I gotta have my orange juice.

James Jordan offers an insight into Peter’s vision of the sheet. He does this at one point while reflecting on the sin of Jonah:

Peter says, I’ve never eaten anything defiled or unclean. And God says, “What God has cleansed, you shall not consider unclean.”

That’s not really what he says. He says, “What God has cleansed, you shall not defile.”

In other words, Peter, you’re like a corpse, and uncleanness spreads from you to these poor, innocent Gentiles. If you have this attitude, instead of spreading life and taking life and resurrection life where you go, you’re taking death and spreading death where you go. That’s what this actually says. He doesn’t say, don’t you regard him. He says, don’t you defile him. (Jonah, Part 2)

Jordan discusses this at greater length in his study on Acts:

“What God has cleansed, no longer consider unholy.” That’s what this says.

But that is not what the Greek says. It’s very clear in Greek, but it’s because it’s curious that it’s not translated literally, and we need to. “What God has cleansed, you shall not defile.”

Now, what that means is that Peter is the source of uncleanness and Peter is defiling Cornelius. Or he’s potentially doing so. You see? “What God has cleansed, you shall not defile.”

Now, of these animals that are in this net, in this sheet, we have clean ones and we have unclean ones. In Peter’s mind, the clean ones have been defiled. But in God’s mind, the clean ones are not defiled. So when it says what God has cleaned, which set of animals has God cleansed? Well, God has cleansed the unclean animals, you see, because the clean animals don’t need to be cleansed. Now, Peter might have thought they needed to be, but they didn’t, objectively speaking, need to be. So they’re not the ones God has cleansed. God has cleansed, symbolically speaking, the unclean animals: the lizards, the donkeys, the pigs, the roaches. They have become clean. So there is no longer any kind of barrier.

But now it says, “What God has cleansed, you shall not defile.” In other words, Peter, if your attitude toward these Gentiles continues to be one of hostility, you become the unclean one, and you will defile them. What is unclean about you will spread to them.

Now this is real strong, you see. It is about as strong a thing as God could say to a Jew. To say, you are going around saying that if we associate with these Gentiles, “Ooh, we’ve got to be careful because their uncleanness might spread to us and we’re so holy we have to preserve ourselves from these Gentiles and not associate with them.”

And God says just the opposite to Peter. He says that attitude makes you the father of uncleanness and you are the one who’s defiling them. You are causing trouble for them. And you’re the one that will have to be purged, Peter, if you have this attitude.

So, that is repeated three times for emphasis. . . . Now, when Peter figures it out, Peter doesn’t quite understand what’s going on until the men come from Cornelius, and then he understands. He’s got to go to this Gentile, baptize him, and bring him into the church. He must not go to him and treat him as if he was a second-class citizen, because if he does that, he’s defiling him. (Studies in Acts #4)

Peter later needed to be reminded by Paul that such behavior is a denial of the gospel (Galatians 2). Paul reminds us in Romans 14 that our eating can destroy one for whom Christ died.

This is a great danger for parents of little ones. If we deny them communion, then we are defiling and potentially destroying those whom God has not merely cleansed, but whom he calls holy (1 Corinthians 7).