1 From: Paul the missionary and all the other Christians here. To: The churches of Galatia. I was not called to be a missionary by any group or agency. My call is from Jesus Christ himself and from God the Father who raised him from the dead.
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3 May peace and blessing be yours from God the Father and from the Lord Jesus Christ.
4 He died for our sins just as God our Father planned, and rescued us from this evil world in which we live.
5 All glory to God through all the ages of eternity. Amen.
6 I am amazed that you are turning away so soon from God who, in his love and mercy, invited you to share the eternal life he gives through Christ; you are already following a different "way to heaven," which really doesn't go to heaven at all.
7 For there is no other way than the one we showed you; you are being fooled by those who twist and change the truth concerning Christ.
8 Let God's curses fall on anyone, including myself, who preaches any other way to be saved than the one we told you about; yes, if an angel comes from heaven and preaches any other message, let him be forever cursed.
9 I will say it again: if anyone preaches any other gospel than the one you welcomed, let God's curse fall upon him.
10 You can see that I am not trying to please you by sweet talk and flattery; no, I am trying to please God. If I were still trying to please men I could not be Christ's servant.
11 Dear friends, I solemnly swear that the way to heaven that I preach is not based on some mere human whim or dream.
12 For my message comes from no less a person than Jesus Christ himself, who told me what to say. No one else has taught me.
13 You know what I was like when I followed the Jewish religion--how I went after the Christians mercilessly, hunting them down and doing my best to get rid of them all.
14 I was one of the most religious Jews of my own age in the whole country and tried as hard as I possibly could to follow all the old, traditional rules of my religion.
15 But then something happened! For even before I was born, God had chosen me to be his and called me--what kindness and grace--
16 to reveal his Son within me so that I could go to the Gentiles and show them the Good News about Jesus. When all this happened to me I didn't go at once and talk it over with anyone else;
17 I didn't go up to Jerusalem to consult with those who were apostles before I was. No, I went away into the deserts of Arabia and then came back to the city of Damascus.
18 It was not until three years later that I finally went to Jerusalem for a visit with Peter and stayed there with him for fifteen days.
19 And the only other apostle I met at that time was James, our Lord's brother.
20 (Listen to what I am saying, for I am telling you this in the very presence of God. This is exactly what happened--I am not lying to you.)
21 Then after this visit I went to Syria and Cilicia.
22 And still the Christians in Judea didn't even know what I looked like.
23 All they knew was what people were saying, that "our former enemy is now preaching the very faith he tried to wreck."
24 And they gave glory to God because of me.
1 Then fourteen years later I went back to Jerusalem again, this time with Barnabas; and Titus came along too.
2 I went there with definite orders from God to confer with the brothers there about the message I was preaching to the Gentiles. I talked privately to the leaders of the church so that they would all understand just what I had been teaching and, I hoped, agree that it was right.
3 And they did agree; they did not even demand that Titus, my companion, should be circumcised, though he was a Gentile.
4 Even that question wouldn't have come up except for some so-called "Christians" there--false ones, really--who came to spy on us and see what freedom we enjoyed in Christ Jesus, as to whether we obeyed the Jewish laws or not. They tried to get us all tied up in their rules, like slaves in chains.
5 But we did not listen to them for a single moment, for we did not want to confuse you into thinking that salvation can be earned by being circumcised and by obeying Jewish laws.
6 And the great leaders of the church who were there had nothing to add to what I was preaching. (By the way, their being great leaders made no difference to me, for all are the same to God.)
7 In fact, when Peter, James, and John, who were known as the pillars of the church, saw how greatly God had used me in winning the Gentiles, just as Peter had been blessed so greatly in his preaching to the Jews
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9 they shook hands with Barnabas and me and encouraged us to keep right on with our preaching to the Gentiles while they continued their work with the Jews.
10 The only thing they did suggest was that we must always remember to help the poor, and I, too, was eager for that.
11 But when Peter came to Antioch I had to oppose him publicly, speaking strongly against what he was doing, for it was very wrong.
12 For when he first arrived, he ate with the Gentile Christians who don't bother with circumcision and the many other Jewish laws. But afterwards, when some Jewish friends of James came, he wouldn't eat with the Gentiles anymore because he was afraid of what these Jewish legalists, who insisted that circumcision was necessary for salvation, would say;
13 and then all the other Jewish Christians and even Barnabas became hypocrites too, following Peter's example, though they certainly knew better.
14 When I saw what was happening and that they weren't being honest about what they really believed and weren't following the truth of the Gospel, I said to Peter in front of all the others, "Though you are a Jew by birth, you have long since discarded the Jewish laws; so why, all of a sudden, are you trying to make these Gentiles obey them?
