For Teaching

Acts 11: What the Passage Says

87 claims across 30 verses, in the order the chapter makes them.

Not a sermon outline. What Acts 11 says, and what its hard words meant. The reading of it is yours.

The Chapter in a Sentence

Believers in Jerusalem question Peter for going into a non-Jewish home and eating there, so Peter retells his vision at Joppa, the Spirit's instruction, and the Holy Spirit coming on the man and his household; his critics stop objecting and praise God. The account then follows believers scattered by the persecution that began over Stephen as far as Antioch, where some speak to Greeks and many believe. The Jerusalem church sends Barnabas, who fetches Saul from Tarsus, and the two teach there for a year; it is at Antioch that the disciples are first called Christians. When the prophet Agabus predicts a great famine, the disciples in Antioch send relief to Judea by Barnabas and Saul.

Claim by Claim

11:1
- The apostles heard that the Gentiles had also received the word of God.
- The brethren in Judaea heard that the Gentiles had also received the word of God.
- The Gentiles had received the word of God.
11:2
- Peter went up to Jerusalem.
- Those of the circumcision contended with Peter.
11:3
- They said to Peter that he went in to uncircumcised men.
- They said to Peter that he ate with them.
11:4
- Peter recounted the matter from the beginning.
- Peter explained it to them in order.
11:5
- Peter said he was in the city of Joppa praying.
- Peter said he saw a vision in a trance.
- Peter said he saw a certain vessel descending like a great sheet.
- Peter said the sheet was let down from heaven by four corners.
- Peter said it came all the way to him.
11:6
- Peter said he fixed his eyes on it and observed it.
- Peter said he saw four-footed beasts of the earth.
- Peter said he saw wild beasts.
- Peter said he saw creeping things.
- Peter said he saw birds of the air.
11:7
- Peter said he heard a voice speaking to him.
- Peter said the voice told him to arise.
- Peter said the voice addressed him by name as Peter.
- Peter said the voice told him to kill and eat.
11:8
- Peter said he refused.
- Peter said he addressed the speaker as Lord.
- Peter said his reason was that nothing common or unclean had ever entered his mouth.
11:9
- Peter said the voice answered from heaven a second time.
- Peter said the voice told him not to call common what God has cleansed.
11:10
- Peter said this happened three times.
- Peter said everything was drawn up again into heaven.
11:11
- Peter said that immediately three men arrived at the house where he was.
- Peter said the three men had been sent from Caesarea to him.
11:12
- Peter said the Spirit told him to go with them.
- Peter said the Spirit told him to make no distinction or hesitation.
- Peter said these six brethren went with him.
- Peter said they entered the man's house.
11:13
- Peter said the man reported to them how he had seen an angel.
- Peter said the angel stood in the man's house.
- Peter said the angel told him to send to Joppa.
- Peter said the angel told him to summon Simon who is called Peter.
11:14
- Peter said the angel said that Simon would speak words to him.
- Peter said the angel said that by those words he and all his house would be saved.
11:15
- Peter said that as he began to speak, the Holy Spirit fell on them.
- Peter said the Spirit fell on them just as on us at the beginning.
11:16
- Peter said he remembered the word of the Lord.
- Peter said the Lord had said that John baptized with water.
- Peter said the Lord had said that they would be baptized with the Holy Spirit.
11:17
- Peter said God gave them the same gift he gave to us.
- Peter said we had believed on the Lord Jesus Christ.
- Peter asked who he was that he could withstand God.
11:18
- When they heard these things they fell silent.
- They glorified God.
- They said that God had also granted repentance unto life to the Gentiles.
11:19
- Those scattered by the persecution that arose over Stephen traveled as far as Phoenicia, Cyprus, and Antioch.
- They spoke the word to no one except Jews only.
11:20
- Some of them were men of Cyprus and Cyrene.
- These men came to Antioch.
- These men spoke also to the Greeks.
- These men preached the Lord Jesus.
11:21
- The hand of the Lord was with them.
- A great number believed and turned to the Lord.
11:22
- Word about them came to the ears of the church in Jerusalem.
- The church sent Barnabas as far as Antioch.
11:23
- Barnabas arrived.
- Barnabas saw the grace of God.
- Barnabas rejoiced.
- Barnabas exhorted them all to remain with the Lord with purpose of heart.
11:24
- Barnabas was a good man.
- Barnabas was full of the Holy Spirit.
- Barnabas was full of faith.
- A considerable crowd was added to the Lord.
11:25
- Barnabas went out to Tarsus.
- Barnabas went to search for Saul.
11:26
- Barnabas found Saul.
- Barnabas brought him to Antioch.
- For a whole year they assembled with the church.
- For a whole year they taught a considerable crowd.
- The disciples were first called Christians in Antioch.
11:27
- In those days prophets came down from Jerusalem to Antioch.
11:28
- One of them named Agabus stood up.
- Agabus signified by the Spirit that a great famine was about to come upon the whole world.
- That famine came to pass in the days of Claudius Caesar.
11:29
- The disciples determined to send relief to the brethren dwelling in Judaea.
- Each of them determined this according to his ability.
11:30
- They did what they had determined.
- They sent it to the elders.
- They sent it by the hands of Barnabas and Saul.

Words Worth Explaining

Every language note in this chapter, gathered. These explain what a word meant, never what it means for the reader.

