Paul Reproves the Galatians

⁸ Formerly, when you did not know God, you were enslaved to beings that by nature are not gods.^(A)

⁴ Hence, as to the eating of food offered to idols, we know that “no idol in the world really exists” and that “there is no God but one.”^(A)

One in Christ

¹¹ So then, remember that at one time you gentiles by birth,^[a] called “the uncircumcision” by those who are called “the circumcision”—a circumcision made in the flesh by human hands^(A)— ¹² remember that you were at that time without Christ, being aliens from the commonwealth of Israel and strangers to the covenants of promise, having no hope and without God in the world.^(B)

⁸ in a fiery flame, inflicting vengeance on those who do not know God and on those who do not obey the gospel of our Lord Jesus.^(A)

⁵ not with lustful passion, like the gentiles who do not know God;

⁹ For they report about us what kind of welcome we had among you and how you turned to God from idols to serve a living and true God^(A)

³ You have already spent enough time in doing what the gentiles like to do, living in debauchery, passions, drunkenness, revels, carousing, and lawless idolatry.^(A)

¹⁹ What do I imply, then? That food sacrificed to idols is anything or that an idol is anything? ²⁰ No, I imply that what they^[a] sacrifice, they sacrifice to demons and not to God. I do not want you to be partners with demons.^(A)

²¹ For since, in the wisdom of God, the world did not know God through wisdom, God decided, through the foolishness of the proclamation, to save those who believe.^(A)

¹⁹ and have hurled their gods into the fire, though they were no gods but the work of human hands—wood and stone—and so they were destroyed.^(A)