Acts 10

 

For two thousand years, Jews believed Gentiles stood outside salvation. Then God shattered that certainty.

Peter receives a vision: Jesus commands him to eat animals the law labeled unclean. Peter refuses, insisting he has never touched anything defiled.

For Jews, unclean food didn’t function as a quirky tradition or optional devotion. God named it sin. The law carved hard boundaries onto their plates, and crossing those boundaries meant rebellion, not preference. Every meal carried moral weight. Choosing what to eat meant choosing obedience or defiance.

So when God tells Peter to eat food considered sinful since Moses, Peter pushes back. And Jesus answers with a line that rewrites the entire moral universe:

“Do not call unclean what I have made clean.”

Later in the chapter, Peter meets a Gentile and discovers the same Spirit that baptized him now fills this outsider. Peter baptizes them on the spot—no hesitation, no prerequisites, no purity tests.

About the encounter, Peter said:

“You are well aware that it is against our law for a Jew to associate with or visit a Gentile. But God has shown me that I should not call anyone impure or unclean.”

Acts 10:28

A couple of years ago, I checked out online recovery meetings. I looked for ones centered on Christ—spaces where recovery language rose from faith.

I understood why many recovery groups avoid Jesus Christ as the God of their understanding. A lot of us fall into addiction because shame and Christianity intertwine in painful ways. For many people, invoking Christianity triggers the same shame that drove them to alcohol or drugs in the first place. Bill W. never wanted anyone to face that kind of emotional damage on their way to experiencing the true nature of God’s love for them.

At the same time, Jesus Christ is the God of my understanding. I felt like I had studied the Twelve Steps my entire life while reading the Bible, and I wanted to share that with others who felt the same way. So I searched for meetings in that vein and found one called Rainbow Fellowship. I thought, Perfect—covenant promise, Noah, the rainbow. Noah himself got drunk; he probably needed a recovery program. It felt like a funny, honest way to talk about Scripture, God, drinking, and acceptance.

I joined the meeting. The leader looked androgynous, sitting outside a ranch house somewhere out West—like a blonde Tommy Lee Jones with weathered skin. He opened the meeting, and then this very handsome woman spoke for fifteen minutes. She was hilarious—one of the best speakers I’d heard in any meeting. She talked about how God delivered her again and again, how He transformed her, how supernatural things unfolded in her life. Her testimony inspired me. She had a brunette flat top, traps as big as mine, and a striking beauty about her.

A few others shared. Then I shared. Then another man talked about him and his roommate of twelve years moving to another place, and how he felt God opening that door. Suddenly it clicked: the androgynous leader, the beautiful masculine woman, the roommate of twelve years. What meeting did I land in?

Then I got it. Rainbow Fellowship wasn’t about Noah. It was a recovery meeting for the LGBTQ community.

But honestly—I couldn’t tell.

Every single person talked about God rescuing them, about transformation, about the Twelve Steps, about God freeing them from addiction, shaping them into better people, and sending them to help others. They talked about giving their lives away for someone else’s healing.

And like Peter, I felt convinced. The same God freeing and transforming them was the same God freeing and transforming me.

Many of these meetings stay open to anyone. If you don’t believe me, show up. As long as you follow the rules, these brothers and sisters will welcome you. It might become one of the greatest Christian meetings you ever attend, because it meets the conditions where God loves to show up:

people poor in spirit,

people who mourn over brokenness,

people who walk in meekness,

people who hunger and thirst for righteousness,

people who practice mercy,

people who pursue purity of heart,

people who make peace,

people who endure persecution for righteousness.

And God shows up:

to comfort them,

to show them mercy,

to fill them,

to reveal His face,

to call them His children.

Not one prerequisite listed in the Beatitudes has anything to do with who they’re attracted to.

Next time anyone quotes the inerrant Bible about gays, this verse should settle how God feels about them forever:

“God has shown me that I should not call anyone impure or unclean.”

Acts 10:28