By no means was according to Peter's religious concept. Peter did not behave in the right way which is according to God. Rather, he behaved rightly according to the religious concept that was passed down from his forefathers for many generations. But the Lord told him, "Eat!" The Lord seemed to be saying, "Peter, you should not be right according to your religion. You should be right according to Me. Today is the day of Christ, not of religion."
It is not easy to get away from your religious concept. Peter said no to the Lord three times (vv. 14-16). He was religious, but he was not in the Lord's dominion. He was in his own dominion. He did not care for what the Lord said. It was the Lord who spoke to him. That was not a voice from hell; that was a voice from heaven. Can you believe that Peter would even say no to the voice from heaven? If that were a voice which came from below, from the ground floor or the basement, to the housetop, it might have been right for Peter to say no. But that was a voice from heaven, and Peter disobeyed.
Brothers and sisters, you have to see that religion is deceitful. You do not know how much you have been deceived by your old religious concepts, nor have you realized how much you are preoccupied with the religion which you inherited from your forefathers. The material things and the moral things are deceitful, and the religious things are even more deceitful. I would even say that the spiritual things are the most deceitful.
It is easy for you to be clear that you are deceived by material things. But it is not so easy for you to realize that you can be deceived by religious things and even by spiritual things. Satan utilizes all things, whether material things, moral things, religious things, or spiritual things, to keep you away from God's dominion. It does not matter to Satan whether you are materialistic, moral, religious, or spiritual. The only thing he cares about is that you be kept away from God's dominion. As long as you are not in God's dominion, whatever you are or do is all right with Satan. Oh, how subtle the enemy is! Today the enemy not only uses material things but also utilizes religion and so-called spirituality to deceive you. He causes you to care only for being religious, for being godly, and for being spiritual, yet not to care for God's authority.
The Lord told Peter to "slay and eat!" Yet Peter said, "By no means, Lord, for I have never eaten anything common and unclean." No doubt, Peter was wrong, and there would have been no rescue for him if he had been wrong intentionally. But because he was wrong unintentionally, there was the rescue for him. Afterward, he became clear and saw that the age had changed. He began to realize that he should no longer care for his religious concepts. He should simply care for what the Spirit said. Eventually, he went to eat the unclean things. That means that he went to contact the family of Cornelius (Acts 10:17-33). To eat is to associate with people (vv. 13, 28). Cornelius and his relatives and intimate friends as Gentiles were considered unclean by the Jews. But Peter went to "eat" them, to associate with them, to preach the word of God to them.
When Peter went back to Jerusalem, those of the circumcision disputed with him, questioning him about his eating with the uncircumcised (Acts 11:2-3). Peter had acted wisely when he went to the house of Cornelius. He had six brothers from Joppa accompany him (10:23; 11:12), so there was a total of seven who went. Therefore, with the six brothers as witnesses to his word, Peter narrated the whole story to the brothers in Jerusalem and was vindicated of his way (vv. 4-18). This illustration shows us that we can be religious yet be outside of God's dominion. We have to be right day and night according to what God is and according to what God says, not according to our religious concept or opinion.
Thus, in Matthew we have the kingdom that equals God's dominion and the righteousness that equals God's image. Furthermore, in Matthew, in the so-called Sermon on the Mount, the Lord Jesus said, "You therefore shall be perfect as your heavenly Father is perfect" (5:48). The Lord did not say that we should be perfect according to what the law of Moses teaches. That we should be perfect as our heavenly Father is perfect means that we should be the expression of the Father. We are the children of the Father, so we have to be the same as the Father. To be the same as the Father is to express the Father. This is the expression, the image. Now you understand what the Lord meant when He said, "Seek first His kingdom and His righteousness" (6:33). This simply means that you need to seek the dominion of God and the image of God. This is to go back to the very beginning of the Bible. You became fallen from Genesis 1, so now you have to go back there. You became fallen from the dominion and the image of God, so now you need to return to the dominion and the expression of God.
The gospel of God is not a matter of repenting that we may go to heaven or that we may be forgiven of our sins. The thought of God's gospel is that we return to the original state from which we became fallen. Matthew, the first book of the New Testament, brings us back to Genesis, the first book of the Old Testament. We all have to go back to Genesis 1. What does this mean? It simply means to go back to God's original purpose. God's original purpose was to have man as His expression and as His representative. But from these two main points man became fallen. Now man needs to return to these two main points. For so many centuries, Christianity has been short of this. But I do have the assurance and deep conviction within me that the Lord today is going to recover these two main points.