1 Then, fourteen years later, I again went up to Jerusalem, with Barnabas, and took Titus with me too.
2 I went up under the guidance of a divine revelation. Now I laid before them the good news that I was in the habit of preaching among the heathen, but first I did so privately before the leaders, for fear that my course might be or might have been to no purpose.
3 But they did not even try to compel my companion, Titus, although he was a Greek, to be circumcised --
4 they did not try it even for the sake of the false brothers who had been smuggled in, who stole in to spy out the freedom we enjoy in Christ Jesus, so as to make us slaves again.
5 But we did not for a moment yield them submission, in order that the truth of the good news might prevail for you.
6 Those who were looked upon as leaders -- what they were makes no difference to me -- God pays no attention to outward appearances these leaders added nothing new to me.
7 On the contrary, because they saw that I had been entrusted with the good news for the heathen, just as Peter had been entrusted with it for the Jews --
8 for He who had been at work in Peter for his apostleship to the Jews had been at work in me too for the apostleship to the heathen --
9 and because they recognized the favor God had shown me, James, Cephas, and John, the so-called pillar apostles, gave Barnabas and me the right hand of fellowship, with the understanding that we should go to the heathen and they to the Jews.
10 Only they wanted us to remember the poor; the very thing that I was eager to do.
11 Now when Cephas came to Antioch, I opposed him to his face, because he stood condemned.
12 For before the coming of certain people from James, he was in the habit of eating with heathen Christians, but after they came, he began to draw back and hold aloof from them, because he was afraid of the circumcision party.
13 The rest of the Jewish Christians, too, joined him in this pretense so that even Barnabas was influenced to join them in their pretense.
14 But when I saw that they were not living up to the truth of the good news, I said to Cephas, and that before them all, "If you are living like a heathen and not like a Jew, although you are a Jew yourself, why do you try to make the heathen live like Jews?"
15 We ourselves are Jews by birth and not heathen sinners, and yet,
16 because we know that a man does not come into right standing with God by doing what the law commands, but by simple trust in Christ, we too have trusted in Christ Jesus, in order to come into right standing with God by simple trust in Christ and not by doing what the law commands, because by doing what the law commands no man can come into right standing with God.
17 Now if, in our efforts to come into right standing with God through union with Christ, we have proved ourselves to be sinners like the heathen themselves, does that make Christ a party to our sin? Of course not.
18 For if I try to build again what I tore down, I really prove myself to be a wrongdoer.
19 For through the law I myself have become dead to the law, so that I may live for God.
20 I have been crucified with Christ, and I myself no longer live, but Christ is living in me; the life I now live as a mortal man I live by faith in the Son of God who loved me and gave Himself for me.
21 I never can nullify the unmerited favor of God. For if right standing with God could come through law, then Christ died for nothing.