The Jews were under the Law and Jesus represented that law. The Gentiles were NOT under it and never had been. Paul didn't teach the Law to them because it didn't apply to them. The Jews and Gentiles were entirely different and had to be approached differently. That's where the conflicts came. The other apostles (all Jews) were all under the Law and had to be taught that it didn't apply in the case of the Gentiles. It took some compromising before they accepted that fact. Peter ran into it head on when he met Cornelius. The idea that a Gentile could be a spirit filled believer shocked their systems and entirely changed the church. But, it prepared them for sending Paul out into the Gentile world. God used Cornelius to prepare them for what He was gonna to do.
It’s been said by some that Paul invented the things he'd done and how he'd been converted. However, Luke investigated carefully what he wrote in Luke and Acts. Luke didn't get his information from Paul. He got much of it from the people he talked to, eyewitnesses to the events. He would have talked to Ananias about how Jesus sent him to restore Paul's eyesight and how Jesus said that he would teach Paul what he must suffer for Jesus’ ministry. Luke has been called the greatest historian in history because of his thorough methods of investigation. His words can be trusted.
Some say they rely on the 4 gospels alone because that's what Jesus taught. That's fine if you're a Jew. The rest of us are not Jews. We're Gentiles and God sent us our message through Paul and the other NT authors. Everyone benefits from the 4 gospels, but us Gentiles also benefit from the rest of what God's telling us.
But even for the Jews, the Law was no longer necessary after Jesus' death and resurrection. Jesus fulfilled…as in ended…the necessity of the Law. He didn’t abolish the Law by fulfilling it...He just made it obsolete by fulfilling it. Jesus said that nothing in the Law would “disappear” until everything in it was “accomplished.” It ‘was’ accomplished, and then the Law began to disappear. Jews throughout the Roman world started abandoning strict adherence to the Law to follow the resurrected Jesus.
That transition came to an abrupt end on August 6 in AD70. Ancient Judaism ended…wholly and completely…signaled by the temple’s destruction...just as Jesus predicted. The Old Covenant wasn’t needed anymore...it had been fulfilled and replaced with a new, and better covenant.
