Cornelius and the Limits of Natural Religion

Why Acts 10 Does Not Teach That the Unregenerate Can Please God

Acts 10 stands as one of the most frequently misunderstood chapters in the New Testament, not because the narrative is ambiguous, but because it is often approached with theological assumptions already in place. The figure of Cornelius has become a theological Rorschach test. Some readers treat him as evidence that sincere unbelievers are already pleasing to God. Others portray him as a seeker whose moral discipline places him closer to salvation than his pagan neighbors. In more popular treatments, Cornelius becomes the archetype of the basically saved man who merely lacks doctrinal information.

The text itself resists all such conclusions.

Luke introduces Cornelius as devout, God fearing, generous, and prayerful. These descriptions are deliberate and theologically loaded. Yet the narrative simultaneously insists that Cornelius, for all his religiosity, remains outside of Christ until the gospel is proclaimed to him by Peter. This tension is not an exegetical problem to be solved. It is the theological point Luke intends to press upon the reader.

Acts 10 does not exist to affirm the moral capacity of fallen humanity. It exists to dismantle confidence in natural religion and to reassert the necessity of Christ proclaimed and believed.

Cornelius in Redemptive History

The account of Cornelius marks a decisive moment in the outward expansion of the gospel. Up to this point, Acts has followed the trajectory announced by Christ in Acts 1:8. The gospel moves from Jerusalem to Judea, then to Samaria. In Acts 10, the boundary is crossed decisively and publicly as the Gentiles are brought into the church through divine orchestration.

The nature of the Gentile Luke chooses to spotlight is striking. Cornelius is not presented as morally indifferent or spiritually hostile. He is a Roman centurion stationed in Caesarea, the administrative capital of Roman Judea. He fears the God of Israel. He gives alms. He prays continually. Even his household shares in his religious orientation.

Luke is intentionally stacking the deck. If salvation were attainable through sincerity, reverence, or ethical devotion, Cornelius would qualify. Yet Luke is equally clear that at this moment in the narrative, Cornelius is not saved.

This is confirmed explicitly when Peter recounts the event to the church in Jerusalem. He reports that the angel told Cornelius that Peter would declare to him a message by which he and his household would be saved (Acts 11:14). Salvation is not a present possession awaiting clarification. It is a future reality contingent upon hearing and believing the gospel.

The structure of the narrative leaves no room for ambiguity.

The Meaning of “God Fearer”

One of the most persistent errors in the interpretation of Acts 10 is the assumption that the term God fearer denotes saving faith. A related but more serious error is the assumption that fallen humanity possesses the moral capacity to fear God in a way that leads to salvation. Luke’s usage permits neither conclusion.

The phrase God fearer functioned as a technical designation in the first century. It referred to Gentiles who worshiped Israel’s God, attended synagogue, and ordered their lives according to Jewish moral teaching, yet remained uncircumcised and outside the covenant community. They were not proselytes and did not possess covenant status. They stood near Israel without becoming Israel.¹

F F Bruce notes that such individuals were attracted to Jewish monotheism and ethics but stopped short of full conversion.² Darrell Bock and Craig Keener likewise affirm that Luke employs the term sociologically rather than soteriologically.³ Josephus provides independent historical corroboration for the presence of such Gentiles attached to synagogue life without covenant membership.⁴ Cornelius fits this category precisely.

This distinction matters because Scripture itself differentiates between kinds of fear. Proverbs 9:10 teaches that the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. James 2:19 reminds us that even demons believe and shudder. Both involve fear. Only one flows from reconciliation and sonship.

Cornelius’s fear was real and God oriented. It was sincere. But it was not filial. By filial fear, Scripture refers to the reverent love that arises from adoption and reconciliation. It is the fear of a son toward a father, marked not by dread of punishment but by delight in communion and hatred of sin because it dishonors the one loved.⁵ Filial fear presupposes justification and union with Christ. It cannot exist apart from regeneration.

Until adoption takes place through faith, filial fear is impossible. Cornelius had not yet been adopted because he had not yet believed the gospel. The narrative makes this unmistakable.

This preserves both the seriousness of Cornelius’s devotion and the necessity of his conversion.

Common Grace and the Appearance of Righteousness

The life of Cornelius illustrates what theologians have historically described as common grace. God restrains sin in the world, awakens conscience, and inclines people toward external acts of obedience, mercy, and reverence. These effects are real. They are observable. They are not saving.

Jonathan Edwards repeatedly warned against confusing such external religion with true grace. In Religious Affections, Edwards argues that individuals may experience intense religious concern, practice spiritual disciplines, reform their lives, and even exhibit zeal for God, while remaining unregenerate.⁶ Such affections arise from natural conscience, fear of judgment, or self interest rather than from a new nature. Cornelius exemplifies this reality.

