Between the Babylonian Captivity and the time of the Messiah, Israel developed an erroneous understanding of the Law’s purpose. The Jews who first returned from Babylon knew that their exile had been the result of the breaking of God’s Laws; therefore, they put a heavy emphasis on the Law when they returned to their homeland. Unfortunately, this new emphasis eventually developed a theology that caused some people to erroneously view Law-keeping, rather than faith, as the key to their justification. Paul’s negative statements about the Law were simply his attempts to correct this erroneous use of the Law.

One writer puts it this way: “Paul, in his epistles, affirms the Law, yet condemns the wrong emphasis men place upon it. In this sense he is turning believers back to the original intent of the law, it being a rule for godly living for those who are already redeemed. He rejects the later shift towards making it a means of salvation.”²⁹

Another author says basically the same thing when he writes, “Paul rejects the law as a “Method of Salvation” but upholds it as a “Standard for Christian Conduct.”³⁰

To dispel these false accusations, the elders of Jerusalem had Paul go with four men who had taken a vow (probably a Nazarite vow), telling Paul that in this way “all will know that there is nothing to the things which they have been told about you, but that you yourself also walk orderly, keeping the Law” (Acts 21:24).

To his Jewish accusers from Jerusalem, Paul said, “I have committed No Offense, either against the Law of the Jews or against The temple”(Acts 25:8). To the Jews in Rome, he repeated the same testimony: “Brethren, though I had done nothing against our people, or the customs of our fathers, yet I was delivered prisoner into the hands of the Romans” (Acts 28:17).