15 You and I are Jews by birth, not mere Gentile sinners,
16 and yet we Jewish Christians know very well that we cannot become right with God by obeying our Jewish laws but only by faith in Jesus Christ to take away our sins. And so we, too, have trusted Jesus Christ, that we might be accepted by God because of faith--and not because we have obeyed the Jewish laws. For no one will ever be saved by obeying them."
17 But what if we trust Christ to save us and then find that we are wrong and that we cannot be saved without being circumcised and obeying all the other Jewish laws? Wouldn't we need to say that faith in Christ had ruined us? God forbid that anyone should dare to think such things about our Lord.
18 Rather, we are sinners if we start rebuilding the old systems I have been destroying of trying to be saved by keeping Jewish laws,
19 for it was through reading the Scripture that I came to realize that I could never find God's favor by trying--and failing--to obey the laws. I came to realize that acceptance with God comes by believing in Christ.
20 I have been crucified with Christ: and I myself no longer live, but Christ lives in me. And the real life I now have within this body is a result of my trusting in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.
21 I am not one of those who treats Christ's death as meaningless. For if we could be saved by keeping Jewish laws, then there was no need for Christ to die.
1 Oh, foolish Galatians! What magician has hypnotized you and cast an evil spell upon you? For you used to see the meaning of Jesus Christ's death as clearly as though I had waved a placard before you with a picture on it of Christ dying on the cross.
2 Let me ask you this one question: Did you receive the Holy Spirit by trying to keep the Jewish laws? Of course not, for the Holy Spirit came upon you only after you heard about Christ and trusted him to save you.
3 Then have you gone completely crazy? For if trying to obey the Jewish laws never gave you spiritual life in the first place, why do you think that trying to obey them now will make you stronger Christians?
4 You have suffered so much for the Gospel. Now are you going to just throw it all overboard? I can hardly believe it!
5 I ask you again, does God give you the power of the Holy Spirit and work miracles among you as a result of your trying to obey the Jewish laws? No, of course not. It is when you believe in Christ and fully trust him.
6 Abraham had the same experience--God declared him fit for heaven only because he believed God's promises.
7 You can see from this that the real children of Abraham are all the men of faith who truly trust in God.
8 What's more, the Scriptures looked forward to this time when God would save the Gentiles also, through their faith. God told Abraham about this long ago when he said, "I will bless those in every nation who trust in me as you do."
9 And so it is: all who trust in Christ share the same blessing Abraham received.
10 Yes, and those who depend on the Jewish laws to save them are under God's curse, for the Scriptures point out very clearly, "Cursed is everyone who at any time breaks a single one of these laws that are written in God's Book of the Law."
11 Consequently, it is clear that no one can ever win God's favor by trying to keep the Jewish laws because God has said that the only way we can be right in his sight is by faith. As the prophet Habakkuk says it, "The man who finds life will find it through trusting God."
12 How different from this way of faith is the way of law, which says that a man is saved by obeying every law of God, without one slip.
13 But Christ has bought us out from under the doom of that impossible system by taking the curse for our wrongdoing upon himself. For it is written in the Scripture, "Anyone who is hanged on a tree is cursed" as Jesus was hung upon a wooden cross.
14 Now God can bless the Gentiles, too, with this same blessing he promised to Abraham; and all of us as Christians can have the promised Holy Spirit through this faith.
15 Dear brothers, even in everyday life a promise made by one man to another, if it is written down and signed, cannot be changed. He cannot decide afterward to do something else instead.
16 Now, God gave some promises to Abraham and his Child. And notice that it doesn't say the promises were to his children, as it would if all his sons--all the Jews--were being spoken of, but to his Child--and that, of course, means Christ.
17 Here's what I am trying to say: God's promise to save through faith--and God wrote this promise down and signed it--could not be canceled or changed four hundred and thirty years later when God gave the Ten Commandments.
18 If obeying those laws could save us, then it is obvious that this would be a different way of gaining God's favor than Abraham's way, for he simply accepted God's promise.
19 Well then, why were the laws given? They were added after the promise was given, to show men how guilty they are of breaking God's laws. But this system of law was to last only until the coming of Christ, the Child to whom God's promise was made. (And there is this further difference. God gave his laws to angels to give to Moses, who then gave them to the people;
20 but when God gave his promise to Abraham, he did it by himself alone, without angels or Moses as go-betweens.)
21 Well then, are God's laws and God's promises against each other? Of course not! If we could be saved by his laws, then God would not have had to give us a different way to get out of the grip of sin--
22 for the Scriptures insist we are all its prisoners. The only way out is through faith in Jesus Christ; the way of escape is open to all who believe him.
23 Until Christ came we were guarded by the law, kept in protective custody, so to speak, until we could believe in the coming Savior.
24 Let me put it another way. The Jewish laws were our teacher and guide until Christ came to give us right standing with God through our faith.
