Paul was not as fixated on the idea of “identity” as we are in our contemporary culture. But, if the question had been asked, this passage offers a sharp answer. “I became like a Jew.” “Why, Paul,” we want to say, “you are a Jew.” “Not in that sense,” he replies. “I am not ‘under the law.’” If he were, he could never have quoted Psalm 24:1 as meaning that all foods are now acceptable. He has a different identity, the messianic identity. He is “under the Messiah’s law”; he is “in the Messiah.” The Messiah’s people, as he says in a climactic passage in Galatians, have died; they have left behind
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