His almsgiving constitutes genuine mercy. His prayers are sincere. His reverence is visible. Yet none of these reconcile him to God. They do not justify him. They do not obligate divine favor.

Acts 10 is often abused precisely at this point. Cornelius is treated as evidence that unbelievers can please God. Yet the text never claims that God is pleased with Cornelius in a covenantal or saving sense. Instead, it shows God sovereignly intervening to bring Cornelius the one thing he lacks.

The kindness of God toward Cornelius is not a reward for virtue. It is grace preparing the way for grace.

Does God Hear the Prayer of the Unbeliever?

The angel tells Cornelius that his prayers and alms have ascended as a memorial before God (Acts 10:4). This language has generated confusion, especially when compared with passages such as Proverbs 15:29, Isaiah 1:15, and John 9:31, which state plainly that God does not hear the prayers of the wicked.

The resolution lies in distinguishing kinds of divine hearing.

Scripture consistently teaches that God does not hear the prayers of the unregenerate in a covenantal or fatherly sense. He does not receive them as acts of communion. He does not delight in them as offerings of faith. Yet Scripture also affirms that God, in His providence, may respond to the cries of the unregenerate in order to accomplish His saving purposes.

John Piper captures this distinction clearly when he argues that God hears Cornelius not because Cornelius has earned divine favor, but because God sovereignly intends to give him the gospel.⁷ The hearing itself is an act of grace, not a response to merit.

When the angel tells Cornelius that his prayers and alms have ascended as a memorial before God (Acts 10:4), Luke is not inventing novel religious language. He is deliberately drawing from the sacrificial vocabulary of the Old Testament, and specifically from the grain offering described in Leviticus 2.

In Leviticus 2, the grain offering is presented as a gift brought before the Lord, composed of fine flour, oil, and frankincense. Unlike the sin offering or the guilt offering, the grain offering is not explicitly connected to atonement. It does not deal with blood. It does not remove guilt. It functions differently within Israel’s sacrificial system.

The key term appears in Leviticus 2:2, where the priest is instructed to take a portion of the offering and burn it on the altar. This portion is called the memorial portion. The Hebrew term carries the sense of remembrance or bringing to mind. The smoke rises before the Lord as a memorial.

Crucially, the memorial portion does not earn forgiveness. It does not satisfy divine justice. It does not reconcile the worshiper to God. Those realities are addressed elsewhere in the sacrificial system. The memorial offering presupposes access rather than creating it.

The memorial language is not transactional. It is relational and covenantal. The offering does not place God under obligation. It functions because God has already condescended to allow such an offering to come before Him at all.

This distinction is essential for understanding Acts 10.

When Cornelius’s prayers and alms are said to rise as a memorial before God, the imagery is not that of merit accumulating in heaven. It is the imagery of God graciously attending to something He is not obligated to receive. Just as the grain offering’s memorial portion ascended only because God had ordained that it should, so Cornelius’s prayers rise only because God has chosen to notice them.

The direction of movement matters. The memorial does not move God toward salvation because of human action. God moves toward the sinner because He has already purposed to save.

Cornelius’s prayers are not saving. His alms are not justifying. They are preparatory, sovereignly orchestrated acts that God uses as part of the means by which He brings the gospel to a man He has already set His love upon.

Leviticus 2 also clarifies what the memorial is not. It is not a substitute for sacrifice. It is not an atoning act. In fact, the grain offering only makes sense within a sacrificial system that already includes blood atonement. To treat the memorial portion as salvific would be to misunderstand its place entirely.

Applied to Cornelius, this means that his prayers and generosity cannot be interpreted as pleasing God in a covenantal or reconciliatory sense. They do not deal with sin. They do not provide righteousness. They do not secure peace with God.

Instead, they function as signs of God’s providential work, not as causes of God’s saving action.

God is not obligated to hear Cornelius, yet chooses to do so in kindness. That is precisely the dynamic at work in Leviticus 2. The memorial portion rises because God has graciously made room for it. The worshiper is remembered because God has first chosen to remember.

This preserves both divine sovereignty and human responsibility without collapsing one into the other. Cornelius truly prays. Cornelius truly gives. Yet neither act compels God. God’s response is grounded entirely in His own gracious purpose.

The Old Testament imagery therefore strengthens, rather than weakens, the Reformed reading of Acts 10. The memorial language does not elevate Cornelius’s actions into saving obedience. It situates them within a framework of divine condescension, where God attends to human action only because He has freely chosen to do so.

In that sense, the memorial of Acts 10 functions exactly as the memorial of Leviticus 2 always did. It brings the worshiper before God’s attention, not because the offering is sufficient, but because God is gracious.

And that grace does not culminate in remembrance alone. It culminates in Christ proclaimed, Christ believed, and Christ received.

