NOTES for Act 11:1-18
The first reaction of the apostles and the other brothers to Peter's fellowship with the Gentiles was negative; they still set Jews and Gentiles in opposition to one another. Even the apostles did not immediately grasp that what was familiar had passed away. But difficult does not mean impossible, and after Peter told them how everything had happened, the brothers' reaction proved approving. Their attachment to familiar ideas is free of the Pharisaic formalism in which confidence in one's own rightness blocks the possibility of seeing the truth.
Quite often, when something is revealed to us that seems incompatible with our established ideas, we risk rejecting it. In that case, we mistake the degree of our capacity to receive the truth for the fullness of the truth itself. But the Lord raises us above our habitual level, and when we see new horizons, we do not abandon our former experience but begin to understand it better thanks to the new perspective.