Paul was constantly accused of wanting to please men. Why? Because he preached unity and denied the traditions and laws that got in the way of unity.

Of course, this doesn’t for a minute mean that he was anything like a “liberal” or a “mainliner.” His stance on ethical issues was uncompomised. As much as he promoted table fellowship, he commanded Christians not even to eat with one who claimed to be a Christian and who lived in public sin.

But, he also commanded that Christians separate from and have nothing to do with those who taught that something other than faith in Christ was necessary for table fellowship. When Peter began separating from uncircumcized Gentile believers and refusing to eat with them to make certain circumcized Christians happy because they taught that one had to be circumcized to be fully “in” the kingdom, Paul accused him of being out of step with the truth of the Gospel (Galatians 2).

So Paul must have looked like a hypocrite to the Judaizers. On the one hand he kept exhorting everyone to unity, love, and fellowship (concretely: table fellowship) while he kept using the most serious (and sometimes phallic) language to refer to those who demanded that Jews continue to observe the separations that Moses had laid down or that the traditions had instituted.

Paul preached separation from them just like he preached separation from those who continued in immorality. In fact he regarded them as continuing in immorality.

Backing Paul’s polemics is mandatory for us who regard his epistles as God’s word. But it would be wise to make sure we are understanding the target of his polemics correctly–lest we discover that we ourselves are in sitting in the bull’s eye.