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#47. The Third Missionary Journey (19: 21 - 21: 39).
The Apprehension of the Apostle in the Temple (21: 27 - 34).
pp. 149 - 154
When we examine Paul's epistles, we find they contain two contemporaneous lines of
teaching, which, if taken as two parts of a whole, make an intelligible presentation of
truth, but if segregated, could easily become the tenets of two opposing factions.
One of the objects of the Apostle's ministry was the conciliation of the church at
Jerusalem without yielding any of the peculiar truth that constituted both the glory of his
message among the Gentiles, and its offensiveness to those that believed, but who were
still zealous of the law.
In his then recently written epistles to the Corinthians and the Romans, this
conciliatory spirit is especially manifest, not only "to the Jew", but "to the Greek" and "to
the Church of God" (I Cor. 10: 32). He had not only urged respect for the conscience of
one who failed to shake off his earlier feelings regarding idols (I Cor. 10: 27-29), but had
counseled the same charitable attitude to the believing, yet ceremonial, Jew (Rom. 14:).
He had expressed his attitude in the well-known words:
"Though I be free from all men, yet have I made myself servant unto all, that I might
gain the more. And unto the Jews I became as a Jew, that I might gain the Jews: to them
that are under the law as under the law, that I might gain them that are under the law. To
them that are without the law, as without the law (being not with the law to God, but
under the law to Christ), that I might gain them that are without the law. To the weak
became I as weak, that I might gain the weak; I am made all things to all men, that I
might by all means save some" (I Cor. 9: 19-21).
This represented one side of the apostolic character and attitude. But there was
another aspect of his teaching necessary to complete the whole, and that was his
unsparing opposition of all attempts on the part of Judaizers to bring his converts under
bondage. He had called these Judaizers "false brethren", "deceitful workers" and even
"dogs". He had declared that those who had gone back to "the weak and beggarly
elements" of the law were comparable with those who returned to the rites and
ceremonies of heathen gods; he had spoken of the "curse" and the "wrath" that must be
associated with the law, and had even declared that any believer who submitted to
circumcision would fall from grace, and that Christ would profit such an one, nothing.
Unless, therefore, we see Paul and his doctrine as a whole, we shall not be able to
understand what is recorded of him in Acts 21:
"A modern writer has said that he (Paul) could not do this without untruth; and that to
suppose the author of the epistles to the Romans and Galatians standing seven days, oil
cakes in hand, in the temple vestibule, and submitting himself to all the manifestations
with which Rabbinic pettiness had multiplied the Mosaic ceremonials which
accompanied the completion of the Nazarite vow--to suppose that in the midst of the
unbelieving Priests and Levites, he should have patiently tolerated all the ritual nullities