The word which he sent to the sons of Israel, preaching peace by Jesus Christ, (*he* is Lord of all things,)
Peter is standing in the house of Cornelius, a Roman officer. He sums up God's whole message to the world — peace, through Jesus Christ — and then adds five words that break every boundary he grew up with.
The verse does not say people must find peace. It says God sent the word and preached it. That reverses the way many people think about getting right with God.
How often are souls urged to make their peace with God! The truth is that Christ has made peace, and God has been proclaiming it in the gospel for more than 1800 years. The poor sinner has only to believe... Nothing but the blood of Christ, the Son of God's love, could make peace with a holy and righteous God. But the work is done and God has accepted it. Now God Himself proclaims it, and He wants you to receive it. "Preaching peace by Jesus Christ," said the apostle Peter in the house of Cornelius.
Peter names one source of peace: Jesus Christ. That matters for anyone who keeps checking their own progress for proof of peace.
So many live in miserable uncertainty because they do not rest in absolute faith on God's foundation. They are taken up with themselves instead of building on Christ alone. They are looking to experience rather than to a risen Saviour... God did not send peace to the children of Israel by spiritual experiences or by religious exercises. He does not send it to us Gentiles that way either. He sends peace by Jesus Christ alone.
Peter tells Cornelius he already knows this message. His own honesty was what kept him from claiming it.
You can see that a man might be godly and still not know the privileges of Christianity... Cornelius was not ignorant of this word. He had also heard that God was preaching peace through Jesus Christ. But it was "to the children of Israel." So why did Cornelius not get peace? For a beautiful reason. He was just and upright, and he knew he was not in the favoured circle of Israel. So he judged it was not for him.
The words in brackets are not decoration. They are the hinge the whole scene turns on.
He reminds them that they knew of the word of God sent to Israel by Jesus Christ. He is the One who preached peace in the middle of the strife and confusion of the nation. The parenthesis he adds, "He is Lord of all," shows that the message was not for Israel alone.
Peter had seen this majesty with his own eyes, and the memory breaks into his sermon.
Then we have the short but delightfully expressive parenthesis — "He is Lord of all." The apostle had heard the voice "from the excellent glory" telling the Father's delight in Christ. He had been an eyewitness "of His majesty." So he breaks off his talk to Cornelius, as it were, to express his heartfelt appreciation of the universal supremacy of his Lord.
Peter had preached Jesus as Israel's Messiah. Under the title "Lord," the national line disappears — and a personal demand appears.
He is Lord, not of the Jews only, but also of the Gentiles. His place as Messiah did apply more to the Jew, who had the holy writings, with their prophecies announcing the coming of the Messiah. But when we consider Him from the point of view of His Lordship, then all other distinctions vanish. He is Lord of the Jew, but He is equally Lord of the Gentile... If I turn to the Lord I shall at once admit myself to be under His authority. My place is subjection beneath His mighty Word.
Commentators tie this universal title to the resurrection. The risen Christ is beyond the borders that divide people here.
Jesus, risen from the dead, is Lord of all, not merely of the Jews. He is the Lord of all men and all things, for all things are put under His feet... Jesus, walking through this world, was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel. But risen from the dead, the Saviour has no national limits. There is no Gentile or Jew beyond the grave. Here there are geographical distinctions that mark people off from one another. Beyond the grave there are none — and that is where the Lord of glory is.
It also reaches into the future.
He is Lord of all, and you, my friend, will have to give an account to Him hereafter.
- Sent — God is the one who sends and preaches. Peace is not something people negotiate; it is news delivered.
- Made — the peace preached was already made by the blood of Christ. Believing it, not producing it, is the sinner's part.
- Through Christ — not through feelings, progress, or religious effort. Peace is only as steady as the foundation it rests on.
- Lord of all — those bracketed words carried the message past Israel's borders. They reached a Roman officer's house, and everyone since.
- All means you — if He is Lord of all, He is your Lord: today for peace, and one day for an account.
*ye* know; the testimony which has spread through the whole of Judaea, beginning from Galilee after the baptism which John preached --
Peter is in the house of Cornelius, telling a room of Gentiles that they already know the story. The verse says where that story ran and when it began — so why did Cornelius still need Peter to come?
Peter opens with news, not with new facts. God had sent that word to Israel — yet these Gentiles had heard it too.
The grace of God was now about to flow richly beyond the boundaries of Israel. Yet God had sent that word about Jesus Christ, Himself present among men, to the children of Israel only. Still, that word had spread widely through Galilee and Judea. Cornelius and his friends lived in those parts, so they knew all about it. They knew well the things that happened in the life and death of Jesus of Nazareth.
"Judea" here does not mean one small province. The word covers the whole land.
"Judea." This seems to stand for the whole land of Israel, as it clearly does in Acts 10:37, and in the Gospel at Luke 6:17, Luke 7:17, and Luke 23:5.
The starting point matters. Peter names a district in the north that people despised, a region named after the Gentiles.
This message was spoken of throughout Judea. It began from despised Galilee of the Gentiles, after the baptism which John preached. We read of it in Mark 1:14-15, where the Lord Himself called men to repent and believe the gospel. It is the only salvation for the Jew — and for the Gentile when he is called later, as Cornelius now began to be.
Peter dates the start from John's baptism. Commentators differ on which stretch of ministry the phrase covers. One reading ties it to the moment John went to prison:
The public testimony, or preaching, of our Lord began after John's imprisonment, and it began from Galilee. But this passage shows that before that He was gathering disciples by private teaching, and His disciples were baptising.
Another reading points back to an earlier work in the south that the Gospels do not record:
Early in His ministry He preached the gospel so widely that in Judea He "was making and baptizing more disciples than John" (John 4:1). We have no record of this huge campaign, and the scale of its success was amazing. Peter appears to point to it when he says that the word God sent, preaching peace by Jesus Christ, spread throughout all Judea (Acts 10:37).
Cornelius already had the facts. So what did a God-fearing man like him still lack?
He had the fear of God, and faith in Him. He even knew certain facts about Christ's ministry on earth. Yet he was not saved until he heard and believed the good news of the risen Christ and forgiveness in His name. Then God delivered him right out of the old world system that had held him, and brought him to Himself.
What he lacked was not information but permission.
As Acts 10:37 tells us, he knew very well the word that had spread through all Judea and was sent to the children of Israel. What he wanted was to learn on authority that God meant the same word of His grace for himself, a Gentile, and for others like him. He wanted it in all the freeness and fullness of the gospel. He did not dare take it without God's approval. He saw it clearly enough for Israel, whom he honoured as the old and chosen people of God.
- Known. Peter starts from what his Gentile hearers already knew. The life and death of Jesus were public news across the land, not a private tradition.
- Begun. The message dates from John's baptism and started in Galilee — a despised region named after the Gentiles.
- Bounded. God sent that word to Israel, and it ran through Judea — a name that here covers the whole land, not one province.
- Not enough. Cornelius knew the account, but knowing it did not save him. He had to hear and believe the message of the risen Christ and forgiveness in His name.
- Released. He needed authority to claim as a Gentile what he had only ever seen as Israel's. Peter's visit gave him that.