only they kept hearing people say, "Our former persecutor is now preaching as good news the faith which once he tried to destroy,"

and they kept on praising God for me.

But they did not even try to compel my companion, Titus, although he was a Greek, to be circumcised --

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.

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.

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 --

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.

Only they wanted us to remember the poor; the very thing that I was eager to do.

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.

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?"

These men are paying you special attention, but not sincerely. They want to shut you off from me, so that you may keep on paying them special attention.

Indeed, the very men who let themselves be circumcised do not themselves observe the law. But they simply want you to let yourselves be circumcised, so that they can boast of you as members of their party.