What God has made clean, you are not to call profane. One of the many hurdles the young Christian community had to overcome or contend with was carrying out Jesus’ command of making disciples of all nations (cf. Matthew 28:19). Christianity was born among the Jewish people, a people who were already steeped into an idea of both God and religion that was much similar to the one the followers of Jesus were trying to propagate. As such, it was going to be easy to make disciples from the immediate Jewish community because they were already familiar with the demands of a monotheistic religion. As a matter of fact, Christianity at this moment in time was seen as a sect within Judaism. However, it was not going to be the same story once the disciples decided to cross the ethnic boundary in order to proclaim the faith, as it were, to the ends of the world. 
How were they to make this new “religion” appealing to a people who had hitherto been considered “outsiders” and unworthy of religion? How were they to make Christianity inclusive (as opposed to the exclusivity of its parent religion, Judaism) without compromising its values? As the disciples would soon find out, this wasn’t going to be an easy feat to accomplish. Selling Christianity to the Gentiles wasn’t going to be an easy feat. But even as they were perhaps looking into how to meet this challenge, I believe they were more surprised to realize that the first hurdle they had to overcome was from within. Some ‘conservative’ members of the Christian community (circumcised believers) were apparently not happy with the step Peter had taken of entering the house of an uncircumcised believer (a gentile Christian). They were not happy that, by his action, Peter was doing away with the outfit of their religion. In his defense, Peter reminds them that he too had shared in their belief and had himself taken such a stance until he was “converted” through a vision from on high.
In the vision, Peter is reminded that continuing to hold on to his conservative ideas concerning religion was not only a retrogression but also a nullification of what God had accomplished in Jesus Christ. For in Jesus Christ, God had broken the walls of division that had kept man from reaching out to fellow man. In Jesus Christ, God was gathering the human race into one family of God. In Jesus Christ, there was no longer a Jew or gentile, a slave or free person (cf. Galatians 3:28) but rather brothers and sisters one to another. Although the Jews were the first to receive the revelation of the God of Jesus Christ, Jesus’ mission had been extended to all (cf. John 10:16) for Jesus had offered himself on the wood of the cross for the salvation of all his brothers and sisters. After all, this was the very message that the disciples were charged with disseminating to the ends of the earth: that in Jesus Christ, God has reconciled the universe to God-self. In Jesus Christ, God has re-created the universe and has made it new (clean). In Jesus Christ, even those who thought of as unclean and unworthy of God were now clean and worthy recipients of God’s salvation.