NOTES for Act 10:15

The law about impurity was all but foundational in the practice of first-century Jews. Nothing was more serious than violating kashrut: to be defiled meant being barred from the Temple and excluded from the fellowship of the people of God. It is no surprise that Peter so sharply objects in his dream to the impiety proposed to him.

But why does God Himself do something contrary to His own law? If God's guidance were limited only to His law, then a person would only need to know that law, and no further relationship would be needed. But God, whose name is love, seeks precisely a personal relationship with us, and our behavior must then flow from that relationship. Therefore God does something new, thereby opening for His Church new ways of fulfilling His will. In this way the Church receives the possibility of beginning its witness to Christ among the Gentiles, with whom the law had forbidden association.