¹Then after fourteen years I went up to Jerusalem again. This time I went with Barnabas. I also took Titus along.

²I went because God showed me that he wanted me to go. I met privately with those who are respected as leaders. I presented to them the good news that I preach among the Gentiles. I wanted to be sure that it wasn’t useless for me to keep presenting the good news that way.

³But even though Titus, who was with me, was Greek, they didn’t require him to be circumcised.

⁴That question came up because some false believers had slipped in among us to spy on the freedom we have in Christ Jesus. They wanted to make us slaves again.

⁵But we didn’t give in to them for a moment, in order to protect the truth of the good news for you.

⁶The people in Jerusalem who were considered to be important didn’t add anything to my message. (And it didn’t matter to me who they were anyway. God doesn’t see some people as more important than others.)

⁷It was just the opposite! They recognized that I had been trusted with the task of preaching the good news to the Gentiles, just as Peter had been trusted with preaching to the Jews.

⁸God was working through Peter as an apostle to the Jews, and God was working through me as an apostle to the Gentiles.

⁹James, Peter, and John, who are respected as pillars in the church, recognized that God had given me this privilege. So they shook hands with Barnabas and me to welcome us as partners. They agreed that we should go to the Gentiles while they went to the Jews.

¹⁰They asked only one thing: They wanted us to continue to remember the poor, which is what I had wanted to do all along.

¹¹But when Peter came to Antioch, I challenged him directly, because he was clearly wrong.

¹²Before a group came representing James, Peter was eating with the Gentiles. But after they arrived, Peter pulled back and wouldn’t eat with them. He was afraid of those who wanted to require people to be circumcised.

¹³He was being hypocritical, and the other Jews followed his example. Even Barnabas was led astray.

¹⁴When I saw that they were not acting consistently with the truth of the good news, I spoke to Peter in front of everyone. I said, “You’re a Jew, but you live like a Gentile, not a Jew. So why are you trying force the Gentiles to follow Jewish ways?

¹⁵“We grew up as Jews. We’re not sinful Gentiles.

¹⁶But even though we’re used to following the law, we still know that no one can be made right with God that way. Instead, a person needs to believe in Jesus Christ. So we too have put our faith in Christ Jesus to be made right with God. We’re not trying to do that by obeying the law, because no one can be made right with God by obeying the law.

¹⁷“But what if, as we seek to be made right with God through Christ, we Jews find ourselves to be sinners? Does that mean that Christ promotes sin? Certainly not!

¹⁸But if I rebuild what I destroyed, then I would really be breaking the law.

¹⁹“Through my experience with the law, I died to the law so that I might live for God.

²⁰I’ve been crucified with Christ. I’m not the one living anymore. Christ is living in me. I do continue to live in this body, but I do that by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.

²¹I don’t regard the grace of God as worthless. If a person could become right with God by obeying the law, then Christ died for nothing!”