Is Paul a Hypocrite?

2 Peter 3:14–16 CJB

Therefore, dear friends, as you look for these things, do everything you can to be found by him without spot or defect and at peace. And think of our Lord’s patience as deliverance, just as our dear brother Sha’ul also wrote you, following the wisdom God gave him. Indeed, he speaks about these things in all his letters. They contain some things that are hard to understand, things which the uninstructed and unstable distort, to their own destruction, as they do the other Scriptures.

Who is Sha’ul/Paul?

At the Feet of Rabbi Gamaliel: Rabbinic Influence in Paul’s Teachings Chapter One: Shaul at the Rabban’s Feet

I am a Jew, born in Tarsus of Cilicia, but brought up in this city (Jerusalem). Under Gamaliel I was thoroughly trained in the law of our fathers and was just as zealous for God as any of you are today.… The religious leaders all know the way I have lived ever since I was a child, from the beginning of my life in my own country, and also in Jerusalem.” (Acts 22:3, 5, CJB

At the Feet of Rabbi Gamaliel: Rabbinic Influence in Paul’s Teachings Chapter One: Shaul at the Rabban’s Feet

He explains his sectarian allegiance within 1st century Judaism:

[I had] b’rit-milah on the eighth day, an Isra’eli by birth, from the tribe of Binyamin, a Hebrew-speaker, with Hebrew-speaking parents, in regard to the Torah, a Parush, in regard to zeal, a persecutor of the Messianic Community, in regard to the righteousness demanded by legalism, blameless … (Phil. 3:5–8, CJB