What we have told you in the past I am now telling you again: If anyone proclaims to you a gospel contrary to what you received, let that person be condemned!

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

However, false brothers were secretly brought in. They slipped in to spy on the freedom we have in the Messiah Jesus so that they might enslave us.

But when I saw that they were not acting consistently with the truth of the gospel, I told Cephas in front of everyone, "Though you are a Jew, you have been living like a gentile and not like a Jew. So how can you insist that the gentiles must live like Jews?"

yet we know that a person is not justified by doing what the Law requires, but rather by the faithfulness of Jesus the Messiah. We, too, have believed in the Messiah Jesus so that we might be justified by the faithfulness of the Messiah and not by doing what the Law requires, for no human being will be justified by doing what the Law requires.

Now if we, while trying to be justified by the Messiah, have been found to be sinners, does that mean that the Messiah is serving the interests of sin? Of course not!

For through the Law I died to the Law so that I might live for God. I have been crucified with the Messiah.

You see, then, that those who have faith are Abraham's real descendants.

But the Law has nothing to do with faith. Instead, "The person who keeps the commandments will have life in them."

Indeed, all of you who were baptized into the Messiah have clothed yourselves with the Messiah.

But now that you know God, or rather have been known by God, how can you turn back again to those powerless and bankrupt basic principles? Why do you want to become their slaves all over again?

I am afraid for you! I don't want my work for you to have been wasted!

What, then, happened to your positive attitude? For I testify that if it had been possible, you would have torn out your eyes and given them to me.

So have I now become your enemy for telling you the truth?

These people who have been instructing you are devoted to you, but not in a good way. They want you to avoid me so that you will be devoted to them.

Those of you who are trying to be justified by the Law have been cut off from the Messiah. You have fallen away from grace.

envy, murder, drunkenness, wild partying, and things like that. I am telling you now, as I have told you in the past, that people who practice such things will not inherit the kingdom of God.

Now those who belong to the Messiah Jesus have crucified their flesh with its passions and desires.

So then, whenever we have the opportunity, let's practice doing good to everyone, especially to the family of faith.