Isaiah had written it centuries before it happened: “Let not the foreigner who has joined himself to the Lord say, ‘The Lord will surely separate me from his people,’ and let not the eunuch say, ‘Behold, I am a dry tree'” (). The foreigners, the excluded, the ones kept at the margins would have a place and a name better than sons and daughters. What Isaiah promised, the book of Acts shows being fulfilled in real faces and real stories, and the people doing the welcoming don’t always find it simple or comfortable. The gospel reaches across every line human communities draw, and the communities that carry it are asked to do the same.
The People You Weren’t Supposed to Mix With
When persecution scattered the Jerusalem church in Acts 8, Philip went north to Samaria. This wasn’t a neutral choice. The Jews and the Samaritans had centuries of tension between them. Samaritans were considered ethnically mixed and their religious practice a corrupt departure from the true worship of Yahweh. A respectable Jewish believer didn’t go to Samaria to preach the good news. But Philip went, the crowds listened, and people believed and were baptized (). When word reached Jerusalem, Peter and John were sent down, not to investigate a mistake but to confirm what had happened. By laying hands on the Samaritan believers and praying for them, they made the statement clear: these people are fully members of the body. There is no tiered citizenship in the kingdom of God.
A Man on the Road
Shortly after, an angel directed Philip to a road running toward the desert. There he found an Ethiopian official, a eunuch, sitting in his chariot reading from the prophet Isaiah. The detail of his identity matters. Under the law of Moses, a eunuch was barred from the full assembly of Israel (). He could approach, but not enter. He had come to Jerusalem to worship (), and he was still reading the prophets on his way home, still searching. Philip sat with him, explained that the passage from Isaiah 53 the man was reading was about Jesus, and when they came to water, the official asked what prevented him from being baptized. Nothing prevented him. Philip baptized him on the spot, and the man went on his way rejoicing.
What Isaiah 56 had promised was being fulfilled. Eunuchs who feared God and kept his covenant would have a place in his house, a name that would not be cut off. The temple Isaiah described, as Paul would later explain to the Ephesians, is not a building in Jerusalem. It is the community of believers, Jew and Gentile being built together as a dwelling place for God in the Spirit (). This man had full access. No second-class standing, no conditional acceptance, no border to stand behind.
The Hardest Crossing
The Ethiopian eunuch’s inclusion was remarkable, but the conversion of Cornelius in Acts 10 required a vision from heaven repeated three times and a hard moment of self-examination for Peter before it happened. Peter was a devout Jew with deeply held convictions about purity and proper boundaries. God interrupted his prayer with an image of unclean food and a command to eat. When Peter finally stood in Cornelius’s house, he opened his mouth and said: “Truly I understand that God shows no partiality, but in every nation anyone who fears him and does what is right is acceptable to him” (). The Spirit fell on the household while Peter was still speaking. When he reported back to Jerusalem, the believers there were silent at first, then glorified God that the Gentiles also had received repentance leading to life.
The Walls Come Back Up
What makes this section of Acts both encouraging and challenging is how quickly the familiar lines tend to reappear. Paul would later have to confront Peter in Antioch for withdrawing from the Gentiles when Jewish believers arrived from Jerusalem, because he feared their judgment (). Peter, who had received the vision, who had stood in Cornelius’s house, who had seen the Spirit fall on Gentiles, still backed away from the practical meaning of what he knew. Paul said directly: that is not consistent with the truth of the gospel. The gospel isn’t only a message we announce to anyone who will listen. It is a claim that reshapes every relationship, every social habit, every way of sorting people into those who belong and those who don’t.
What This Requires
The question Acts puts to any believing community isn’t abstract. It isn’t whether you would theoretically welcome anyone who walked through the door. It’s whether you’re willing to welcome the same kinds of people who appear in Acts 8 through 11: people with complicated pasts, people who don’t yet live the way you do, people from backgrounds and cultures different from your own, people who are still working out what they believe and need patient help along the way. The gospel reached Samaritans. It reached a eunuch reading the prophets alone on a desert road. It reached a Roman soldier who feared God and didn’t yet know the name of Jesus. says that God demonstrated his love in that Christ died for us while we were still sinners, not after we had cleaned ourselves up. There is no one the gospel was not intended to reach, and communities that believe it carry that intention into every relationship they form.
