Paul’s first letter to Timothy teaches us that we are to reject no foods if they are received with thanksgiving (1 Tim 4:3-5). He goes so far as to say that anyone who forbids either food or marriage are liars (vv. 2-3)! Therefore, we can have assurance from this passage (along with Romans 14:20) that God removed the distinction between clean and unclean foods under the New Covenant. What about Acts 10? Did Peter’s vision declare all foods clean?
People often consider Acts 10 and Mark 7 to be passages which teach that all foods are clean for disciples of Jesus. It is understandable why people draw this conclusion. A casual reading of both passages could leave one with the impression that they teach the removal of the Old Testament dietary laws. People who conclude the kosher food laws do not apply under the New Covenant are correct, but sometimes for the wrong reason.
What was Peter’s vision?
5 “I was in the city of Joppa praying, and in a trance I saw a vision, something like a great sheet descending, being let down from heaven by its four corners, and it came down to me.
6 Looking at it closely, I observed animals and beasts of prey and reptiles and birds of the air.
7 And I heard a voice saying to me, ‘Rise, Peter; kill and eat.’
8 But I said, ‘By no means, Lord; for nothing common or unclean has ever entered my mouth.’
9 But the voice answered a second time from heaven, ‘What God has made clean, do not call common.’
10 This happened three times, and all was drawn up again into heaven. (Acts 11:5–10 ESV)
What was cleansed?
It is clear from Peter’s vision that God has cleansed something, but what? To Peter’s credit, he did not jump to conclusions about the meaning of the vision the way that many Bible students do today. Notice that after the vision, Peter puzzled about its meaning:
Peter was inwardly perplexed as to what the vision that he had seen might mean (Acts 10:17 ESV)
while Peter was pondering the vision, (Acts 10:19 ESV)
Peter was perplexed by the vision and had to ponder it. We can infer from this that Peter didn’t think the surface level, or most obvious, interpretation was necessarily the correct one.
Many today who feel that the vision’s meaning was glaringly obvious would have given Peter a good natured ribbing because he had to think about it. Peter wisely didn’t jump to conclusions about the vision the way we are prone to.
How most interpret
Most Christians assume the vision conveyed two meanings. First, we think the vision was meant to eliminate the distinction between clean and unclean foods. They take for granted that God was declaring all foods clean in the vision. Second, we conclude that God was also declaring the Gentiles to be clean. Jews should no longer consider them to be an unclean people who were unfit for the gospel.
How Peter interpreted
Peter didn’t jump to the conclusion that the vision’s interpretation was about food! Isn’t that interesting? Throughout Jesus’s ministry, Peter had a reputation for being loud, impulsive, and perhaps not a deep thinker. It would seem that Peter had matured quite a bit because he didn’t make the assumption so many of us make. He didn’t automatically adopt the surface level meaning of the vision as the message God was conveying. Peter’s need to give thought to the vision shows that he knew God had a deeper meaning He wanted to communicate.
Peter himself tells us what the vision meant:
God has shown me that I should not call any person common or unclean. (Acts 10:28 ESV)
Simple, right? We muddy the waters when we try to impose a second, surface level interpretation onto the vision. Our “point of greatest confusion is that while the vision dealt with foods, Peter and the Jerusalem believers understood it to refer to people.”1
Neither Peter, Luke (the author of Acts), nor anyone else in the story ever applies the vision to food! The Old Testament dietary laws were the backdrop in which God used a vision of clean and unclean animals to teach Peter something about the Gentiles. In this New Covenant that Jesus established, He had eliminated the old taboos concerning the Gentiles. Jesus was in the process of breaking down the wall separating Jews and Gentiles (Eph 2:11-18).
God confirmed Peter’s interpretation of the vision pouring out the Holy Spirit on the household of Cornelius.
The vision said nothing about the Old Testament dietary laws
Because the vision was only about people and not food, we cannot use this passage to “prove” that God removed the Old Testament dietary laws in the New Covenant. “The vision does not nullify Jewish dietary laws or the Mosaic Law in general, since there is no support for the interpretation that the vision also pertains to the cleansing of unclean food.”2
We have other clear passages which say that all foods are permissible for followers of Jesus. We need not make Peter’s vision say something it was never intended to communicate.
Allow the text to speak
If we read only what the text of this passage communicates to us it interprets itself. There were not two meanings in this vision, only one. Most of us have been guilty of eisegesis (imposing our thoughts into the text) concerning this passage. We need to read it carefully and note what it does and does not say. “Luke does not specifically say that the food laws have been abolished per se; what he focuses on is the fact that no person was to be treated as unclean any longer.”3
It does teach that the Jews were to cease considering the Gentiles unclean. “What God has made clean, do not call common” (Acts 10:15 ESV). No one who wrestled with the implications of the vision, neither Peter, Luke, nor the Jerusalem brethren, ever applied its meaning to food. The text itself only applies the vision to people.
References
- Miller, Chris A. “Did Peter’s Vision in Acts 10 Pertain to Men or the Menu?” Bibliotheca sacra 159, no. 635 (July 2002): 306.
- Woods, David B. “Interpreting Peter’s Vision in Acts 10:9–16.” Conspectus 13 (March 2012): 171.
- Witherington, Ben. The Acts of the Apostles: A Socio-Rhetorical Commentary (p. 600). Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co.. Kindle Edition.