Galatians 2

1Fourteen years later, I went up to Jerusalem again, this time with Barnabas. I also took Titus with me.

2I went because God showed me I should go. I explained to them the good news that I preach among the people who are not Jews. I spoke privately with the leaders, so that my work would not be wasted.

3Yet they did not even force Titus, who was with me, to be circumcised, even though he was a Greek.

4This question came up because some false brothers had slipped in among us. They came secretly to spy on the freedom we have in Christ Jesus, so that they could make us slaves again.

5But we did not give in to them, not even for a moment, so that the truth of the good news would stay with you.

6As for the leaders who seemed important — whatever they were makes no difference to me, because God does not judge by how important a person seems — those leaders added nothing to my message.

7Instead, they saw that God had trusted me to take the good news to people who are not Jews, just as he had trusted Peter to take it to the Jews.

8For God, who worked through Peter as an apostle to the Jews, also worked through me as an apostle to the other nations.

9James, Peter, and John, who were seen as pillars of the church, recognized the grace God had given me. So they shook hands with me and Barnabas as partners. We would go to the other nations, and they would go to the Jews.

10They asked only one thing: that we keep remembering the poor — the very thing I was eager to do.

11But when Peter came to Antioch, I told him to his face that he was wrong.

12Here is what happened: before certain men came from James, Peter used to eat with the people who were not Jews. But when those men arrived, Peter pulled back and stopped eating with them, because he was afraid of the Jews.

13The other Jewish believers joined Peter in this pretending, so that even Barnabas was led astray.

14When I saw that they were not being honest about the truth of the good news, I said to Peter in front of everyone: You are a Jew, yet you live like the other nations and not like a Jew. So why are you forcing the other nations to live like Jews?

15We are Jews by birth, not “sinners from the other nations.”

16Yet we know that no one is made right with God by obeying the law. A person is made right only by faith in Jesus Christ. So we too have put our faith in Christ Jesus, to be made right with God by faith in Christ and not by obeying the law. For no one will be made right with God by obeying the law.

17But suppose we are trying to be made right with God through Christ, and it becomes clear that we ourselves are sinners. Does that mean Christ leads people into sin? No, never!

18If I build again what I tore down, I show that I am a lawbreaker.

19For through the law I died to the law, so that I could live for God.

20I have been put to death on the cross with Christ. I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I now live in my body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.

21I do not throw away the grace of God. For if a person could be made right with God by the law, then Christ died for nothing.