¹¹ My brothers, I want you to know this. The good news which I told you is not man's good news.

¹² No man told it to me. No man taught it to me. But it was Jesus Christ who showed it to me.

¹³ You have heard how I lived while I was still under the law of the Jews. I troubled the church of God very much. And I even tried to stop the church people altogether.

¹⁴ I knew more about the law of the Jews than many of my own age among my people. I wanted much more than they did to obey the laws which our fathers passed down to us, even the ones that were not written.

¹⁵ But God chose me to be an apostle before I was born. And he called me by his love.

¹⁶ God wanted to show his Son to me so that I might tell people who are not Jews about him. I did not go and ask any other person about the good news.

¹⁷ I did not go to Jerusalem to the men who were apostles before I was. But I went away into the country of Arabia. Then afterwards, I came back to the city of Damascus.

¹⁸ Three years later, I went to Jerusalem to visit Peter, and stayed with him fifteen days.

¹⁹ James, the brother of the Lord, was the only other apostle I saw. I did not see any of the other apostles.

²⁰ God knows that what I am writing to you is not a lie.

²¹ After I had been at Jerusalem, I went to the countries of Syria and Cilicia.

²² At that time the churches of Christ in Judea did not know me. They had never seen me.

²³ They only heard people say, `This is the man who used to trouble us and he is now telling others to believe what he once tried to stop.'

²⁴ And they praised God for what had happened to me.