25 But now that Christ has come, we don't need those laws any longer to guard us and lead us to him.
26 For now we are all children of God through faith in Jesus Christ,
27 and we who have been baptized into union with Christ are enveloped by him.
28 We are no longer Jews or Greeks or slaves or free men or even merely men or women, but we are all the same--we are Christians; we are one in Christ Jesus.
29 And now that we are Christ's we are the true descendants of Abraham, and all of God's promises to him belong to us.
1 But remember this, that if a father dies and leaves great wealth for his little son, that child is not much better off than a slave until he grows up, even though he actually owns everything his father had.
2 He has to do what his guardians and managers tell him to until he reaches whatever age his father set.
3 And that is the way it was with us before Christ came. We were slaves to Jewish laws and rituals, for we thought they could save us.
4 But when the right time came, the time God decided on, he sent his Son, born of a woman, born as a Jew,
5 to buy freedom for us who were slaves to the law so that he could adopt us as his very own sons.
6 And because we are his sons, God has sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, so now we can rightly speak of God as our dear Father.
7 Now we are no longer slaves but God's own sons. And since we are his sons, everything he has belongs to us, for that is the way God planned.
8 Before you Gentiles knew God you were slaves to so-called gods that did not even exist.
9 And now that you have found God (or I should say, now that God has found you), how can it be that you want to go back again and become slaves once more to another poor, weak, useless religion of trying to get to heaven by obeying God's laws?
10 You are trying to find favor with God by what you do or don't do on certain days or months or seasons or years.
11 I fear for you. I am afraid that all my hard work for you was worth nothing.
12 Dear brothers, please feel as I do about these things, for I am as free from these chains as you used to be. You did not despise me then when I first preached to you,
13 even though I was sick when I first brought you the Good News of Christ.
14 But even though my sickness was revolting to you, you didn't reject me and turn me away. No, you took me in and cared for me as though I were an angel from God or even Jesus Christ himself.
15 Where is that happy spirit that we felt together then? For in those days I know you would gladly have taken out your own eyes and given them to replace mine if that would have helped me.
16 And now have I become your enemy because I tell you the truth?
17 Those false teachers who are so anxious to win your favor are not doing it for your good. What they are trying to do is to shut you off from me so that you will pay more attention to them.
18 It is a fine thing when people are nice to you with good motives and sincere hearts, especially if they aren't doing it just when I am with you!
19 Oh, my children, how you are hurting me! I am once again suffering for you the pains of a mother waiting for her child to be born--longing for the time when you will finally be filled with Christ.
20 How I wish I could be there with you right now and not have to reason with you like this, for at this distance I frankly don't know what to do.
21 Listen to me, you friends who think you have to obey the Jewish laws to be saved: Why don't you find out what those laws really mean?
22 For it is written that Abraham had two sons, one from his slave-wife and one from his freeborn wife.
23 There was nothing unusual about the birth of the slave-wife's baby. But the baby of the freeborn wife was born only after God had especially promised he would come.
24 Now this true story is an illustration of God's two ways of helping people. One way was by giving them his laws to obey. He did this on Mount Sinai, when he gave the Ten Commandments to Moses.
25 Mount Sinai, by the way, is called "Mount Hagar" by the Arabs--and in my illustration, Abraham's slave-wife Hagar represents Jerusalem, the mother-city of the Jews, the center of that system of trying to please God by trying to obey the Commandments; and the Jews, who try to follow that system, are her slave children.
26 But our mother-city is the heavenly Jerusalem, and she is not a slave to Jewish laws.
27 That is what Isaiah meant when he prophesied, "Now you can rejoice, O childless woman; you can shout with joy though you never before had a child. For I am going to give you many children--more children than the slave-wife has."
28 You and I, dear brothers, are the children that God promised, just as Isaac was.
29 And so we who are born of the Holy Spirit are persecuted now by those who want us to keep the Jewish laws, just as Isaac, the child of promise, was persecuted by Ishmael, the slave-wife's son.
30 But the Scriptures say that God told Abraham to send away the slave-wife and her son, for the slave-wife's son could not inherit Abraham's home and lands along with the free woman's son.
31 Dear brothers, we are not slave children, obligated to the Jewish laws, but children of the free woman, acceptable to God because of our faith.
1 So Christ has made us free. Now make sure that you stay free, and don't get all tied up again in the chains of slavery to Jewish laws and ceremonies.
2 Listen to me, for this is serious: if you are counting on circumcision and keeping the Jewish laws to make you right with God, then Christ cannot save you.
3 I'll say it again. Anyone trying to find favor with God by being circumcised must always obey every other Jewish law or perish.
4 Christ is useless to you if you are counting on clearing your debt to God by keeping those laws; you are lost from God's grace.
5 But we by the help of the Holy Spirit are counting on Christ's death to clear away our sins and make us right with God.
