Acts 21:21

“And they have been informed concerning you, that you teach all the Jews who are among the Gentiles to forsake Moses, telling them not to circumcise their children nor to walk after the customs.”

For some had been informed that Paul was teaching Jews who became Christians to cease being Jews, not to have their children circumcised and not to walk in the customs of the Jews. Such twisting of the truth, when men have been defeated in an argument, has been commonplace throughout the ages. It is amazing how thwarted men, even Christians, can so dishonour Christ, but it regularly happens. They had been told that he was teaching them to forsake Moses. (Do we detect the hand of the Christian Judaisers at work here? Defeated in their arguments they retaliate with lies). That this was untrue we know because Paul had had Timothy circumcised because he was half a Jew. And nowhere do we learn of Paul teaching Jews no longer to be racially, and by customary behaviour, Jews. He was not concerned with race and customs when he taught. He was only concerned with central truth. As long as their race and customs did not lead men astray from the truth they could hold to what they liked. And, as we have seen, we have reason to believe that Paul himself continued to observe Jewish customs. They had been his fashion of life from his youth up. What was good in them he wanted to retain (they were not a burden to Paul now that he saw that they were not an essential for salvation). And he knew that observance of them could aid the witness among Jews. What he would not do was impose them on others, or make them necessary for salvation.