Acts 15:9

Acts 15:9. And put no difference between us and them. He no longer made any distinction between the Pagans who were converted and believed in the Lord Jesus, and the believing Israelite, after He had once purified their hearts by faith. The words here plainly allude to the case of the conversion of Cornelius (Acts 10:15): ‘ What God hath cleansed, that call not thou common.'

Purifying their hearts by faith. The Jews generally, whom Peter was addressing, held that the heathen were unclean so long as they were uncircumcised; but Peter showed them that God, by bestowing His glorious blessing upon uncircumcised believing Gentiles as fully and freely as He had done upon circumcised believing Jews, had ruled that faith was the true circumcision, the only real means of purification. ‘Through faith we obtain another, a new and clean heart, and God regards us, for the sake of Christ our Mediator, as altogether righteous and holy' (Articles of Smalcald).