Galatians
After fourteen years I returned to Jerusalem with Barnabas, taking Titus along also.
I went as a result of a revelation, and I laid out before them the Gospel which I proclaim among the Gentiles. I did this in private to those in authority, to make sure that I was not running, or had not run, this race for nothing.
Yet none of these leaders insisted that Titus, who was with me, should be circumcised, though he
was a Greek.
That issue came up because some false brothers with false motives secretly came in to spy on our freedom in Messiah Jesus, trying to bring us into
bondage.
Yet we did not submit to them, even for a moment, so that the truth
of the Gospel would remain with you.
But those influential people — whatever they were is all the same to me, since God shows no favoritism — they added nothing to what I was preaching.
On the contrary, they recognized that I
had been entrusted with the Gospel to the Gentiles just as Peter was to the
Jews.
For the One who worked through Peter as an Apostle to the Jews also
worked through me as an Apostle to the Gentiles.
Realizing the grace given to me, the
recognized pillars of authority, James, Peter, and John, extended to Barnabas and me the
right hand of fellowship. We were to go to the Gentiles and they to the Jews.
They only asked us to remember the poor, the very thing I was eager to
do.
But when Peter came to Antioch I opposed him to his face because
he clearly was wrong:
previously he had been eating regularly with Gentiles until some associates of James came. Then, fearing the pro-circumcision group, he began drawing back and separating himself from the Gentiles.
The rest of the
Jewish Christians joined him in this hypocrisy, so that even Barnabas was
drawn into their hypocrisy.
But when I saw that they were not behaving
according to the truth of the Gospel, I said to Peter in the presence of all of them, “You are a Jew who lives like a Gentile and not like a Jew. How then can you pressure the
Gentiles to live like Jews?”
We are Jews by birth and not Gentile sinners,
yet we know that nobody is made right by the works of the Law, but through the faith of Messiah Jesus. And we have believed in Messiah Jesus so that we might be made right by the faith of Messiah and not by the works of the Law, because no one will be made right by the works of the Law.
Now if while trying to be made right in Messiah, we are found to be sinners, is Messiah then a promoter of sin? Absolutely not!
But if I rebuild what I already tore down, then I prove myself to be a sinner.
For through the Law I died to the Law, so that I may live to God.
I have been crucified with Messiah, so it is no longer I who live, but
Messiah lives in me. I now live this fleshly life by the faith of the Son of
God,
who loved me and gave himself up for me.
I do not nullify the
grace of God,
because if being made right comes through the Law, then
Messiah died for nothing.
Galatians