Did Paul Contradict Jesus? 14 Clashes

In a few places Paul does say something new, and nearly all of them concern the Law of Moses. Put his words beside Jesus and the Old Testament and most of the fourteen clashes people point to fall away, while about five remain real arguments that turn on how you read them.

The question matters because Paul's name is on almost half the books of the New Testament. If he bent the message of Jesus, a large part of the Bible bends with him. So start with how much he wrote, who he was, and who wrote the books that tell his story.

How many books of the Bible did Paul write?

Thirteen letters carry Paul's name. In Bible order they are Romans, 1 and 2 Corinthians, Galatians, Ephesians, Philippians, Colossians, 1 and 2 Thessalonians, 1 and 2 Timothy, Titus and Philemon.

Some traditions count fourteen, because the early church often credited Hebrews to Paul as well. Hebrews never names its author, and most scholars today do not think Paul wrote it.

Scholars are more divided over the thirteen than most churchgoers realise. Nearly all of them accept seven as Paul's own, namely Romans, 1 and 2 Corinthians, Galatians, Philippians, 1 Thessalonians and Philemon. Many think the other six were written after his death by followers using his name. Conservative scholars still hold that all thirteen are his.

Half the books, a quarter of the words

Thirteen out of twenty-seven books is 48%, which makes Paul look like the author of half the New Testament. But most of his letters are short. Philemon is 452 words in the Berean Standard Bible, while Luke's Gospel runs past 24,000.

Counted by words in that translation, Paul's thirteen letters make up 25% of the New Testament. The seven undisputed letters make up 19%. Luke's Gospel and the book of Acts together make up 27%, so the largest share of the New Testament comes from a man who never met Jesus and was not an apostle.

Was Paul one of the 12 apostles?

No. Matthew gives the list of the twelve Jesus chose.

“These are the names of the twelve apostles: first Simon, called Peter, and his brother Andrew; James son of Zebedee, and his brother John; Philip and Bartholomew; Thomas and Matthew the tax collector; James son of Alphaeus, and Thaddaeus; Simon the Zealot, and Judas Iscariot, who betrayed Jesus.”

(Matthew 10:2-4, BSB)

After Judas died, the eleven cast lots and “the lot fell to Matthias. So he was added to the eleven apostles” (Acts 1:26). Paul is not on either list.

The Greek word for apostle (Greek: ἀπόστολος, apostolos, “one who is sent, messenger”) means someone sent with a message, an envoy. That is why Paul could claim the title without being one of the Twelve. His claim rests on being sent by the risen Jesus himself.

“And last of all He appeared to me also, as to one of untimely birth. For I am the least of the apostles and am unworthy to be called an apostle, because I persecuted the church of God.”

(1 Corinthians 15:8-9, BSB)

Paul is open that he came last and came from the other side. He had hunted the church before he joined it.

Was Luke an apostle, and who wrote the Gospel of Luke?

Luke was not an apostle either, and he never claims to have met Jesus. He says plainly how he wrote his Gospel.

“Many have undertaken to compose an account of the things that have been fulfilled among us, just as they were handed down to us by the initial eyewitnesses and servants of the word. Therefore, having carefully investigated everything from the beginning, it seemed good also to me to write an orderly account for you, most excellent Theophilus…”

(Luke 1:1-3, BSB)

He used earlier written accounts and the testimony of eyewitnesses, and he checked them. That is a researcher's method, and he says so in his first sentence.

The doctor who travelled with Paul

Paul calls him “Luke, the beloved physician” (Colossians 4:14). A few verses earlier Paul names three co-workers and says “these are the only Jews among my fellow workers” (Colossians 4:11). Luke is not among them, which is why most readers conclude he was a Gentile. That rests on putting two verses together, but if it holds, Luke is probably the only non-Jewish writer in the Bible.

Luke also wrote Acts, and partway through it the story changes from “they” to “we”. After Paul's vision of a man from Macedonia, Acts says “we got ready to leave for Macedonia” (Acts 16:10). From there, in several stretches, the writer is on the road with Paul.

So who wrote the Gospel of Luke, Luke or Paul?

Luke did. Paul wrote letters and never a gospel. The Gospel itself is anonymous, like all four, and the name comes from the early church. In the late second century Irenaeus wrote that “Luke also, the companion of Paul, recorded in a book the Gospel preached by him.”

You can see Paul in the background. Paul's account of the Last Supper and Luke's use almost the same words for the cup.

“This cup is the new covenant in My blood; do this, as often as you drink it, in remembrance of Me.”

(1 Corinthians 11:25, BSB)

“This cup is the new covenant in My blood, which is poured out for you.”

(Luke 22:20, BSB)

Matthew and Mark word the cup differently. Luke held the pen and did the research, and the teacher you can hear behind him is Paul.

Why is Paul so controversial?

The charge against Paul is old. In the second century a Jewish-Christian group called the Ebionites rejected him, and Irenaeus recorded that they called Paul “an apostate from the law.” The same charge is still made today.

