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The radical nature of Peter’s action becomes immediately clear when word reaches the community in Jerusalem that gentile God-fearers had received the word of God (vv.1-3). Once again it is clear that entering into the experience of relationship with God in Christ and receiving the fullness of the Holy Spirit does not guarantee the elimination of deeply ingrained prejudices and narrow perspectives. While receiving the Word of God might be interpreted in a positive manner, this was not the case for the Jewish Christians in Jerusalem. For them it was not proper that the Gentiles receive the Word of God. This is revealed in their charges against Peter: You went to uncircumcised men and ate with them. How often we assume the correctness of our deeply ingrained and long-held perspectives. It often takes a radical intervention by God to break us out of our limitations.
This is the first appearance of the circumcision party, undoubtedly a group of conservative Jewish Christians who held that it was necessary for persons to become Jews before they could become Christians. They appear again in 15:1, 5. Their perspective is reasonable. If the Christian experience is the fulfillment of the promise of the old covenant, obviously people have to be members of the old covenant if they are to experience its fulfillment. Their only problem is in limiting God to their understanding of fulfillment.
Peter’s defense, after reiterating the events with Cornelius (vv.4-16), is that God poured out the Holy Spirit into the God-fearers' lives just as at Pentecost. If God dealt with the Godfearers just as with the Jews, who was he to go against God (v.17)? Peter keeps his focus clear; the issue is the reality of the experience of new relationship with God in Christ. If that is genuine, no other structures and procedures, no matter how well established, long held, or cherished, are to become a restriction to what God has done.
There is a possibility of two responses in Jerusalem (v.18). One group (the circumcision party) is silenced; the other rejoices that God has included the God-fearers in the new covenant.