God is not partial and He does not show partiality to one group of people over another based on status or race.  God loves all people and He has sent the Holy Spirit to baptize us all into one body.

Peter was preaching a simple but yet powerful Christ centric message as recorded in Acts 10:34-43.  His audience was of a different nationality, but Peter had learned that God shows no partiality.  God loves all people and desires that all people come to Him through Jesus Christ.  As Peter told this house full of foreigners about Jesus, faith rose up within each hearer.  And we know that God’s word declares that faith comes from hearing the Word (Romans 10:17) .  It was saving faith springing up within them like a gushing fountain and they were receiving the forgiveness of sin that Peter told them would come through believing (Acts 10:43).

While Peter was still saying these things, the Holy Spirit fell on all who heard the word. And the believers from among the circumcised who had come with Peter were amazed, because the gift of the Holy Spirit was poured out even on the Gentiles. For they were hearing them speaking in tongues and extolling God. Then Peter declared, "Can anyone withhold water for baptizing these people, who have received the Holy Spirit just as we have?" And he commanded them to be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ. Then they asked him to remain for some days. (Act 10:44-48 ESV)

As Peter was speaking, there was a holy interruption.  He did not conclude his message with a story and a prayer, nor did he precede his message with a joke to break the ice.  He didn’t ask for a show of hands of those who would like to receive Jesus into their hearts.  He did not ask people to come forward to receive Christ.  He simply spoke God’s message and the Holy Spirit did the rest.

The six Jewish brothers (“the believers from among the circumcised”) that he brought with him were “amazed”.  They could not believe that God was pouring out the gift of the Holy Spirit on these foreigners as He had poured out on the Jews on the day of Pentecost (Acts 2:1-4).  And they would have never believed it if they had not come with Peter and witnessed what God was doing at this God gathering.  They were witnessing God baptizing believers into one body by His Spirit.  It is as the Apostle Paul would write in 1 Corinthians 12:13 “For in one Spirit we were all baptized into one body--Jews or Greeks”.

When Peter realized that these people had just received the Holy Spirit as He had earlier, he immediately pointed them to water baptism which is an outside indicator and testimony of what God has done on the inside.  All through the book of Acts and early church history, Christ followers did not wait to baptize a new Christ follower in water.  When a person was baptized into the body by the Spirit, they immediately looked for a hole of water deep enough to follow their Lord Jesus Christ in water baptism.

Beloved, in this paragraph of Scripture, some of the heart of God is revealed to us:

• He desires to use preachers to communicate the good news of Christ to all people.
• He has ordained the preaching and hearing of the Word to produce and grow saving faith in people.
• He does not need manmade gimmicks that produce “converts” or “church members”.
• He is not partial.
• He loves and desires for all people to be baptized by the Spirit into the body of Christ regardless of race, regardless of status, regardless of what they have done and regardless of what they have become.

God is no respecter of people.  What He does for one, He will do for another.  May He lift up preachers in our day who will deliver God messages and allow the Holy Spirit to do His work in baptizing all people, Jews and Gentiles, into the body of Christ.  And may we be quick to follow our Lord Jesus Christ in water baptism as an outward testimony of a spiritual rebirth.

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Know that you are loved,

@PastorGreg
Founder
www.LovingGodFellowship.org