith and walked in the footsteps of faithful Abraham.
As their spiritual acquaintance with the truth revealed in the Old Testament had prepared them to receive any other revelation which God might yet be pleased to make, so God manifested the utmost care for them and gave them the earliest and best opportunities of acquiring a knowledge of the truth as it is in Jesus. Thus He fulfilled the law of His spiritual administration: “Who-
1This is the first part of a chapter, reprinted with editing, from the “Illustrative Cases of Conversion” in The Office and Work of the Holy Spirit. It is based on Acts 10.
soever hath, to him shall be given; and whosoever hath not, from him shall be taken even that which he seemeth to have”.
We have a remarkable instance of this in the narrative of the experience of Cornelius when he was made acquainted with the full truth of the gospel. A change was wrought upon him which cannot, I think, be considered as a case of conversion, for he was already a devout believer, but as a case of advancement, of translation from the lower form of the Jewish faith to the higher form of the Christian – yet still in the same school and under the same Teacher. This will become apparent, if we consider:
1. The state and character of Cornelius before this change occurred. He was by birth a Gentile and by profession a soldier. Notwithstanding these disadvantages, he had become a proselyte to the Jewish faith; he believed in and worshipped the one living and true God. His character is thus described: “a devout man, and one that feared God with all his house, which gave much alms to the people, and prayed to God alway”; and again: “a just man, and one that feareth God, and of good report among all the nations of the Jews”. Such language is never applied in Scripture to any idolater or heathen. That his religion was not merely natural appears from the incidental point that “at the ninth hour of the day, he was praying in his house,” the hour of evening sacrifice among the Jews, when such as were not present at the temple prayed at home.
It is evident also that his prayers were addressed to the God of Israel. Not only so, they were accepted by Him, for the angel said to him: “Thy prayers and thine alms are come up for a memorial before God”. Thus we infer that he must have been a genuine believer and a justified man, for “without faith it is impossible to please [God]; for he that cometh to God, must believe that He is and that He is a rewarder of them that diligently seek Him”. Cornelius was acquainted, then, with God’s revealed truth and had embraced it with a lively faith which led him to fast and pray and to care for the religious instruction of his family. Loving God, he loved his neighbour also, for he gave much alms to the people. Indeed it would seem that he was not altogether ignorant of the gospel itself, although he had not been firmly established in it; for Peter said to him: “The word which God sent unto the children of Israel, preaching peace by Jesus Christ (He is Lord of all): that word, ye know, which was published throughout all Judea, and began from Galilee, after the baptism which John preached”.
We are to consider him, I apprehend, as a Gentile proselyte to the Jewish faith who, without submitting to the rite of circumcision, embraced the faith of the Jewish Church and worshipped the God of Israel (we learn that he was uncircumcised from the later objection to Peter’s conduct, founded on this
consideration). In doing so, he was doubtless encouraged by the gracious provision for admitting strangers to the Church’s privileges (1 Ki 8:41, Is 56:6). As a devout and conscientious man, he acted up to the light he had and waited for more, listening to the reports which had reached him of the miracles and preaching of Jesus, but without yet arriving at a clear apprehension of the gospel.
On the whole, he may be regarded as a believer in the sense in which Abraham was a believer, or the cloud of witnesses mentioned in Hebrews 11, who “all died in faith, not having received the promises, but having seen them afar off, and were persuaded of them, and embraced them, and confessed that they were strangers and pilgrims on the earth”. Being a believer, he was justified and accepted, as they were, by faith in God’s covenant promise – and many others who, like himself, were sinners of the Gentiles – for a promise was given before the law: that the seed of the woman should bruise the serpent’s head.
That promise, with the accompanying rite of sacrifice, which prefigured “the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world”, afforded a sufficient object of faith and a solid ground of hope to many who had no natural connection with Abraham and his family. By this faith Melchizedek was justified; Jethro, the father-in-law of Moses; Rahab, in Jericho; indeed Abraham himself before he was circumcised; for, the Apostle says, “faith was reckoned to Abraham for righteousness. How was it then reckoned? When he was in circumcision, or in uncircumcision? Not in circumcision, but in uncircumcision. And he received the sign of circumcision, a seal of the righteousness of the faith which he had yet being uncircumcised, that he might be the father of all them that believe, though they be not circumcised, that righteousness might be imputed unto them also: and the father of circumcision to them who are not of the circumcision only, but who also walk in the steps of that faith of our father Abraham, which he had being yet uncircumcised.”
But here a question may arise: If Cornelius was already a justified man, why were such extraordinary means used for his instruction? Some have supposed that, had he died in his present state, he must have perished – founding mainly on an expression in the following chapter, where Peter quotes the words of the angel to Cornelius: “Send men to Joppa, and call for Simon, whose surname is Peter, who shall tell thee words, whereby thou and all thy house shall be saved”. They have inferred that he had not yet acquired a saving knowledge of divine truth, but I believe that the whole description given of his character seems very plainly to imply the reverse.
The centurion was at that time in a state of transition from the Jewish faith to the Christian. He underwent precisely the same change as was wrought
on all the devout Jews who “looked for redemption in Jerusalem” and “waited for the consolation of Israel”; after long expecting the promised Messiah, they were led to believe that Jesus was He. The subject of their faith as Jews was that God would send a deliverer; that “Jesus was the Christ” became the subject of their faith as Christians. Before he knew Christ and while he was yet under the influence of prejudice, Nathaniel was asking, “Can any good thing come out of Nazareth?” He was “an Israelite indeed, in whom is no guile”; but when Jesus spoke to him and convinced him of His omniscient knowledge by a few simple words, he believed and exclaimed, “Rabbi, Thou art the Son of God; Thou art the king of Israel”.
Just such was the change which was wrought on Cornelius, the devout Gentile believer. And such a change was necessary for two reasons, one of which was personal to himself, the other of a more public nature.
(1) He must now believe the truth as it is in Jesus. It was no longer true that God would send a deliverer – the Deliverer had already come; and it was now necessary to acknowledge that “Jesus is the Christ”. Had Cornelius died before Christ’s coming, or even before he had sufficient information on the subject, he might have been saved as Abraham and all the faithful children of Abraham were, by the faith of what God had promised to the fathers. To refuse to believe in Christ, when fully informed of all that He had done and taught, would have been fatal, not only because it rejected the Saviour, but also because it indicated the absence of that spirit of faith in the true meaning of the Old Testament itself, a faith which invariably embraced the gospel when it was first proclaimed. There was an affinity between the faith of a spiritual Jew or proselyte and the faith of the New Testament, in virtue of which the one led on to the other and found in it, not a new creed, but the completion of the old one.
(2) The events recorded in this chapter were not designed exclusively for the personal benefit of Cornelius and his family; they were designed, with reference to the Church at large, to make it manifest that the “middle wall of partition”, which had long divided the Jews from the Gentiles, had been taken down; that in Christ there is neither Jew nor Greek, circumcision nor uncircumcision, bond nor free, but Christ is all and in all; and that the Christian Church was to be truly catholic, comprehending all nations and peoples and tongues. The Gentiles were admitted, on an equal footing with the Jews, to participate in its holiest privileges and share in its highest hopes.
O believer, though the arms of thy faith be small and weak, yet they embrace a great Christ and receive the richest gift that ever God bestowed upon the world; no sooner art thou become a believer but Christ is in thee the hope of glory and thou hast authority to become a son or daughter of God.
John Flavel