However, I admit that I worship the God of our ancestors as a follower of the Way, which they call a sect. I believe everything that is in accordance with the Law and that is written in the Prophets, and I have the same hope in God as these men themselves have, that there will be a resurrection of both the righteous and the wicked.
Acts 24:14-15 NIV
This passage is a portion of Paul’s defense against the Jewish leaders’ charge that he was a ringleader of the Nazarene sect (Acts 24:5). They considered the followers of Jesus (the Nazarene) to be a sect, a heretical offshoot of Judaism. Paul had agreed with that assessment a few years earlier. But then he encountered the resurrected Jesus on the road to Damascus. And everything changed.
Paul admitted to now being a follower of the Way. The Way was an early name for the followers of Jesus, who was the way, the truth, and the life (John 14:6). But he denied that the Way was not orthodox. Paul believed everything written in the Law and the Prophets. His faith in the Lord Jesus was fully in line with what their Scriptures (the Old Testament) taught.
The difference between what Paul and the Jewish leaders believed concerned how their Scripture would be fulfilled. Paul understood the Law and Prophets as fulfilled in Jesus. But the Jewish leaders were still looking for their fulfillment.
The concept of Judaism and Christianity as two distinct religions would have been foreign to Paul and the first generation of believers. They were not starting a new religion. Instead, they rejoiced that the kingdom promised by the prophets had been inaugurated with Jesus as king. And they were obedient to him as their Lord (Acts 4:19-20). Rather than being a sect, they were the Way, the way pointed to by the Law and the Prophets. And it was the Jewish leaders who had lost their way, rejecting the promised Messiah and King sent to them by God.