The case against him

His whole authority rests on a vision only he saw. Acts tells the Damascus road story three times, and the details shift. In Acts 9:7 the men with him “heard the voice but did not see anyone.” In Acts 22:9 the Berean Standard Bible says they “could not understand the voice”, while older translations such as the King James say they “heard not the voice”. Translators still disagree over how to read the Greek here.

He gives himself his own title. “I am the apostle to the Gentiles,” he writes (Romans 11:13). Apart from Paul himself, the only one who confirms it is Luke, his own companion.

He clashed with the men who had walked with Jesus. “When Cephas came to Antioch, however, I opposed him to his face, because he stood condemned” (Galatians 2:11). Cephas is Peter.

And he changed the rules about the Law of Moses, which the rest of this page tests one verse at a time.

The case for him

The men who knew Jesus accepted him, by his own account. Three years after his conversion he spent fifteen days with Peter and met “James, the Lord’s brother” (Galatians 1:18-19). Years later the leaders in Jerusalem endorsed his mission.

“And recognizing the grace that I had been given, James, Cephas, and John—those reputed to be pillars—gave me and Barnabas the right hand of fellowship, so that we should go to the Gentiles, and they to the circumcised.”

(Galatians 2:9, BSB)

Second Peter calls him “our beloved brother Paul” and puts his letters alongside “the rest of the Scriptures”, while admitting “some parts of his letters are hard to understand” (2 Peter 3:15-16).

The claim that he did it for status is hard to square with what it cost him.

“Five times I received from the Jews the forty lashes minus one. Three times I was beaten with rods, once I was stoned, three times I was shipwrecked. I spent a night and a day in the open sea.”

(2 Corinthians 11:24-25, BSB)

He worked as a tentmaker (Acts 18:3) rather than take a living from the churches, though he says he had the right to (1 Corinthians 9:14-15). The church historian Eusebius records that he was beheaded in Rome under Nero. A man chasing fame chose a strange road to it.

Paul is also one of the earliest witnesses to the resurrection. In 1 Corinthians 15:3-7 he passes on a list of people the risen Jesus appeared to, and he says he “received” it, so it is older than the letter he wrote it in.

The test Scripture itself gives

The strongest case against Paul does not guess at his motives. It uses the Torah's own rule for testing a prophet.

“If a prophet or dreamer of dreams arises among you and proclaims a sign or wonder to you, and if the sign or wonder he has spoken to you comes about, but he says, ‘Let us follow other gods (which you have not known) and let us worship them,’ you must not listen to the words of that prophet or dreamer.”

(Deuteronomy 13:1-3, BSB)

The passage is about turning people to other gods, and Paul preached the God of Israel. Critics lean on the next verse, which tells Israel to “keep His commandments” (Deuteronomy 13:4), and say Paul led people away from them. Whether he did is the question of the rest of this page.

Where does the Bible say Gentiles don't need the law?

The clearest place is not one of Paul's letters. It is a ruling made by the whole church in Jerusalem, recorded in Acts 15.

The word for Gentiles (Greek: ἔθνος, ethnos, “nation, non-Jewish people”) means the nations, every people that is not Israel. The question in Acts 15 was whether those nations had to become Jews to follow Jesus.

“But some believers from the party of the Pharisees stood up and declared, ‘The Gentiles must be circumcised and required to obey the law of Moses.’”

(Acts 15:5, BSB)

Peter, Paul and Barnabas spoke, and then James gave his judgment.

“It is my judgment, therefore, that we should not cause trouble for the Gentiles who are turning to God. Instead, we should write and tell them to abstain from food polluted by idols, from sexual immorality, from the meat of strangled animals, and from blood.”

(Acts 15:19-20, BSB)

The letter that went out was sent by “the apostles and elders”, not by Paul alone. It asked four things of Gentiles and said nothing of circumcision (Greek: περιτομή, peritomē, “circumcision”), the Sabbath or the food laws.

Peter opened the door before Paul walked through it

In Acts 10 Peter has a vision and then baptises Cornelius, a Roman centurion. He explains it himself. “God has shown me that I should not call any man impure or unclean” (Acts 10:28). When Jerusalem challenged him, the believers concluded, “So then, God has granted even the Gentiles repentance unto life” (Acts 11:18). Paul's first mission to the Gentiles does not begin until Acts 13.

This has two limits. Paul says his calling to the Gentiles came straight from God at his conversion, before any of this (Galatians 1:15-16). And the order of events comes from Acts, written by Paul's own companion, so it is not an independent witness.

What Paul's letters say

Paul puts it most bluntly in Galatians.

“…know that a man is not justified by works of the law, but by faith in Jesus Christ. So we, too, have believed in Christ Jesus, that we may be justified by faith in Christ and not by works of the law, because by works of the law no one will be justified.”

(Galatians 2:16, BSB)

The word for law (Greek: νόμος, nomos, “law”) here usually means the Law of Moses, the commands given at Sinai. The word for works (Greek: ἔργον, ergon, “work, deed”) means deeds, things done. Paul's target is the idea that keeping those commands puts a person right with God, and his answer is faith (Greek: πίστις, pistis, “persuasion, faith”), meaning trust in Christ.

