Chapter 2

¹Then, fourteen years later, I went up to Jerusalem again, with Barnabas, and took Titus also with me. ²It was in obedience to a revelation that I went. I laid before them the good news that I preach to the heathen, presenting it privately to the leaders, for fear my efforts might be or might have been futile. ³But they did not insist that even my companion Titus, although he was a Greek, should be circumcised, ⁴to gratify the false brothers who had been smuggled in, who sneaked in to spy upon the freedom we enjoy in Christ Jesus, so as to reduce us to slavery again. ⁵But we did not submit to them for a moment, in order that the truth of the good news might remain yours. ⁶Those who were regarded as the leaders—what they once were makes no difference to me; God takes no account of external differences—the leaders contributed nothing new to me. ⁷On the contrary, when they saw that I had been intrusted with the good news for the heathen, just as Peter had been intrusted with it for the Jews— ⁸for he who actuated Peter to be an apostle to the Jews also actuated me to be one to the heathen— ⁹and when they recognized the favor God had shown me, James, Cephas, and John, who were regarded as pillars of the church, pledged Barnabas and me their co-operation, with the understanding that we should work among the heathen and they among the Jews. ¹⁰Only, we were to remember the poor, and that I have taken pains to do. ¹¹But when Cephas came to Antioch, I opposed him to his face, for his own conduct condemned him. ¹²For until some people came from James, he used to eat with the heathen, but after they came, he began to draw back and hold aloof, for fear of the party of circumcision. ¹³The other Jewish Christians followed his example in concealing their real views, so that even Barnabas was carried away by their pose. ¹⁴But when I saw that they were not straightforward about the truth of the good news, I said to Cephas, right before them all, “If you live like a heathen, and not like a Jew, though you are a Jew yourself, why should you try to make the heathen live like Jews?”

¹⁵We who are Jews by birth, and not sinful heathen, ¹⁶but who know that a man is not made upright by doing what the Law commands, but by faith in Christ Jesus—even we believed in Christ Jesus, so as to be made upright by faith in Christ and not by doing what the Law commands—for by doing what the Law commands no one can be made upright. ¹⁷If through our efforts to be made upright through Christ, we have ourselves been proved as much “sinners” as the heathen, does that make Christ encourage sin? By no means. ¹⁸I really convict myself of wrongdoing when I start to rebuild what I tore down. ¹⁹For it is through the Law that I have become dead to the Law, so that I may live for God. ²⁰I have been crucified with Christ, and it is no longer I that live, but Christ that lives in me. The life I am now living in the body I am living by faith in the Son of God who loved me and gave himself for me. ²¹I refuse to nullify the mercy of God. For if uprightness could be secured through law, then Christ died for nothing!