Barnabas and the Early Christians 71Assuming that this assumption was correct, and assuming that the
means justifies the end, Paul then apparently assumed that this
viewpoint must therefore be pleasing to God, Whose commands
and Prophets he had just rather clumsily but nevertheless almost
completely negated:
Therefore, since we have been justified through faith,
we have peacewith God through our Lord Jesus Christ,
through whom we have gained access by faith into this
grace in which we now stand. And we rejoicein the hope
of the glory of God. (Romans 5: 1-2).Paul's attitude towards the Law of Moses is, to sorne extent, un
derstandable, perhaps at times even laudable, because as we have
already seen, by the time that Jesus began his mission, the [ews
had already re-written and re-defined the Law of Moses on more
than one occasion, transforming it into their own religion. Thus
Jesus had upbraided them in no uncertain terms, when referring
to lsaiah 29:13, forpassingoff their ownman-madelaws and inter
pretations as being the 'Law of God':
You hypocrites! Isaiah was right when he prophesied
about you: (The Lord says:) 'These people honour Me
with their lips, but their hearts are far from Me. They
worship Me in vain; their teaclùngs are but rules taught
by men.' (Matthew 15: 7-9).This, as we have already seen, is one of the main reasons why the
Pharisees and the Sadducees plotted to kill Jesus - because he was
fully aware of just how much they had changed the original teach
ing of Moses. Jesus had, however, while he was on earth,succeeded
in restoring the original teaching of Moses, breathing back into it
the mercy and justice which had all but been squeezed out of il.
Itis highly significant that whereas Jesus rejected the rewritten
law of the [ews but reaffirmed the original Law of Moses, Paul
rejected both the rewritten law of the Jews and the original Law of
Moses. To use that well-known phrase, Paul threw the baby out
withthebathwater - claimingthatthis was exactlywhatitsmother
wanted - and his followers, perhaps mistakenly thinking that they
were following Jesus when they were really following Paul, have
been paying for it ever since!