Galatians:2

---

Seeker Overlay ON

* Fourteen years later I went up to Jerusalem again , with Barnabas , and took Titus also with me * (I went up at that time in obedience to a revelation ). And I laid before them the gospel which I am wont to preach among the Gentiles . I did this privately before those in authority , lest by any means I should be running , or should already have run , in vain . * But although Titus , my companion , was a Greek , they did not compel even him to be circumcised . * Yet there were false brethren who had crept in to spy out the freedom we enjoy in Christ Jesus , in order to enslave us again . * To them we did not yield submission even for an hour , in order that the truth of the gospel might abide unshaken among you . * But those in authority - what they once were makes no difference to me ; God is no respecter of persons - those I say who were in authority had no additions to make my message . * On the contrary , when they saw that I had been entrusted with the gospel for the uncircumcised , just as Peter has with the gospel for the circumcised * (for he who has equipped Peter for the apostleship to the circumcised , equipped me also for the apostleship to the Gentiles ), * and when they recognized the grace which had been given to me , James and Cephas and John , then thought to be pillars , gave to Barnabas and to me the right hand of fellowship . They agreed that we should go to the Gentiles and they to the Jews . * They stipulated only that we should remember the poor , which very thing indeed I was quite eager to do . * But when Cephas came to Antioch I resisted him to his face , because he stood self-condemned . * For until certain men came from James he used to eat with the Gentile Christians , but when they came , he began to draw back and to separate himself , because he was afraid of the circumcision party . * And the rest of the Jewish Christians also dissimulated with him , so that even Barnabas was carried away by their hypocrisy . * But when I saw that they were not walking a straight path , in the presence of the truth of the gospel , I said to Cephas before them all . "If you , although you are a Jew , live like the Gentiles and not like the Jews , why do you try to compel the Gentiles to become Jews ? * "We are Jews by birth , and not Gentile sinners ; * "yet because we know that no man is justified by the works of the Law , but by the faith of Jesus Christ , we ourselves also have put our faith in Jesus Christ , that we might be justified by the faith of Christ , and not by the works of the Law ; for "By the works of the Law shall no flesh be justified ." * But if while seeking to be justified in Christ we ourselves also have been found to be sinners , is Christ then a minister of sin ? Far from it ! * For if I am rebuilding the very things which I destroyed , I am proving myself a transgressor . * For it is through law I died to law , in order to live to God . * I have been crucified with Christ , so it is no longer I who am living , but it is Christ who is living in me ; and the life I am now living in the flesh , I am living in faith of the Son of God who loved me and gave himself up for me . * I do not annul the grace of God ; for if righteousness comes by way of the Law , then indeed Christ died Christ for nothing .

---