6 And we to whom Christ has given eternal life don't need to worry about whether we have been circumcised or not, or whether we are obeying the Jewish ceremonies or not; for all we need is faith working through love.
7 You were getting along so well. Who has interfered with you to hold you back from following the truth?
8 It certainly isn't God who has done it, for he is the one who has called you to freedom in Christ.
9 But it takes only one wrong person among you to infect all the others.
10 I am trusting the Lord to bring you back to believing as I do about these things. God will deal with that person, whoever he is, who has been troubling and confusing you.
11 Some people even say that I myself am preaching that circumcision and Jewish laws are necessary to the plan of salvation. Well, if I preached that, I would be persecuted no more--for that message doesn't offend anyone. The fact that I am still being persecuted proves that I am still preaching salvation through faith in the cross of Christ alone.
12 I only wish these teachers who want you to cut yourselves by being circumcised would cut themselves off from you and leave you alone!
13 For, dear brothers, you have been given freedom: not freedom to do wrong, but freedom to love and serve each other.
14 For the whole Law can be summed up in this one command: "Love others as you love yourself."
15 But if instead of showing love among yourselves you are always critical and catty, watch out! Beware of ruining each other.
16 I advise you to obey only the Holy Spirit's instructions. He will tell you where to go and what to do, and then you won't always be doing the wrong things your evil nature wants you to.
17 For we naturally love to do evil things that are just the opposite from the things that the Holy Spirit tells us to do; and the good things we want to do when the Spirit has his way with us are just the opposite of our natural desires. These two forces within us are constantly fighting each other to win control over us, and our wishes are never free from their pressures.
18 When you are guided by the Holy Spirit, you need no longer force yourself to obey Jewish laws.
19 But when you follow your own wrong inclinations, your lives will produce these evil results: impure thoughts, eagerness for lustful pleasure,
20 idolatry, spiritism (that is, encouraging the activity of demons), hatred and fighting, jealousy and anger, constant effort to get the best for yourself, complaints and criticisms, the feeling that everyone else is wrong except those in your own little group--and there will be wrong doctrine,
21 envy, murder, drunkenness, wild parties, and all that sort of thing. Let me tell you again, as I have before, that anyone living that sort of life will not inherit the Kingdom of God.
22 But when the Holy Spirit controls our lives he will produce this kind of fruit in us: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness,
23 gentleness and self-control; and here there is no conflict with Jewish laws.
24 Those who belong to Christ have nailed their natural evil desires to his cross and crucified them there.
25 If we are living now by the Holy Spirit's power, let us follow the Holy Spirit's leading in every part of our lives.
26 Then we won't need to look for honors and popularity, which lead to jealousy and hard feelings.
1 Dear brothers, if a Christian is overcome by some sin, you who are godly should gently and humbly help him back onto the right path, remembering that next time it might be one of you who is in the wrong.
2 Share each other's troubles and problems, and so obey our Lord's command.
3 If anyone thinks he is too great to stoop to this, he is fooling himself. He is really a nobody.
4 Let everyone be sure that he is doing his very best, for then he will have the personal satisfaction of work well done and won't need to compare himself with someone else.
5 Each of us must bear some faults and burdens of his own. For none of us is perfect!
6 Those who are taught the Word of God should help their teachers by paying them.
7 Don't be misled; remember that you can't ignore God and get away with it: a man will always reap just the kind of crop he sows!
8 If he sows to please his own wrong desires, he will be planting seeds of evil and he will surely reap a harvest of spiritual decay and death; but if he plants the good things of the Spirit, he will reap the everlasting life that the Holy Spirit gives him.
9 And let us not get tired of doing what is right, for after a while we will reap a harvest of blessing if we don't get discouraged and give up.
10 That's why whenever we can we should always be kind to everyone, and especially to our Christian brothers.
11 I will write these closing words in my own handwriting. See how large I have to make the letters!
12 Those teachers of yours who are trying to convince you to be circumcised are doing it for just one reason: so that they can be popular and avoid the persecution they would get if they admitted that the cross of Christ alone can save.
13 And even those teachers who submit to circumcision don't try to keep the other Jewish laws; but they want you to be circumcised in order that they can boast that you are their disciples.
14 As for me, God forbid that I should boast about anything except the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ. Because of that cross, my interest in all the attractive things of the world was killed long ago, and the world's interest in me is also long dead.
15 It doesn't make any difference now whether we have been circumcised or not; what counts is whether we really have been changed into new and different people.
16 May God's mercy and peace be upon all of you who live by this principle and upon those everywhere who are really God's own.
17 From now on please don't argue with me about these things, for I carry on my body the scars of the whippings and wounds from Jesus' enemies that mark me as his slave.
18 Dear brothers, may the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you all. Sincerely, Paul