Paul visits Jerusalem (the fifth time); Acts 21:17 – 26 Part 5

Church History: Date: A.D.57 - 59

The law of Moses, as to its moral part, Christ continued as his law: the ceremonial part, as to the use types and ceremonies, signifying him that was to come, this was abrogated at Christ's coming; and the political part ceased, when the Jewish polity was dissolved: but the abrogation of the whole was not fully made known at the first, but by degrees; and the exercise of it long tolerated to the Jews. They advised Paul to go into the temple, and perform the legal ceremony of purification: “We have four men which have a vow; them take, and purify yourself, that all may know that you walk orderly, and keep the law.” That is, "Seeing we have four men here which have a Nazarite's vow upon them, the time of which vow is now expired, and they are to shave themselves ceremoniously in the temple; go with them, and perform the legal ceremony of purification there, so that the people may know that the reports about you are not true; but you, being a Jew, keeps the law."
Here we may observe the truth of what St. Paul elsewhere declared, that “to the Jews he became as a Jew, that he might gain the Jews, He became all things to all men that he might gain some.” A noble pattern for the ministers of the gospel to follow after, in yielding, so far as we may without sin or scandal, to the weakness of others, in order to the furtherance of the great ends of our ministry among our people: To the Jews I became as a Jew. (1Corinthians 9:20)5
At the urging his friends, Paul is persuaded to purify himself in the temple; partly to gain the confidence of the believing Jews, who were still zealous of the law; and partly to refute the false accusations of those who reported him to be against all ceremonial observances. How blind was the zeal, and how furious the rage, of the unbelieving Jews, against the apostle! They seek, and because they could not find, they take an occasion to vent their malice upon him; accordingly they put the whole city of Jerusalem into an uproar, upon a pretence that he had brought Titus, a Gentile, into the temple, to corrupt and pollute it; and in their blind rage they dragged the apostle out of the temple, because he showed an irreverence of it.