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You are here: Home > Bible Commentary > Acts > Chapter 21 > Verse 21

Acts 21

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Acts 21:21
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Acts 21:21
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And they are informed of thee, that thou teachest all the Jews which are among the Gentiles to forsake Moses, saying that they ought not to circumcise [their] children, neither to walk after the customs.

Note 4 at Acts 21:21: This was not an accurate statement. Paul wasn't instructing the Gentile Christians to forsake Moses. They were never under the law of Moses!. You cannot forsake something that you were never bound to. The law was given to the Jews and was never intended for the Gentiles (Rom. 2:14; Eph. 2:12).

The Sabbath, which was one of the prominent commands of the law of Moses, was clearly never intended for Gentiles (Ex. 31:16-17). Circumcision was the rite that Paul was specifically accused of instructing the Gentiles to forsake, but again, this was a part of the Jewish covenant. The gentiles were not becoming proselytes to Judaism, they were becoming Christians.

The contention that Paul found himself in the midst of was caused by Jewish Christians thinking that Christianity was just an extension of Judaism. They did not understand that the Jewish religion and Christianity didn't mix. They don't contradict, but the New Covenant so far supersede the Old Covenant that there can not be a mixing of the two (see note 1 at Lk. 5:36, p. 150).