Book of Common Prayer
1 I am Paul the apostle, a messenger from God. Men did not call me to be an apostle. Men did not make me an apostle. Jesus Christ and God the Father made me an apostle. It was the same God the Father who raised Jesus from death.
2 All the Christian brothers who are with me and I, send greetings. To the churches in the province of Galatia:
3 May God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ bless you with his loving kindness and give you peace.
4 Christ gave his life to pay for the wrong things we have done. He did this to set us free from the wrong ways of this world. This is what our God and Father wanted him to do.
5 All the praise for this belongs to God for ever and ever. Yes, it does!
6 I am very much surprised. It is so soon, and you are leaving God who called you by the love of Christ. Instead you are listening to another good news.
7 There is really no other good news. But some people are making you think wrong things. They want to change the good news of Christ.
8 We are wrong if we tell you a different kind of good news. Even an angel from heaven is wrong to tell you something different. Let a punishment from God come upon us if we tell you a different kind of good news.
9 We have said it before, and I say it again now. A curse be on any one who tells you a kind of good news which is not the good news we have already told you.
10 Now, am I trying to please men or God? If I were still trying to please men, then I would not be the servant of Christ.
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.
44 `The kingdom of heaven is like this. Something worth a lot of money is buried in a field. A man found it and covered it again. He was so glad that he went and sold everything he had. Then he bought that field.'
45 `The kingdom of heaven is like this. A trader was looking for fine stones called pearls.
46 He found a pearl that was worth a lot of money. Then he went and sold everything he had and bought it.'
47 `The kingdom of heaven is like this. A fish net was thrown into the sea. It caught all kinds of fish.
48 When it was full, the men pulled it to the land. They sat down and picked out the good fish into baskets. But they threw the bad fish away.
49 That is the way it will be at the end of the world. The angels will come and take the bad people away from the good people.
50 They will put the bad people into the never-ending hell fire. There they will cry and make a noise with their teeth.'
51 Jesus asked, `Have you understood all these stories?' The disciples said, `Yes.'
52 Then Jesus said to them, `So anyone who knows the law and has learned about the kingdom of heaven, is like the headman of a house. He can bring both new things and old things out of what he has stored up.'
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