1 PAUL an apostle ??not appointed by men nor commissioned by any man but by Jesus Christ and God the Father who raised him from the dead, ??2 with all the brothers who are beside me, to the churches of Galatia;
3 grace and peace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ
4 who gave himself for our sins to rescue us from the present evil world ??by the will of our God and Father,
5 to whom be glory for ever and ever: Amen.
6 I am astonished you are hastily shifting like this, deserting Him who called you by Christ's grace and going over to another gospel.
7 It simply means that certain individuals are unsettling you; they want to distort the gospel of Christ.
8 Now even though it were myself or some angel from heaven, whoever preaches a gospel that contradicts the gospel I preached to you, God's curse be on him!
9 I have said it before and I now repeat it: whoever preaches a gospel to you that contradicts the gospel you have already received, God's curse be on him!
10 Now is that 'appealing to the interests of men' or of God? Trying to 'satisfy men'? Why, if I still tried to give satisfaction to human masters, I would be no servant of Christ.
11 No, brothers, I tell you the gospel that I preach is not a human affair;
12 no man put it into my hands, no man taught me what it meant, I had it by a revelation of Jesus Christ.
13 You know the story of my past career in Judaism; you know how furiously I persecuted the church of God and harried it,
14 and how I outstripped many of my own age and race in my special ardour for the ancestral traditions of my house.
15 But the God who had set me apart from my very birth called me by his grace,
16 and when he chose to reveal his Son to me, that I might preach him to the Gentiles, instead of consulting with any human being,
17 instead of going up to Jerusalem to see those who had been apostles before me, I went off at once to Arabia, and on my return I came back to Damascus.
18 Then, after three years, I went up to Jerusalem to make the acquaintance of Cephas. I stayed a fortnight with him.
19 I saw no other apostle, only James the brother of the Lord.
20 (I am writing you the sheer truth, I swear it before God!)
21 Then I went to the districts of Syria and of Cilicia.
22 Personally I was quite unknown to the Christian churches of Judaea;
23 they merely heard that 'our former persecutor is now preaching the faith he once harried,'
24 which made them praise God for me.