¹⁸ But if I build up again the very things that I once tore down, then I demonstrate that I am a transgressor.

⁹ Now, however, that you have come to know God, or rather to be known by God, how can you turn back again to the weak and beggarly elemental principles?^[a] How can you want to be enslaved to them again?^{(A) 10} You are observing special days and months and seasons and years. ¹¹ I am afraid that my work for you may have been wasted.

¹² Brothers and sisters, I beg you: become as I am, for I also have become as you are. You have done me no wrong.

⁴ But because of false brothers and sisters secretly brought in, who slipped in to spy on the freedom we have in Christ Jesus, so that they might enslave us^(A)— ⁵ we did not submit to them even for a moment, so that the truth of the gospel might always remain with you.^(B)

¹² for until certain people came from James, he used to eat with the gentiles. But after they came, he drew back and kept himself separate for fear of the circumcision faction.^{(A) 13} And the other Jews joined him in this hypocrisy, so that even Barnabas was led astray by their hypocrisy. ¹⁴ But when I saw that they were not acting consistently with the truth of the gospel, I said to Cephas before them all, “If you, though a Jew, live like a gentile and not like a Jew, how can you compel the gentiles to live like Jews?”^[a](B)

Jews and Gentiles Are Saved by Faith

¹⁵ We ourselves are Jews by birth and not gentile sinners, ¹⁶ yet we know that a person is justified^[b] not by the works of the law but through the faith of Jesus Christ.^[c] And we have come to believe in Christ Jesus, so that we might be justified by the faith of Christ^[d] and not by doing the works of the law, because no one will be justified by the works of the law.^(C)

¹¹ But my brothers and sisters, why am I still being persecuted if I am still preaching circumcision? In that case the offense of the cross has been removed.

²¹ I do not nullify the grace of God, for if righteousness^[a] comes through the law, then Christ died for nothing.

¹¹ So by your knowledge the weak brother or sister for whom Christ died is destroyed.^{(A) 12} But when you thus sin against brothers and sisters and wound their conscience when it is weak, you sin against Christ.

¹⁵ If your brother or sister is distressed by what you eat, you are no longer walking in love. Do not let what you eat cause the ruin of one for whom Christ died.