The Problem Isn’t Paul
Most of the confusion about the Law, grace, and obedience doesn’t come from Yeshua. It comes from how people read Paul the Apostle — and not just read him, but isolate him. A verse here, a phrase there, stripped of context, and suddenly Paul is being used to cancel the words of Christ, Yehovah's commandments — the very Law Paul himself called holy.
But Peter already warned us this would happen:
“In which are some things hard to be understood, which they that are unlearned and unstable wrest, as they do also the other scriptures, unto their own destruction.”
That’s not a warning about Paul being wrong. That’s a warning about people misusing him. Peter names the danger before we encounter it — and gives us the only responsible way to approach Paul: carefully, in context, through the lens of everything else scripture says.
“Unlearned and unstable” readers wrest Paul’s letters “unto their own destruction.” The destruction Peter has in mind is not intellectual — it is moral. People use Paul to justify ignoring God’s commandments. Peter calls that self-destruction, not liberation.
The First Rule: Paul Cannot Contradict Christ
Before we open a single epistle, we anchor on bedrock. Yeshua said:
“Think not that I am come to destroy the law, or the prophets: I am not come to destroy, but to fulfil. For verily I say unto you, Till heaven and earth pass, one jot or one tittle shall in no wise pass from the law, till all be fulfilled.”
Heaven and earth are still here. That means whatever Paul is saying, it must agree with this. If a reading of Paul contradicts Christ, the problem is not Paul — it is our interpretation.
This is not a complicated hermeneutic. It is the simplest possible rule: let the words of the Son of God be the lens through which you read everything else.
“The doctrine of Jesus Christ is… that all men must repent and be baptized… and keep His commandments.”
— Teachings of the Prophet Joseph Smith, p. 331
Not optional. Not symbolic. Commandments — still in force, still expected, still the measure of discipleship.
What Paul Was Actually Fighting
Paul’s letters are responses to specific problems in specific congregations. Read them that way. When you understand what he was opposing, the apparent contradictions dissolve.
- Torah itself
- Obedience to God
- The commandments
- Keeping the Law
- Justification by works
- Forced Gentile circumcision
- Man-made additions to the Law
- Pride in legal performance
Those are not the same battlefield. Paul never attacks Torah. He attacks the misuse of Torah — the turning of a prophetic covenant system into a mechanism for earning standing before God.
“Works of the Law” ≠ Obedience
People read this and stop too early:
“By the works of the law shall no flesh be justified…”
But Paul doesn’t stop there. Three chapters later in the same letter system, in Romans, he finishes the thought:
“Do we then make void the law through faith? God forbid: yea, we establish the law.”
Faith does not void the Law — it establishes it. And Paul’s verdict on the Law itself is unambiguous:
“Wherefore the law is holy, and the commandment holy, and just, and good.”
That is not how you talk about something you want abolished. Paul’s argument is surgical: you are not saved by keeping the Law. That is not the same as you are free to ignore the Law.
“The law… was fulfilled in Christ, so far as its ordinances were concerned…”
— Journal of Discourses, Vol. 1, p. 234
Not everything. The ordinances. The sacrificial system. Pratt draws the same line Paul draws — and the same line the Nephites drew.
The Schoolmaster — A Teacher, Not an Enemy
Paul’s most important metaphor for Torah:
“Wherefore the law was our schoolmaster to bring us unto Christ, that we might be justified by faith.”
A schoolmaster instructs, prepares, and leads you toward a destination. When you reach that destination, you don’t declare the teacher was wrong — you say the teacher succeeded. Graduation is not the teacher’s refutation. It is the teacher’s vindication.
The Book of Mormon says the identical thing, written centuries before Paul:
“For this intent we keep the law of Moses, it pointing our souls to him.”
Two witnesses. Same doctrine. The Law was designed to point toward Christ — and it did exactly that.
Grace Does Not Remove Obedience
Paul closes this door himself, in the same letter that people use to argue for lawlessness:
“What then? shall we sin, because we are not under the law, but under grace? God forbid.”
And consider what sin actually is:
“Whosoever committeth sin transgresseth also the law: for sin is the transgression of the law.”
