Montgomery - Galatians - 2

2:1  Fourteen years later I went up to Jerusalem again, with Barnabas, and took Titus also with me

2:2  (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.

2:3  But although Titus, my companion, was a Greek, they did not compel even him to be circumcised.

2:4  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.

2:5  To them we did not yield submission even for an hour, in order that the truth of the gospel might abide unshaken among you.

2:6  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.

2:7  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

2:8  (for he who has equipped Peter for the apostleship to the circumcised, equipped me also for the apostleship to the Gentiles),

2:9  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.

2:10  They stipulated only that we should remember the poor, which very thing indeed I was quite eager to do.

2:11  But when Cephas came to Antioch I resisted him to his face, because he stood self-condemned.

2:12  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.

2:13  And the rest of the Jewish Christians also dissimulated with him, so that even Barnabas was carried away by their hypocrisy.

2:14  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?

2:15  "We are Jews by birth, and not ‘Gentile sinners’;

2:16  "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."

2:17  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!

2:18  For if I am rebuilding the very things which I destroyed, I am proving myself a transgressor.

2:19  For it is through law I died to law, in order to live to God.

2:20  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.

2:21  I do not annul the grace of God; for if righteousness comes by way of the Law, then indeed Christ died Christ for nothing.