For you have heard about my earlier life in Judaism how I kept violently persecuting God's church and was trying to destroy it.

they simply kept hearing: “He who formerly persecuted us now preaches the faith he once tried to destroy.”

So they kept glorifying God for what had happened to me.

Christ ransomed us from the curse of the Law by becoming accursed for us (for it is written, Cursed is everyone who hangs on a gibbet),

But before faith came, we were kept under the law, shut up unto the faith which should afterwards be revealed.

So also we [whether Jews or Gentiles], when we were children (spiritually immature), were kept like slaves under the elementary [man-made religious or philosophical] teachings of the world.

But, just as then, the one born after the flesh kept persecuting him born after the Spirit, so also is it now.

You were running well; who kept you back from obedience to the truth?

For the entire Law has been obeyed when you have kept the single precept, which says, "You are to love your fellow man equally with yourself."