In Romans he writes, “you are not under law, but under grace (Greek: χάρις, charis, “favour freely given”)” (Romans 6:14). In Colossians he says no one should judge you over food, feasts or a Sabbath, because “these are a shadow of the things to come, but the body that casts it belongs to Christ” (Colossians 2:16-17).

Paul also defends the Law.

“Do we, then, nullify the law by this faith? Certainly not! Instead, we uphold the law.”

(Romans 3:31, BSB)

He calls the commandment “holy, righteous, and good” (Romans 7:12), and he writes, “Circumcision is nothing and uncircumcision is nothing. Keeping God’s commandments is what counts” (1 Corinthians 7:19). So Paul keeps the moral commands and lets go of the signs that marked Israel out, such as circumcision, food laws and the Sabbath. Where exactly to draw that line is still argued over today.

The new covenant Jeremiah promised

Paul's defence rests on a promise made more than six hundred years before him.

“Behold, the days are coming, declares the LORD, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah… I will put My law in their minds and inscribe it on their hearts. And I will be their God, and they will be My people.”

(Jeremiah 31:31, 33, BSB)

The Hebrew for covenant (Hebrew: בְּרִית, berit, “covenant, compact”) means a binding pact. Its root idea is cutting, because covenants were sealed by cutting animals in two. The Greek word Jesus uses for the cup at the Last Supper is covenant (Greek: διαθήκη, diathēkē, “covenant, testament”), a word that can also mean a will. The King James Version translates it “testament” in Luke 22:20, and that is why “New Testament” really means “new covenant”. Paul even calls the Jewish scriptures “the old covenant” (2 Corinthians 3:14).

Christians read Jeremiah as predicting that the Sinai covenant would be replaced. Jewish readers and many of Paul's critics point out that Jeremiah says God's law will be written on hearts, not set aside, and Ezekiel says the same promise means God will “cause you to walk in My statutes and to carefully observe My ordinances” (Ezekiel 36:27). Both sides read the same verses. They disagree over whether “My law” means the Torah kept from the heart, or something new that fulfils it.

Did Paul contradict Jesus? The 14 clashes, side by side

These are the fourteen places critics name most. Each row gives the words of Jesus or the Old Testament, then Paul's, then the usual Christian answer, and how much weight the clash carries once both sides are heard.

Row three rests on Mark 7:19, which ends with the comment “Thus all foods are clean.” The Greek is a participle meaning making clean (Greek: καθαρίζω, katharizō, “to make clean, cleanse”), and how to read it is disputed. Most modern translations take it as Mark explaining Jesus' words, while the King James reads it as describing digestion. The argument in Mark 7 also began over handwashing, not over Leviticus.

Row one hangs on a single word. In Romans 10:4 Paul calls Christ “the end (Greek: τέλος, telos, “end, the point aimed at”) of the law”, and the Greek word means the point something is aimed at, its finish or its goal. Read as finish, Paul is closing the Law. Read as goal, he is saying the Law was always pointing at Christ.

What the fourteen add up to

Four clashes are weak. In each one the wider passage, or Jesus himself somewhere else, closes the gap. Five are middling, and in most of them Paul says the other side too, so the tension sits inside Paul's own letters rather than between him and Jesus.

Five are strong. They cover the permanence of the Law, circumcision, the Sabbath, whether the Law is good, and divorce. Four of those five are the same question asked four ways. What happens to the Law of Moses once the Messiah has come?

Read James on faith and deeds for the other side of row five, eye for an eye against turn the other cheek for a clash that dissolves in context, and why Matthew and Luke give Jesus two family trees for Luke's research at work.

So did Paul contradict Jesus?

On almost everything, no. On the Law of Moses, Paul says what Jesus in the Gospels never says outright, that circumcision, the food laws and the Sabbath no longer bind those who follow Christ. That is a real difference in emphasis, and it is fair to admit it.

But it was not Paul's private invention. Peter baptised the first Gentile without circumcision. The leaders who had walked with Jesus shook Paul's hand. The letter of Acts 15 went out in the name of the apostles and elders together, and Paul hung the whole argument on a promise God made through Jeremiah six centuries before. Read all of that together, and Paul is not changing the message of Jesus. He is arguing over what that message means now that the Messiah has come, and the apostles in Jerusalem sided with him.

Sources

• Berean Standard Bible (public domain), every passage quoted. The word counts and shares (Paul 25%, the seven undisputed letters 19%, Luke and Acts 27%) were computed from its full New Testament text, 172,381 words.
• “How many books of the Bible did St. Paul write?”, Britannica, for the count of 13 or 14.
• Bart Ehrman, “How Many Books Did Paul Write?”, for the seven letters most scholars accept.
• Irenaeus, Against Heresies 3.1.1, on Luke as Paul's companion, New Advent translation, and 1.26.2, on the Ebionites, New Advent translation.
• Eusebius, Church History 2.25, on Paul's death in Rome, New Advent translation.
• Acts 22:9 in the King James Version, Mark 7:19 in the King James Version, Luke 22:20 in the King James Version, and 1 Corinthians 7:1 in the NIV, for the translation differences.
• Hebrew and Greek definitions from Strong's dictionaries via Open Scriptures (CC BY-SA). See the word list.