Galatians 2

Paul Accepted by the Leaders in Jerusalem

1 Fourteen years later, I went back to Jerusalem. I took a brother with me, and I also brought another young believer.

2 I went because God revealed that I needed to go. While I was there, I sat down privately with the leaders and laid out the Good News I have been preaching to the nations. I wanted to make sure I was not running this race for anything.

3 The young believer who was with me was not Jewish, but nobody forced him to go through religious rituals just to fit in.

4 That is because some fake believers had slipped in among us. They came sneaking around trying to spy on the freedom we got in Christ Jesus. They wanted to put us back in chains and drag us into religious bondage.

5 But we did not give in to them, not even for a minute. We stood firm so the truth of the gospel would stay intact for you all.

6 As for those who seemed important, it did not matter to me who they were. God does not play favorites. Those leaders did not add anything to the message God had already given me.

7 Instead, they saw that God had trusted me to preach the gospel to the nations, just like another servant had been trusted to preach to the Jewish people.

8 The same God who worked through him was working through me too.

9 When the leaders saw the grace God had given me, they welcomed me as a fellow worker. They agreed that we should keep reaching the nations while they focused on the Jewish people.

10 The only thing they asked was that we remember the poor, and that is something I was already eager to do.

Paul Calls Out Hypocrisy

11 Later, when a respected leader came to Antioch, I had to check him to his face because he was clearly in the wrong.

12 Before certain men came from Jerusalem, he had no problem eating and hanging out with non-Jewish believers. But when those men showed up, he started backing away and separating himself because he was scared of what they might think.

13 The rest of the Jewish believers followed his example and got caught up in the same fake behavior. Even one of my closest ministry partners got pulled into it.

14 When I saw they were not walking straight according to the truth of the gospel, I spoke up in front of everybody. "If you, being raised under Jewish customs, have been living like the nations, why are you now trying to pressure the nations to live like Jews?"

Justification Comes Through Faith

15 We were born Jewish and not raised among those who did not know God’s law.

16 But we know this: nobody gets declared righteous before God by keeping the law. A person is justified through faith in Jesus Christ. That is why we put our faith in Christ, because nobody gets justified by works of the law.

17 But if we are seeking to be justified in Christ and still find ourselves sinners, does that mean Christ promotes sin, Not a chance!

18 If I rebuild the very thing I tore down, then I am the one proving myself to be a lawbreaker.

19 Through the Law, I died to the Law so that I might live to God.

20 I been crucified with Christ. It is not me living anymore; Christ is living in me. And the life I am living right now in this body, I am living by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself up for me.

21 I am not setting aside God’s grace. Because if righteousness could come through the Law, then Christ died for nothing.