⁴ For if you are trying to make yourselves right with God by keeping the law, you have been cut off from Christ! You have fallen away from God’s grace.

²⁰ And when people escape from the wickedness of the world by knowing our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ and then get tangled up and enslaved by sin again, they are worse off than before. ²¹ It would be better if they had never known the way to righteousness than to know it and then reject the command they were given to live a holy life. ²² They prove the truth of this proverb: “A dog returns to its vomit.”^[a] And another says, “A washed pig returns to the mud.”

²¹ I do not treat the grace of God as meaningless. For if keeping the law could make us right with God, then there was no need for Christ to die.

³¹ But the people of Israel, who tried so hard to get right with God by keeping the law, never succeeded. ³² Why not? Because they were trying to get right with God by keeping the law^[a] instead of by trusting in him. They stumbled over the great rock in their path.

⁶ And since it is through God’s kindness, then it is not by their good works. For in that case, God’s grace would not be what it really is—free and undeserved.