Guojing:
Before you mentioned Acts of the Apostles 21:25, and then you removed it. While I do not agree with everything Boice says, here is part of a commentary by James Montgomery Boice (to help you to understand where I am coming from on this verse):
"Was Paul wrong in going to Jerusalem? There are two sides to the argument. Some commentators have pointed out that in Acts 20, when Paul said that the Holy Spirit had been warning him in every city that prison and hardships awaited him, the first part of the statement also says, “And now, compelled by the Spirit, I am going to Jerusalem” (v. 22). If that means that Paul was being led by the Holy Spirit to go to Jerusalem, it cancels out what I was saying in the last chapter. But it is ambiguous. One might argue that the words “compelled by the Spirit,” since they lack the word “Holy” before “Spirit,” merely refer to an inner compulsion on Paul’s part. I think this is what it does mean.
Nevertheless, for this reason and perhaps for others, one has to be careful not to claim too dogmatically that Paul was disobeying God in going to Jerusalem.
On the other hand, I would insist that what Paul was prepared to do once he got to Jerusalem was unambiguously wrong. He may have been right in going up to the city. However, the leaders of the Jerusalem church proposed he go through the Jewish rites of purification and then offer a sacrifice for sin to demonstrate to the Jews that he was not opposed to Jewish laws and traditions. Paul agreed to do it, and he was in error for a number of reasons.
First, the idea of purification is wrong for Christians. We do not find anything in the New Testament about any rite of purification for Christians. What we do find in the New Testament is the command to confess our sins to God, which is quite a different thing. If we confess our sin to God pleading the blood of Jesus Christ, which has been shed for us, and when we ask forgiveness, we have the promise of God that “he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness” (1 John 1:9). That is different from a purification rite.
Second, the rite also involved a sacrifice. It is referred to in Acts 21:26 as “an offering,” but it was not what we mean by “an offering.” When we say, “Let’s receive an offering,” we mean, “Let’s take a collection, give money.” It was an animal sacrifice, brought by the worshiper and handed to the priest. The worshiper confessed his sin over the head of the animal; then the animal was killed as a substitutionary sacrifice for the individual’s sins. It is almost inconceivable that Paul could have been prepared to do that. Yet he was.
We might plead that he did it with good motives. He loved the Jewish people, and he did not want a schism in the church between Jewish Christians and Gentile Christians. He wanted to hold the church together as well as show his love for Israel. But right motives do not make a wrong action right. They did not make this right.
What Paul should have done is what he had told the Galatians to do when they were faced with a similar but less serious problem. Legalizers from Jerusalem had come to the Galatian churches, saying that Gentiles could not be saved unless they kept the law of Moses. The focal point of the debate was circumcision. Paul argued in the Book of Galatians that if they were circumcised Christ would profit them nothing. He said, “Stand firm, then, and do not let yourselves be burdened again by a yoke of slavery” (Gal. 5:1). Yet here Paul himself became burdened.
In my opinion, the great proof that Paul was wrong was that God, who is sovereign over the details of our lives, did not allow him to do it. It is good that God intervenes like this. Sometimes you and I act wrongly. We are prepared to do wrong things—perhaps with good motives, but quite often with bad motives—and God simply slams the door on us. He will not let us do it, because what we do matters to God, even if at the moment it does not seem to matter a great deal to us."
Source:
https://www.amazon.com/Acts-Expositional-James-Montgomery-Boice/dp/0801066336/
(Please take note that Boice appears to believe in Eternal Security because he uses words like trusting in the finished work of Christ, etc.; However, this is where I depart from the commentator. For I believe the Bible clearly teaches that salvation is conditional).