11:1: "Gentiles" translates a Greek word meaning the nations or the peoples: everyone who was not Jewish. In the King James "brethren" means fellow members of the group, women included, not male relatives.
11:2: Circumcision, the cutting away of the foreskin of a male infant, was the physical mark of belonging to Israel, commanded in Genesis 17. "They that were of the circumcision" here means Jewish believers in Jesus who held that this mark, and the whole way of life that went with it, still defined the people of God.
11:3: The objection is not about the conversation but about the meal. Sharing a table with a non-Jew meant eating food that might not meet Jewish dietary rules, prepared in a kitchen that did not observe them, and it was widely treated as making a Jew ritually unfit until he washed and waited. To enter such a house and eat was a public act everyone present would have understood.
11:4: "Rehearsed" in the King James means recounted or narrated, and "expounded it by order" means laid it out in sequence. Neither word carries its modern sense of practicing or of arguing a case.
11:5: Joppa was a port on the Mediterranean, the modern Jaffa. A "vessel" in King James English is any container or object, not a ship.
11:6: The list matches the categories of animals set out in Leviticus 11, where God tells Israel which creatures may be eaten and which may not. Peter is describing a sheet holding animals from every category, forbidden ones mixed in with permitted ones.
11:7: "Arise" means get up. "Slay" means kill.
11:8: "Common" here does not mean ordinary or frequent. It translates a Greek word meaning shared with everyone, and so not set apart, not fit to bring near God. "Unclean" is the technical term for the animals Leviticus forbids. Peter is saying he has kept the food laws all his life.
11:10: Three repetitions were a standard way of marking something as settled and beyond mistaking, not a sign that Peter was slow to understand.
11:11: Caesarea was a harbor city built by Herod the Great on the coast, about thirty miles north of Joppa. It was the seat of Roman government in Judea and housed the Roman garrison, so its population was heavily Gentile.
11:12: Peter names the number deliberately. Jewish legal practice required witnesses to establish a disputed fact, and six of them, plus Peter, far exceeded the usual two or three. He has brought his corroboration into the room with him.
11:13: "Surname" in King James English means an additional name a person is known by, not a family name inherited from a father. Simon was his given name; Peter, meaning rock, was the name Jesus gave him.
11:14: "All thy house" means the entire household as a social unit: family, dependents, servants and slaves living under one roof. In the ancient world the household, not the individual, was the ordinary unit of decision.
11:15: "At the beginning" refers to the day of Pentecost described in Acts 2, when the Spirit first came on the followers of Jesus in Jerusalem. Peter is claiming that what happened in Caesarea was the same event, not a lesser version of it.
11:16: To baptize is to dip or wash in water. John, called the Baptist, had been immersing people in the Jordan river as a sign that they were turning from their sins.
11:17: "Withstand" means stand in the way and try to stop.
11:18: "They held their peace" means they fell silent, dropping their objection; it does not mean they made peace. "Repentance" translates a Greek word meaning a change of mind that turns a person around, a reversal of direction rather than merely feeling sorry.
11:19: Stephen was stoned to death in Jerusalem, an event described in Acts 7, and the crackdown that followed drove believers out of the city. "Phenice" is the King James spelling of Phoenicia, the coastal strip to the north around Tyre and Sidon. Antioch, in Syria, was one of the largest cities in the Roman empire, several hundred miles from Jerusalem.
11:20: Cyrene was a Greek city on the coast of North Africa, in modern Libya, with a large Jewish population. The King James "Grecians" is ambiguous, and so is the underlying Greek, where the manuscripts differ between a word meaning Greek-speaking Jews and a word meaning Greeks, that is, non-Jews. Given that verse 19 has just said the message went to Jews only and this verse marks a contrast, the sense is most likely non-Jews, but the wording itself does not settle it.
11:21: "The hand of the Lord" is a standard Hebrew idiom for God's power in action, used throughout the Old Testament. It is a figure of speech, not a description of a hand.
11:22: The word translated "church" means an assembly or gathering of people called together. At this date it names the community itself, not a building.
11:23: "Cleave unto" in King James English means to cling to or stick fast to, the opposite of its other old sense of splitting apart. "With purpose of heart" means with settled resolve.
11:24: "Faith" means trusting God. "Much people was added" means many more people joined them.
11:25: Tarsus was a substantial city in Cilicia, in what is now southern Turkey, and Saul's home town. Saul is the man later called Paul; both were his names from the start, Saul the Hebrew one and Paul the Roman one.
11:26: "Christians" means partisans or followers of Christ, formed the way Roman political labels were formed. "Christ" is not a surname but a title, the Greek for anointed one, translating the Hebrew word messiah. The name was probably coined by outsiders in Antioch as a convenient label for a group that no longer looked simply like a Jewish sect.
11:27: A prophet in this setting is someone who speaks a message received from God. Predicting the future is one thing such a message might do, as here, but the word does not mean fortune-teller.
11:28: "Dearth" is the King James word for famine. "All the world" translates a Greek term for the inhabited world, in practice the Roman empire. Claudius was emperor from 41 to 54, and ancient writers record repeated grain shortages during his reign, including one that hit Judea hard.
11:29: Judea was poor and heavily dependent on its own harvests, so a famine there was life threatening. A collection of money sent from a Gentile church to Jewish believers is also a deliberate gesture, given the argument at the start of this chapter.
11:30: "Elders" translates a Greek word for the older men who governed a synagogue and its community. The early churches took the structure over ready-made, so the title describes a recognized office, not simply age.

Read Acts 11