“Not sure where you got ‘Paul commanded people to abandoned Judaism’ from.”
This is the popular concept of today—that the Law was abolished by Christ and is no longer in force—Jews and Gentiles not only may ignore its ordinances, such as circumcision, but they MUST ignore them. No distinction is made between Jew and Gentile.
Perhaps I misunderstood what you said here:
https://youtu.be/R1aTcI_R9zI?t=820 (@13:40)
“Paul is saying that we... don’t have to be bound by the Law any more, that Jesus came to free us from living under the Law, and now God isn’t really concerned with our diet or anything like that any more. He’s concerned with our hearts. And you don’t have to be circumcised to go to Heaven. Now this is very troubling for Jewish Christians back in the early days of Christianity. “
I think the ordinance of circumcision was never intended for non-semitic people. Of course, some Gentiles were led by God to convert to Judaism prior to Christ’s first coming, and these would have been expected to follow the ordinances. Likewise, God gave very limited restrictions to Noah when He permitted the eating of meat. Just like the Mosaic Law, the consuming of blood was proscribed against. The New Testament affirms this is applicable to Gentiles and clarifies that even eating meat from animals that have been strangled violate this prohibition. But God never instructed Gentiles to abstain from shellfish or pork, for example.
So your use of the word “now” led me to believe that you are suggesting that this was not the case prior. In other words, it implies that there was a time in which Gentiles needed to keep these Jewish ordinances in order to please God or receive salvation.
Similarly, by suggesting that Paul was saying “we” don’t have to be bound by the Law, I took it to mean that “we” includes Jews because Paul was Jewish. But perhaps it is still an accurate statement in the sense that God has set all of us—Jew and Gentile—free from the Law of sin and death. The key here, which I am certain that you get, is that God was fulfilling His promise to write His Law upon our hearts.
Circumcision is a test case. For Gentile Christians, it is an Old Testament symbol of our spiritual circumcision. For Jewish Christians today, this is still an ordinance that God expect them to keep as part of His Covenant with Israel. Paul defended himself in Acts, which I mentioned earlier, against the accusations that he was telling Jews they no longer needed to keep the Law. He also defended himself against similar false accusations in Romans because his adversaries were saying that Paul taught God had broken the promises He made to Israel and “cast them off”. He asserts, “God has not cast away His people whom He foreknew.”
An interesting question regarding circumcision is how the Judaizers would know if a Gentile Christian was circumcised. The answer seems to be that what Paul said they did when they came to “spy out” the liberty of Gentile believers was quite literal. It is almost as if, as disgusting as it may sound, that they were practically peeping Toms, looking around the barrier of the bathroom stall (so-to-speak) to see if their Gentile “brethren” had been properly cut. In the case of Timothy, it would have been public knowledge that he had a Jewish Christian mother but had not been circumcised (she would obviously know). I personally find it quite surprising that Paul circumcised him, as this does not seem mandatory even under the understanding that Jewish and Gentile converts retain their heritage. And Paul was no people-pleaser. Yet he discerned that this was necessary in Timothy’s case.
Hope I am not being too nitpicky in my feedback. I encourage you to keep writing, teaching, and serving God, as I expect He has great plans for your ongoing ministry. Don’t be afraid of the inevitable hardships that go along with serving the Lord. Sometimes, as you pointed out, the worst opposition is from other professing Christians. I don’t intend to be that toward you.
It is incorrect to say that Paul taught for Jewish Christians to abandon either the commandments of the Law of Moses or even the customs of Judaism (as long as those customs did not contradict the Law).
This is not a claim I ever made, and I don't find it in the quote you provided. We're not talking about Jewish Christians, but Gentile converts. I have not seen anywhere where Paul told Jewish Christians to abandon Judaism. I thought I was pretty clear that the problem was that Jewish Christians demanded Gentiles fully convert to Judaism before they could believe in Christ. This is what horrified Paul. For example, I don't mean to diminish the importance of circumcision to Jews as a cultural tradition, but is it a requirement to go to heaven? The Judaizers said so. But why did Jesus die on the cross, then?