The One whom the disciples followed eventually brought them to the cross. They were crucified with Him, died with Him, were buried with Him, and resurrected and ascended with Him (Eph. 2:6). On the day of Pentecost, Peter saw the vision. Formerly, he only identified himself with the vision through the Lord Jesus. Now at Pentecost, he saw the vision himself. When he stood up to speak, he was no longer foolish. He was very strong and clear in everything. In Acts 2 through 5, we find him caring for nothing other than the Lord’s ministry. He did not even care for his own life. The vision did not find any resistance or hindrance in him at all.
When we come to Acts 10, however, we find that his strong Jewish background stood in the way and caused the vision to suffer a setback. In Matthew 16 the Lord told Peter that He would give him the keys to the kingdom. The keys are plural in number, indicating that there are at least two keys. On the day of Pentecost, Peter used one key to open the door for the Jews to enter God’s New Testament kingdom. At that time the vision did not suffer any setback in him. However, by the time God wanted to use him further to exercise the second key to open the door to the Gentiles and to spread His New Testament economy among the Gentiles, Peter was lagging behind. This became a problem to God; He was forced to revert to the Old Testament means of visions and dreams. Peter saw a vessel like a great sheet descending from heaven to the earth. In it were all the four-footed animals and reptiles of the earth and birds of heaven. A voice came to him: “Rise up, Peter; slay and eat! But Peter said, By no means, Lord, for I have never eaten anything common and unclean. And a voice came to him again a second time: The things that God has cleansed, do not make common” (Acts 10:13-15). This went on three times. By this we can see that Peter had a problem in following the vision.
If we study Acts 10, Galatians 2, and Acts 15, we will find that, in those cases, Peter was no longer as absolute and strong in following the vision as he was in following the Lord during the first three and a half years. He became somewhat weak. The vision had come into conflict with his tradition, and he could not quite go along with it. He remained to a certain extent in that tradition. It frustrated him and hindered him from going on. We see a falling behind in his case with respect to the vision. We have to pay attention to this matter and be warned by it.
By the time of Acts 13, another person appeared on the scene. In Acts 7 through 9 he was Saul of Tarsus, a person who was in the Jewish religion and had received the highest education. He had also studied the best Greek culture and was an endeavoring man. At that time Judaism was under attack. The followers of Jesus Christ, the so-called “Nazarenes” (24:5), were getting stronger and stronger. Saul could not suffer to see his ancestors’ religion being destroyed, and he became very zealous, being determined to wipe out the Nazarenes and to uphold his fathers’ religion.
We cannot deny that Saul of Tarsus was serving God. After he was saved, he told the believers, “You have heard of my manner of life formerly in Judaism, that I persecuted the church of God excessively and ravaged it. And I advanced in Judaism beyond many contemporaries in my race, being more abundantly a zealot for the traditions of my fathers” (Gal. 1:13-14). As to zeal, he was a persecutor of the church (Phil. 3:6). He was so zealous that he consented to Stephen’s death (Acts 7:58—8:1a). He also put many believers into prison, cast votes to condemn them to death, and persecuted them even as far as foreign cities (26:9-11). Saul was indeed serving God, but he was serving without a vision. While he was being zealous for his fathers’ traditions, who was serving God under a vision? It was Peter. Peter was under a vision, and those who were following him were also under the same vision. Saul, however, was not under the vision, yet one day on his way to Damascus the Lord met him and showed him the vision.
I truly believe that the vision Saul saw on the way to Damascus was more advanced than the one Peter saw. In the New Testament records concerning Peter and in his own Epistles, we do not see any mention of the Triune God working Himself into us to make us His duplication. We do not see anything about the believers being built up into the Body of Christ to be one with the Triune God as His organism. But on the way to Damascus, Paul saw a vision. The Lord said to him, “Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting Me?” (Acts 9:4). The “Me” here is a corporate Me; it includes the Lord Jesus and all His believers. Although the word Me is a small word, it speaks of a great vision. Paul in Galatians 1 says that “it pleased God...to reveal His Son in me” (vv. 15-16). In the Bible we do not find that Peter saw the same clear vision.
Paul’s vision was indeed profound. At the beginning of Galatians, he refers to the Son of God (1:16). When we speak of the Son of God, we have to realize that this involves the Triune God. The Triune God was revealed to Paul, and Paul became one of His members. All the members together with Paul were constituted to become His Body and were joined to Him to become an enlarged “Me.” Although the vision Paul saw at the beginning was so high and profound, he did not take up his ministry immediately. In Acts 13 a few prophets and teachers were serving the Lord and fasting together in Antioch. It was then that the Holy Spirit said, “Set apart for Me now Barnabas and Saul for the work to which I have called them” (v. 2). It was not until then that Paul became clear concerning the vision he had received earlier and was sent to fulfill the ministry which he had received.
Both Barnabas and Saul were Jews, yet they were sent to preach the gospel throughout the Gentile lands. This was not a small vision. In his own time Peter was only sent to make a brief contact with a Gentile and to visit his home. Here Paul received a serious commission: “Go, for I will send you forth far away to the Gentiles” (22:21). This means he was to go to the Gentile lands, nation by nation and city by city. This is a great vision: “That in Christ Jesus the Gentiles are fellow heirs and fellow members of the Body and fellow partakers of the promise through the gospel” (Eph. 3:6).
Many of us have been affected by Christianity; we read the Bible in a superficial way. We think that Paul was sent merely to preach the gospel and to save sinners from hell. In reading the book of Acts, many believers come away with the impression that the Lord’s desire is to spread the gospel to the uttermost part of the earth. They see the great number of sinners in the Gentile world and consider that they cannot be saved unless the believers go out to preach the gospel to them. In their understanding, this was the reason Paul was sent on his evangelistic journey to preach the gospel. However, if we carefully study the book of Acts and Paul’s Epistles, we will discover that this matter is not that simple or shallow. Paul was sent to preach to the Gentiles the unsearchable riches of Christ (Eph. 3:8) in order that the Triune God could be dispensed into them to transform them into the members of Christ for the building up of the Body of Christ. At this time, Paul’s vision became fully clear.