What God Hath Cleansed

But the voice answered me again from heaven, What God hath cleansed, call not thou common—Acts 11:9.

What voice it was that gave utterance to these words, we are not told either in Acts 10 when the vision is first recorded, or in Acts 11, where Peter describes it to those of the circumcision in Judea. But Peter in both places describes himself as saying, “Not so, Lord,” thus seeming to recognize the voice of Jesus, with whom he had been so long and intimately associated a few years before, and whose will he was now seeking to carry out.

What a beautiful instance we have here of the Savior speaking from heaven. Therefore it has peculiar force. In the first place it testifies as to what Jesus had done: “what God hath cleansed;” and in the second place speaks to those whom He has cleansed and says, that from the time of their cleansing nothing can henceforth make them common or unclean. Jesus, who had performed the wonderful act of cleansing, is the one