“But the voice spoke again: “Do not call something unclean if God has made it clean.””
Acts 10:15 (NLT)
God had already told Peter the gospel was headed “to the ends of the earth” in Acts 1:8, but in Acts 10 the Lord presses that calling into the place Peter most resisted. Peter is praying on the roof, hungry, resting, and God gives him a vision three times—like mercy and like a warning—showing him creatures he would never touch. Then the command comes: “Get up, kill, and eat.” Peter says no, because his whole life he had been trained to label certain things as unclean.
And that’s when the Lord speaks the line that shifts everything: “Do not call something unclean if God has made it clean.” Peter’s categories were being confronted. God was not just correcting a diet—He was preparing Peter to go near what he had always kept far. It makes me ask: what are the places, people, or situations I’ve decided are “unclean,” the things I won’t come close to, that God is actually calling me to step toward in obedience?
Here’s what the Holy Spirit pressed on me today: Jesus’ blood is what makes us clean, not our effort, not our law-keeping, not our distance from “messy” things. We can’t make ourselves clean, and we can’t make someone else clean. And if that’s true, we also can’t make dirty what God has purified. Romans 10:10 reminds us that by believing in our heart we’re made right with God, and openly declaring our faith is what saves us—not trying to scrub ourselves clean. And Ephesians 2:10 says we are God’s masterpiece, created anew in Christ Jesus.
I pictured kids with crayons and white walls. When we judge, we act like we’ve got crayons to mark other people with what we see as imperfect, or to keep labeling ourselves by our past. But the Lord showed me we don’t have crayons—we have invisible markers. None of our markings show up because we cannot get dirty what God has cleaned. Ephesians 2:13 says we who used to be far away have been brought near to God through the blood of Christ. So stop calling your blood-bought brothers and sisters unclean. And stop calling yourself unclean. If Jesus has made it clean, don’t keep calling it dirty.