Let’s say that instead of Peter, it was you whom God commissioned to take the gospel to Cornelius.
How nervous would you be, especially with your prior disposition and fear of Roman soldiers?
God has obviously given you a very important task, whether you fully understand that importance or not.
This must be important.
Are you nervous? Of course you are.
With what should you begin your presentation of the gospel?
He has nothing to offer the self-righteous.
Then I would go to the vicarious sacrifice of the Lord Jesus which was made to satisfy the demand of the holy God against sinners.
I would try to show that in the resurrection, there was proof of the Father’s acceptance of the sacrifice.
And then I’d exhort Cornelius to acknowledge and repent of his idolatry and sins and to turn to Christ and His blood offering in order to be accepted before God.
But generally speaking this is the approach that I would have taken with Cornelius.
He began by saying that general information about Christ had been published throughout all Judea, from Galilee to Jerusalem and from Jericho to Caesarea.
And then he said, that the Lord Jesus had been anointed by the Holy Spirit and went about doing good, healing the sick and casting out demons.
My question is this:
Although what he said about Christ was true, wasn’t it just a little off track & unimportant at this point?
There are millions of people who think that the crucifixion was only the exclamation mark at the end of a perfect life.
And so they preach that when you and I go about doing good, we are living and sharing Christianity.
Could it be because it was something that was completely unusual?
The public life of the Pharisees, as Cornelius well-knew, was one of ostentatious show.
The Lord condemned the way that they stood on street corners and prayed so loudly that made the dogs bark.
They did what they did to be seen by God and man,
But the Lord said that after they were praised by men, they wouldn’t get the praise of God.
And then there were the Romans who enjoyed being seen as much as the Pharisees.
Think back on what you know of Roman society, with its slavery, gladiators, wars, and social life.
Often the Greeks and Persians were represented by living animals,
But the Romans were depicted by unimaginable combinations of horrible creatures.
Isn’t it because Rome was the most cruel and horrible of the Biblically prophesied empires?
Didn’t Peter bring up the Saviour’s life of beneficence because it was so unique?
The Lord Jesus was perhaps the kindest man to ever walk this planet,
And yet His purpose was not to be kind, but to die a ransom for many.
How much should our lives imitate or reflect the life of the Lord Jesus?
Let’s think a little more about Jesus’ life.
Jesus “went about doing good, and healing all that were oppressed of the devil.”
That might refer to the Saviour’s miraculous healing of the blind and lame, plus the exorcism of demons.
But Peter might only be speaking about healing those who were demon-oppressed.
Actually, when it comes to Jesus’ good-doing, we have a pretty broad subject.
He brought the dead back to their former, earthly lives.
Do you suppose that He ever multiplied clothes so that the naked could be covered?
And how many people who were sick or lame did the Saviour restore?
Was the supplying of wine to the wedding feast the only time that He was a blessing in that way?
And wasn’t Jesus’ teaching and preaching just as “GOOD” as these other sorts of things?
The people whom Jesus physically helped were further helped through the exposure of their sins and the application of the truth.
Wasn’t he being socially beneficial in publicly rebuking the wickedness of the priests and Sadducees?
Can we say that the first use of the word “good” helps us define what the Lord Jesus was doing during His life?
Where do we first find the word “good” in the Bible?
Genesis 1:4 – ” And God saw the light, that it was good: and God divided the light from the darkness.”
Genesis 1:31 – “And God saw every thing that he had made, and, behold, it was very good. And the evening and the morning were the sixth day.”
And everything that the Lord did in creation was positive, forward-looking, agreeable and enjoyable.
Should we use these sorts of words to define what Peter means by Jesus “went about doing good”?
Weren’t the Lord Jesus’ life and deeds positive, agreeable and enjoyable?
And yet none of these things were the real reason for His incarnation.
If someone gave you a lottery ticket as a gag-anniversary present, and you won $210 million dollars,
So that you had the ability to do a hundred million things to be a blessing to your friends and neighbors;
If you made your neighborhood the safest and cleanest in the state,
If you put every child of theirs through the school of their choice,
And if you used your money to cure cancer AND the common cold,
Benevolence is a great and good thing, but it is not end of all things, and we see this in the Lord Jesus.
He didn’t come to do good; He came “to give His life a ransom for many.”
But that didn’t keep Him from doing good in the meantime.
Peter neglected to tell Cornelius that the Lord Jesus commissioned him and his fellow-apostles to go about doing good too.
Jesus gave them the authority to cast out demons and to heal the sick, just as He had been doing.
They might not have multiplied food and people’s finances, but they were a blessing to society as the ambassadors of Christ.
At the same time the Lord wasn’t acting as the chairman of some benevolent society who hired people at minimum wage to disperse sacks of rice to people in need.
The Lord Jesus got His hands just as dirty, so to speak, as the rest of the church in Jerusalem.
He went about DOING good, not just AUTHORIZING good.
And He WENT ABOUT doing good in spreading it from Galilee to Jerusalem to Caesarea Philippi.
Stop and think about the geography of His miracles and good works.
Some might argue that if He had done more miracles in Judea He might have been better received there.
Others would argue that He should never have done any good works among the Samaritans or Syro-Phoenicians, but He did.
You’d think that since He was so well received in Galilee that they would have been more deserving of more of His goodness.
But when you survey Jesus’ good-life, there weren’t any areas of the country that He neglected.
Just like His salvation, Christ’s good works were dispensed out of grace, not DEBT, or even out of NEED.
Did He feed ALL the hungry and starving people of Israel?
On the other hand, did He ever turn anyone away who came to Him for help?
Sometimes it was to give more information to the rest of us who were watching.
But as far as I can remember the Lord never absolutely refused to be a blessing to anyone who asked.
It involves expensive vacations, and fancy houses that are much bigger than its owners really need.
It involves rich food and rich furnishings.
But isn’t this actually A FALSE “good life?”
Isn’t the true “good life” the life that is spent in DOING good?
The Lord Jesus lived the “good life.”
And like His, the Christian life is supposed to be the “good life” as well.
Not a life of luxury, but a life of good works and being a blessing to God and men.