Galatians - Chapter 2

¹ It was not until fourteen years had gone by that I travelled up to Jerusalem again, with Barnabas, and I took Titus with me too.

² My journey was inspired by a revelation and there, in a private session with the recognised leaders, I expounded the whole gospel that I preach to the gentiles, to make quite sure that the efforts I was making and had already made should not be fruitless.

³ Even then, and although Titus, a Greek, was with me, there was no demand that he should be circumcised;

⁴ but because of some false brothers who had secretly insinuated themselves to spy on the freedom that we have in Christ Jesus, intending to reduce us to slavery-

⁵ people we did not defer to for one moment, or the truth of the gospel preached to you might have been compromised. . .

⁶ but those who were recognised as important people -- whether they actually were important or not: There is no favouritism with God -those recognised leaders, I am saying, had nothing to add to my message.

⁷ On the contrary, once they saw that the gospel for the uncircumcised had been entrusted to me, just as to Peter the gospel for the circumcised

⁸ (for he who empowered Peter's apostolate to the circumcision also empowered mine to the gentiles),

⁹ and when they acknowledged the grace that had been given to me, then James and Cephas and John, who were the ones recognised as pillars, offered their right hands to Barnabas and to me as a sign of partnership: we were to go to the gentiles and they to they to the circumcised.

¹⁰ They asked nothing more than that we should remember to help the poor, as indeed I was anxious to do in any case.

¹¹ However, when Cephas came to Antioch, then I did oppose him to his face since he was manifestly in the wrong.

¹² Before certain people from James came, he used to eat with gentiles; but as soon as these came, he backed out and kept apart from them, out of fear of the circumcised.

¹³ And the rest of the Jews put on the same act as he did, so that even Barnabas was carried away by their insincerity.

¹⁴ When I saw, though, that their behaviour was not true to the gospel, I said to Cephas in front of all of them, 'Since you, though you are a Jew, live like the gentiles and not like the Jews, how can you compel the gentiles to live like the Jews?'

¹⁵ We who were born Jews and not gentile sinners

¹⁶ have nevertheless learnt that someone is reckoned as upright not by practising the Law but by faith in Jesus Christ; and we too came to believe in Christ Jesus so as to be reckoned as upright by faith in Christ and not by practising the Law: since no human being can be found upright by keeping the Law.

¹⁷ Now if we too are found to be sinners on the grounds that we seek our justification in Christ, it would surely follow that Christ was at the service of sin. Out of the question!

¹⁸ If I now rebuild everything I once demolished, I prove that I was wrong before.

¹⁹ In fact, through the Law I am dead to the Law so that I can be alive to God. I have been crucified with Christ

²⁰ and yet I am alive; yet it is no longer I, but Christ living in me. The life that I am now living, subject to the limitation of human nature, I am living in faith, faith in the Son of God who loved me and gave himself for me.

²¹ I am not setting aside God's grace as of no value; it is merely that if saving justice comes through the Law, Christ died needlessly.

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