HARMONY WITH GOD Part 3 of 3 by Zane C. Hodges - Chafer ...

Harmony with God 39
Peter had treated these Gentiles as though he found them
fully acceptable since, apparently after his sermon, he had sat
down to eat with them. But this implied that they were also fully
acceptable to God, and yet all they had done was to repent of their
paganism and believe in Christ. They had not become Jewish
proselytes!
But the fact that they were indeed fully accepted by God had
been signaled by His giving them, says Peter, the same gift as He
gave us when we believed on the Lord Jesus Christ (Acts 11:17).
In this respect, they were more readily blessed than the Palestinian
Jews had been!
We must remember that the Jews at Pentecost did not get the
gift of the Spirit until after baptism. But God did not require even
this of Cornelius in order for him to be baptized by God’s Spirit. It
was thus evident that the Gentiles had entered the same “life
experience” that believing Jews enjoyed, that is, they were fully
blessed by the God with whom they were now obviously in
harmony. We might say, “They entered into the Christian life.”
Here we need to recall the words of the father of the Prodigal
Son. Upon his son’s return home, the experiential separation of
father and son had ended, so that his dad can say to his unhappy
older boy, Your brother was dead and is alive again, was lost and
is found (Luke 15:32, underlining added).
Repentance, we may say, is the wayward sinner’s first step
toward “coming to life” after his experience of alienation and
separation from God. Experientially this is true both for the
unsaved sinner and for the saved sinner. Coming home to God, and
enjoying His presence, is a form of resurrection and it is a true and
vivid experience of life! As Paul would put it later, For if you live
according to the flesh you will die; but if by the Spirit you put to
death the deeds of the body, you will live (Rom. 8:13, underlining
added).