1 Then, fourteen years later, I went up to Jerusalem again, accompanied by Barnabas; I took Titus with me also.
2 (It was in consequence of a revelation that I went up at all.) I submitted the gospel I am in the habit of preaching to the Gentiles, submitting it privately to the authorities, to make sure that my course of action would be and had been sound.
3 But even my companion Titus, Greek though he was, was not obliged to be circumcised.
4 There were traitors of false brothers, who had crept in to spy out the freedom we enjoy in Christ Jesus; they did aim at enslaving us again.
5 But we refused to yield for a single instant to their claims; we were determined that the truth of the gospel should hold good for you.
6 Besides, the so-called 'authorities' (it makes no difference to me what their status used to be ??God pays no regard to the externals of men), these 'authorities' had no additions to make to my gospel.
7 On the contrary, when they saw I had been entrusted with the gospel for the benefit of the uncircumcised, just as Peter had been for the circumcised
8 (for He who equipped Peter to be an apostle of the circumcised equipped me as well for the uncircumcised),
9 and when they recognized the grace I had been given, then the so-called 'pillars' of the church, James and Cephas and John, gave myself and Barnabas the right hand of fellowship. Our sphere was to be the Gentiles, theirs the circumcised.
10 Only, we were to 'remember the poor.' I was quite eager to do that myself.
11 But when Cephas came to Antioch, I opposed him to his face. The man stood self-condemned.
12 Before certain emissaries of James arrived, he ate along with the Gentile Christians; but when they arrived, he began to draw back and hold aloof, because he was afraid of the circumcision party.
13 The rest of the Jewish Christians also played false along with him, so much so that even Barnabas was carried away by their false play.
14 But I saw they were swerving from the true line of the gospel; so I said to Cephas in presence of them all, "If you live like the Gentiles and not like the Jews, though you are a Jew yourself, why do you oblige the Gentiles to become Jews?" ??15 We may be Jews by birth and not 'Gentile sinners,'
16 but since we know a man is justified simply by faith in Jesus Christ and not by doing what the Law commands, we ourselves have believed in Christ Jesus so as to get justified by faith in Christ and not by doing what the Law commands ??for by doing what the Law commands no person shall be justified.
17 If it is discovered that in our quest for justification in Christ we are 'sinners' as well as the Gentiles, does that make Christ an agent of sin? Never!
18 I really convict myself of transgression when I rebuild what I destroyed.
19 For through the Law I died to the Law that I might live for God;
20 I have been crucified with Christ, and it is no longer I who live, Christ lives in me; the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God who loved me and gave himself up for me.
21 I do not annul God's grace; but if righteousness comes by way of the Law, then indeed Christ's death was useless.