- Denunciation (1:6-10)
The Galatians' Experience of the Gospel (3:1-5)The Experience of Abraham (3:6-9)The Curse of the Law (3:10-14)The Priority of the Promise (3:15-18)The Purpose of the Law (3:19-25)Sons, Not Slaves (3:26;4:7)The Danger of Turning Back (4:8-11)Appeal to Embrace the Freedom of God's Children (4:12-20)God's Children Are Children of the Free Woman (4:21-31)
Galatians 2 NLT
1 Then fourteen years later I went back
to Jerusalem again, this time with Barnabas; and Titus came along, too.
2 I went there because God revealed to
me that I should go. While I was there I met privately with those considered to
be leaders of the church and shared with them the message I had been preaching
to the Gentiles. I wanted to make sure that we were in agreement, for fear that
all my efforts had been wasted and I was running the race for nothing.
3 And they supported me and did not
even demand that my companion Titus be circumcised, though he was a
Gentile.
4 Even that question came up only
because of some so-called believers there—false ones, really —who were secretly
brought in. They sneaked in to spy on us and take away the freedom we have in
Christ Jesus. They wanted to enslave us and force us to follow their Jewish
regulations.
5 But we refused to give in to them for
a single moment. We wanted to preserve the truth of the gospel message for
you.
6 And the leaders of the church had
nothing to add to what I was preaching. (By the way, their reputation as great
leaders made no difference to me, for God has no favorites.)
7 Instead, they saw that God had given
me the responsibility of preaching the gospel to the Gentiles, just as he had
given Peter the responsibility of preaching to the Jews.
8 For the same God who worked through
Peter as the apostle to the Jews also worked through me as the apostle to the
Gentiles.
9 In fact, James, Peter, and John, who
were known as pillars of the church, recognized the gift God had given me, and
they accepted Barnabas and me as their co-workers. They encouraged us to keep
preaching to the Gentiles, while they continued their work with the Jews.
10 Their only suggestion was that we
keep on helping the poor, which I have always been eager to do.
11 But when Peter came to Antioch, I had
to oppose him to his face, for what he did was very wrong.
12 When he first arrived, he ate with
the Gentile believers, who were not circumcised. But afterward, when some
friends of James came, Peter wouldn’t eat with the Gentiles anymore. He was
afraid of criticism from these people who insisted on the necessity of
circumcision.
13 As a result, other Jewish believers
followed Peter’s hypocrisy, and even Barnabas was led astray by their hypocrisy.
14When I saw that they were not following the
truth of the gospel message, I said to Peter in front of all the others, “Since
you, a Jew by birth, have discarded the Jewish laws and are living like a
Gentile, why are you now trying to make these Gentiles follow the Jewish
traditions?
15 “You and I are Jews by birth, not
‘sinners’ like the Gentiles.
16 Yet we know that a person is made
right with God by faith in Jesus Christ, not by obeying the law. And we have
believed in Christ Jesus, so that we might be made right with God because of
our faith in Christ, not because we have obeyed the law. For no one will ever
be made right with God by obeying the law.”
17 But suppose we seek to be made right
with God through faith in Christ and then we are found guilty because we have
abandoned the law. Would that mean Christ has led us into sin? Absolutely
not!
18 Rather, I am a sinner if I rebuild
the old system of law I already tore down.
19 For when I tried to keep the law, it
condemned me. So I died to the law—I stopped trying to meet all its
requirements—so that I might live for God.
20 My old self has been crucified with
Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me. So I live in this
earthly body by trusting in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for
me.
21 I do not treat the
grace of God as meaningless. For if keeping the law could make us right with
God, then there was no need for Christ to die.