Good Works Before Conversion

The text explicitly links Cornelius’s prayers and almsgiving. Both ascend before God. Neither is described as righteous in a justifying sense.

Acts of mercy matter because God uses them in His world. They reflect His kindness even when performed by unbelievers. They do not function as currency for salvation.

Isaiah 64:6 remains decisive. All righteous deeds performed apart from faith are tainted by sin. That indictment does not disappear because a man is sincere or disciplined. It disappears only when Christ’s righteousness is imputed by faith.

Titus 3:5 makes this explicit. God saves not because of works done in righteousness, but according to His mercy, by the washing of regeneration and renewal of the Holy Spirit.

Cornelius’s generosity did not move God to save him. God’s sovereign mercy moved God to send Peter.

Salvation is not the culmination of moral effort. It is the interruption of it.

Cornelius and the Myth of Old Covenant Salvation

Some have attempted to resolve the tension of Acts 10 by claiming that Cornelius was saved under the old covenant until Peter informed him about Jesus. This proposal fails exegetically and theologically.

First, Cornelius was a Gentile. He was uncircumcised and outside the covenant. The old covenant was never administered apart from covenant signs and covenant membership.

Second, the old covenant itself never provided salvation apart from faith in the promised Messiah. Abraham was justified by faith. David rejoiced in forgiven sin. The sacrificial system pointed beyond itself.

Third, Peter’s sermon does not present Christ as optional fulfillment. He proclaims forgiveness of sins through Christ alone. The Spirit falls only after this proclamation.

Finally, Acts 11:14 explicitly states that Cornelius would hear words by which he would be saved. Salvation was not already possessed.

The appeal to old covenant salvation is not an explanation. It is an evasion.

Why Cornelius Still Needed Peter

One of the most revealing questions raised by the narrative is also one of the simplest. If Cornelius had already received an angelic vision, why did he still need Peter?

Because faith comes from hearing, and hearing through the word of Christ (Romans 10:17). God has ordained preaching as the means of salvation. Angels do not preach the gospel. Visions do not replace proclamation.

There is no salvation apart from the gospel being heard and believed.

Acts also emphasizes apostolic authority. Peter is present at each major opening of the kingdom. Jews in Acts 2. Samaritans in Acts 8. Gentiles in Acts 10. This confirms the legitimacy of the inclusion of the nations.

Cornelius could not bypass this process. Neither can anyone else.

The Order of Salvation and the Case of Cornelius

Some have argued that Cornelius proves regeneration can occur long before faith. This reading collapses under scrutiny.

Scripture teaches that regeneration precedes faith logically. One must be born again in order to believe. Yet Scripture also presents regeneration and faith as occurring inseparably in time. There is no category for a regenerate unbeliever who remains in unbelief indefinitely.

First John 5:1 states that everyone who believes that Jesus is the Christ has been born of God. Belief flows from new birth. It does not exist apart from it.

Nothing in Acts 10 requires us to conclude that Cornelius was regenerate before hearing the gospel. The term God fearer does not imply regeneration. The angel explicitly points him forward to salvation through Peter’s message. The Spirit falls only after the gospel is preached.

God was drawing Cornelius. God was preparing Cornelius. God was orchestrating events in Cornelius’s life. But God had not yet regenerated Cornelius.

When the gospel is preached, everything changes.

The Seeker Who Was First Sought

Cornelius sought God because God had already set His love upon him. That is the only explanation the text allows.

Romans 3 remains true. No one seeks after God. When a sinner appears to be seeking, it is because God is already at work. The end and the means are both ordained by Him.

God did not choose Cornelius because he prayed and gave alms. Cornelius prayed and gave alms because God had chosen him.

This reverses the logic of religious pride and preserves the glory of grace.

Conclusion

Acts 10 does not soften the doctrine of salvation. It sharpens it.

Cornelius stands as a warning to the religious and a comfort to the undeserving. He proves that morality is not salvation. He proves that sincerity is not regeneration. He proves that prayer, generosity, and reverence, however real, cannot reconcile a sinner to God.

He also proves that God pursues His people relentlessly, graciously, and effectually. He sends the gospel. He opens hearts. He saves through Christ alone.

The question Acts 10 leaves us with is not whether Cornelius was sincere. It is whether we will rest in sincerity or in Christ.

Only one saves.

Footnotes

1. BDAG, φοβούμενος τὸν θεόν

2. F F Bruce, The Book of the Acts, NICNT

3. Darrell L Bock, Acts, Baker Exegetical Commentary; Craig S Keener, Acts, Vol 2

4. Josephus, Antiquities 14.110; 20.17

5. John Murray, Redemption Accomplished and Applied

6. Jonathan Edwards, Religious Affections, Part II

7. John Piper, Let the Nations Be Glad; sermon “God Shows No Partiality”