The Case of Cornelius
by Jeremy McKeen
One of the key figures in the book of Acts and in all of church history is Cornelius. Yet, it’s my guess that the majority of Christians know little or next to nothing about the man. So, who was he, and what should we know about him?
The Spiritual State of Cornelius - People disagree about whether or not Cornelius was saved before Peter came and spoke to him. The reason for questioning his spiritual state before Peter’s arrival is largely due to Peter’s recap of the whole event in Chapter 11 in which the angel told Cornelius that, “…He will declare to you a message by which you will be saved, you and all your household” (11:14b). And the consensus in Jerusalem after hearing this was, “Then to the Gentiles also God has granted repentance that leads to life’ (11:18b). So, by just reading Chapter 11, you would naturally conclude that Cornelius wasn’t saved before he met Peter. Yet, when the context of the whole account of Cornelius is taken into consideration and Scripture is compared with Scripture, it can be seen that Cornelius was indeed saved before Peter’s arrival.
In fact, Luke went out of his way to describe the spiritual state of Cornelius before hearing Peter’s message. Three times Cornelius is described as a man who feared God (Ch.10:2; 22; 35), and the bible is clear that unregenerate people do not fear God (Ps.55:19; 103:13, Rom.3:18). Furthermore, Cornelius is described as a righteous man whose generous giving and continual prayers were pleasing before God (10:2-4; 35), and the bible is clear that this is not possible in the case of the unsaved (Ps.14:1-3, Pr.15:8;29, Heb.11:6) This is why Peter himself perceived and acknowledged the true state of Cornelius even before he preached to him (10:34-35). So, how do we reconcile what’s said in Chapter 11 and what’s described of Cornelius in Chapter 10?
Cornelius lived in the inter-testament transitional period as a Gentile convert who now heard that the promised Christ that he had greeted from afar had finally come in the person of Jesus. So, what must he do to be saved? In the words of Mathew Henry, "He that believed the promise of the Messiah must now believe the performance of that promise." John Calvin concurs: “Cornelius must be put in the catalogue of the old fathers, who hoped for salvation of the Redeemer before he was revealed.” In other words, Cornelius believed in the coming Christ, but now he must demonstrate the genuineness of that faith by believing in this further revelation of who the Christ is in order to truly be counted among the saved. You could say that Cornelius' profession of faith before Peter's arrival would have been, "I believe that the Lord will send the Christ to take away my sins." Yet after hearing Peter it would have been, "I believe that Jesus is the Lord and Christ who has taken away my sins." So, Cornelius wasn't going from a state of damnation to salvation but rather from faith in the promise of salvation to faith in its fulfillment.
The Spiritual Significance of Cornelius - So, if Cornelius was already a believer before Peter met him, then why would Luke record the case of Cornelius? Well, clearly the meaning of Peter’s vision of God instructing him to eat (personally take in) the unclean animals represented how God wanted him to personally take in Cornelius and his household (10:17; 28). Peter is told, “What God has made clean, do not call common” (10:15; 11:9). Notice the past tense. God had already made Cornelius clean through his faith in the coming Christ; it was now up to Peter to proclaim the good news that Christ had finally come and fully embrace Cornelius (aka - all future Gentile believers). In the case of Cornelius, God was showing the Jewish church once and for all that Gentile believers were not “second-class citizens” to be sort of tolerated but fellow citizens to be fully accepted. Full salvation and inclusion in the church was not just for Jews or those who “become Jews” through receiving circumcision and following the feasts, dietary laws, etc.. No, in Jesus Christ, God had created “one new man in place of the two” (Eph.2:15) and had given water baptism as the new sign of belonging for all believers and their household (Ch.10:47-48; 16:14-15, 1 Cor.7:14). Cornelius was a great man of faith and represents a great turning point of the gospel reaching every nation!