If the Law is gone, sin is undefined. You cannot transgress something that no longer exists. Paul never teaches that. John never teaches that. The definition of sin remains anchored in Torah — because Torah remains the standard of Yehovah’s righteousness.
“We are under law to Christ…”
— Journal of Discourses, Vol. 13, p. 144
Not lawless. Not free from obedience. Under law — to Christ.
Colossians 2 — Read It to the End
This passage gets misused constantly:
“Let no man therefore judge you… in meat, or in drink, or in respect of an holyday, or of the new moon, or of the sabbath days.”
People read this as permission to stop observing. But look at what it actually says. Paul doesn’t tell the Colossians to stop keeping feast days, Sabbaths, and dietary practices. He tells them not to let outsiders judge them for keeping these things.
You cannot be criticized for something you’re not doing. The Colossians were keeping Sabbath, new moons, and feast days — and being condemned by others for it. Paul defends their observance. That is the opposite of an abolition passage.
Acts 10 — Peter Interprets His Own Vision
Peter sees a sheet of animals and is told to eat. This gets presented as a dietary reform. But Peter explains the vision immediately after:
“God hath shewed me that I should not call any man common or unclean.”
The vision is about people, not food. Peter doesn’t go downstairs and eat a pig. He goes to Cornelius’s house and declares that Gentiles are not unclean before God. The sheet full of animals is a visual metaphor for Gentile inclusion. Peter says so himself — and his interpretation is the only one that counts.
Hebrews — What Actually Changed
Yes, Hebrews teaches that something changed. But the argument is surgical:
“For it is not possible that the blood of bulls and of goats should take away sins.”
What changed was the priesthood administration and the sacrificial system — because those were types pointing to a single future event. Christ fulfilled what those sacrifices pointed to. The Lamb of God replaced the animal offerings.
- God’s definition of righteousness
- The commandments of Torah
- The Sabbath
- Dietary distinctions
- Covenant obedience
- Levitical priesthood → Melchizedek
- Animal sacrifices → Christ’s once-for-all offering
- The type → the antitype
- The pointer → what it pointed to
Paul’s Own Life Proves the Point
Paul doesn’t just teach Torah — he lives it. Watch what he says in his own defense before Roman authorities:
“But this I confess unto thee, that after the way which they call heresy, so worship I the God of my fathers, believing all things which are written in the law and in the prophets.”
“I have committed nothing against the people, or customs of our fathers.”
Paul participates in Temple observances in Acts 21. He circumcises Timothy. He takes Nazirite vows. He observes feast-day timing in his missionary travels. Whatever Paul meant in his letters about “works of the law” and “not under the law” — he clearly did not mean what the lawlessness interpreters say he meant, because he didn’t live that way himself.
“Christ came not to destroy the law, but to fulfill it.”
— Teachings of the Prophet Joseph Smith, p. 276
Paul must be read through that lens. When he is, the contradictions disappear.
The Real Issue: People Want an Escape Hatch
Let’s say it plainly. People don’t twist Paul because he’s unclear. They twist him because they want freedom from obedience. So they turn him into something he never was: a teacher of lawlessness.
Peter named this pattern in the first century. It hasn’t changed. The instinct is always the same — find the most difficult texts, strip them from context, and use them to silence the clearest and most direct commandments of God.
Paul anticipated this too:
“What shall we say then? Shall we continue in sin, that grace may abound? God forbid. How shall we, that are dead to sin, live any longer therein?”
The answer is in the question. Grace that produces lawlessness is not grace — it is license. And Paul never offered license.
Paul and Christ Are in Agreement
When you read Paul correctly — through the words of Christ, in the full context of his letters, and alongside his own life — the picture is consistent:
- He does not contradict Christ
- He does not abolish the Law
- He does not promote disobedience
- He clarifies that salvation is by grace, not earned through legal performance
- He confirms that the Law points to Christ
- He establishes that obedience still matters, still defines sin, still measures discipleship
The apparent contradictions in Paul are produced by selective reading. When you read him whole, in context, through Christ — they are not contradictions at all.