After Peter uses his “Keys of the Kingdom” to open the door to the gentiles, an evangelistic effort is launched. Previous to this, the Gospel was taken to the Jews only. (Acts 11:19). When the first disciples preached the Gospel to the Jews, they had a natural “in” with the Jewish culture, that is that the Messiah had come and that they had witnessed Him in His resurrected state. The concepts of the coming Messiah and Resurrection we well known and at least partially understood by a Jewish audience.
When preaching Christ to the gentiles however, they had to present it in a different way. The gentiles had no concept of a Messiah and the idea of resurrection was abhorrent to them. What was appealing to the gentiles was the concept of Justice and a universal objective Judge. Man has always recognized that there is a universal desire for justice and at the same time a universal failure to attain to that justice. Plato placed justice in the realm of Forms; things that we know exist but are unable to realize in this mundane realm. Aristotle said that true justice was the totality of ethics. But, due to mankind’s sinful nature, justice is elusive. The concepts of God as the objective lawgiver and judge as well as Christ as the one who has taken our injustice upon Himself was appealing to a first century, gentile audience.
Our modern culture has a similar problem with justice. We know it exists, we say we want it, and yet we have a problem when it is applied to ourselves