The Epistle of Paul the Apostle to the Galatians

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- Chapter 1 -

I, Paul, am writing to my dear brothers and sisters in the province of Galatia. I am Paul, the apostle. No group of people made me an apostle, and God did not tell anybody to make me one. Instead, I am an apostle because Jesus Christ and God the Father have sent me as one, yes, God the Father, who made Messiah live again after he had died!

I and all the fellow believers who are here with me greet you all in the churches in the province of Galatia.

I pray that God, our Father, and the Lord Jesus Christ will kindly help you and give you peace.

Messiah sacrificed himself to God for our sins, in order to take us away from this world in which people act in such evil ways. He did this because God, our Father, wanted him to.

Because that is true, let us now praise God forever and ever.

No Other Gospel

As you know, Messiah called you in his kindness to trust in him. But now I am amazed that you have stopped trusting in him! Now you believe a different message, which some people say is the true good news about God.

Messiah never told us another good news, but other people are confusing you. They want to change the good news about Messiah; they want you to believe that Messiah actually said something different.

But even if we apostles or an angel from heaven should tell you a good news that is not the same as what we told you before, God should punish that person forever.

As we have already told you, so now I say to you again that someone is telling you a form of the good news that he says is good, but it is not the same as what you believed. So I ask God that he condemn that person forever.

Paul Preaches the Gospel

I do not need people to like me, because it is God who approves of me. I am not trying to please people. If I were still trying to please people, then I would not really be serving Messiah.

My fellow believers, I want you to know that the message about Messiah that I proclaim to people is not one that some person created.

I did not learn this good news from any ordinary human being, and no such person taught it to me. Instead, it was Jesus Christ himself who taught me.

People have told you about what I did in the past when I worshiped God in the Jewish way. I never stopped doing the worst things to the groups of believers that God had established. I tried to destroy those believers and their groups.

I honored God in the Jewish way more thoroughly than any other Jew my own age. I was very angry when I saw other Jews neglecting to obey the traditions that our ancestors had kept.

However, I was still in my mother’s womb when God chose me to serve him, and he did this because it pleased him to do so.

He showed me that Jesus is his Son; he did this so that I would tell others the good news about his Son in regions where the non-Jews live. But I did not immediately go to any mere humans in order to understand that message better.

And I did not immediately leave Damascus and go to Jerusalem to see the apostles there, the men who had become apostles before I became one. Instead, I went away into the region of Arabia, a region of wilderness. Later I returned once more to the city of Damascus.

It was actually three years after God revealed this good news to me that I went up to Jerusalem to visit Peter. I stayed with him for fifteen days.

I also saw James, the half-brother of our Lord Jesus and the leader of the believers in Jerusalem, but I did not see any other apostle.

God knows that what I am writing to you is completely true!

After I left Jerusalem, I went to the regions of Syria and Cilicia.

At that time believers in the Christian congregations who were in the province of Judea still had never seen me.

They only heard others keep saying, “Paul, the one who in the past was doing violent things to us, is now proclaiming the same good news that we believe and he had been trying to stop!”

So they kept praising God because of what had happened to me.

Paul, an apostle—not from men, nor through man, but through Jesus Christ,(a) and God the Father, who raised him from the dead—

and all the brothers(b) who are with me, to the assemblies of Galatia:

Grace to you and peace from God the Father and our Lord Jesus Christ,

who gave himself for our sins, that he might deliver us out of this present evil age, according to the will of our God and Father—

to whom be the glory forever and ever. Amen.

No Other Gospel

I marvel that you are so quickly deserting him who called you in the grace of Christ to a different “good news”,

but there isn’t another “good news.” Only there are some who trouble you and want to pervert the Good News of Christ.

But even though we, or an angel from heaven, should preach to you any “good news” other than that which we preached to you, let him be cursed.

As we have said before, so I now say again: if any man preaches to you any “good news” other than that which you received, let him be cursed.

Paul Preaches the Gospel

For am I now seeking the favor of men, or of God? Or am I striving to please men? For if I were still pleasing men, I wouldn’t be a servant of Christ.

But I make known to you, brothers, concerning the Good News which was preached by me, that it is not according to man.

For I didn’t receive it from man, nor was I taught it, but it came to me through revelation of Jesus Christ.

For you have heard of my way of living in time past in the Jews’ religion, how that beyond measure I persecuted the assembly of God and ravaged it.

I advanced in the Jews’ religion beyond many of my own age among my countrymen, being more exceedingly zealous for the traditions of my fathers.

But when it was the good pleasure of God, who separated me from my mother’s womb and called me through his grace,

to reveal his Son in me, that I might preach him among the Gentiles, I didn’t immediately confer with flesh and blood,

nor did I go up to Jerusalem to those who were apostles before me, but I went away into Arabia. Then I returned to Damascus.

Then after three years I went up to Jerusalem to visit Peter, and stayed with him fifteen days.

But of the other apostles I saw no one except James, the Lord’s brother.

Now about the things which I write to you, behold,(c) before God, I’m not lying.

Then I came to the regions of Syria and Cilicia.

I was still unknown by face to the assemblies of Judea which were in Christ,

but they only heard, “He who once persecuted us now preaches the faith that he once tried to destroy.”

So they glorified God in me.

Footnotes

(a)1:1 “Christ” means “Anointed One”.

(b)1:2 The word for “brothers” here and where context allows may also be correctly translated “brothers and sisters” or “siblings.”

(c)1:20 “Behold”, from “ἰδοὺ”, means look at, take notice, observe, see, or gaze at. It is often used as an interjection.