Galatians 2

All 21 verses in the Clear Bible Translation. Tap a verse to compare the KJV and read what it means.

Read Galatians 2 in the Bible reader, with audio →

1. 1Then fourteen years after, I went up again to Jerusalem with Barnabas, and I took Titus with me as well.
2. 2I went because God revealed to me that I should. While there, I laid out the gospel message I'd been preaching to the Gentiles. But I did this privately with the recognized leaders, because I wanted to make sure the work I was doing — and had already done — wasn't for nothing.
3. 3And here's the key thing: not even Titus, who was with me and is a Greek, was forced to be circumcised.
4. 4This issue arose because false believers were secretly brought in, who came in to spy on the freedom we have in Christ Jesus, so they might bring us into bondage.
5. 5We didn't give in to them for even an hour. We stood firm so that the truth of the gospel would be preserved for you.
6. 6As for those who seemed to be important — whatever they were makes no difference to me, for God shows no partiality — those who seemed to be important added nothing to me in our discussion.
7. 7Instead, they saw the opposite: that God had entrusted me with the gospel for the uncircumcised, just as he had entrusted Peter with the gospel for the circumcised.
8. 8The same God who worked powerfully through Peter in his mission to the Jews was also working powerfully through me in my mission to the Gentiles.
9. 9When James, Cephas, and John, who seemed to be pillars, recognized the grace given to me, they gave Barnabas and me the right hands of fellowship, so that we should go to the Gentiles and they to the circumcised.
10. 10Their only request was that we remember the poor, which was something I was already eager to do.
11. 11But when Peter came to Antioch, I confronted him to his face, because he was clearly in the wrong.
12. 12Before certain people arrived from James, Peter had been eating with Gentile believers. But when those people showed up, he pulled back and separated himself, because he was afraid of the circumcision group.
13. 13The other Jewish believers also acted hypocritically with him, so much so that even Barnabas was led astray by their hypocrisy.
14. 14When I saw that they weren't acting in line with the truth of the gospel, I said to Peter in front of everyone, "You're a Jew, but you've been living like a Gentile, not like a Jew. So how can you now turn around and force Gentiles to follow Jewish customs?"
15. 15"We are Jews by birth, not 'Gentile sinners.'
16. 16Yet we know that a person is not justified by the works of the law, but by the faith of Jesus Christ. So we have believed in Jesus Christ, that we might be justified by the faith of Christ, and not by the works of the law. For by the works of the law, no one will be justified.
17. 17But if, while we seek to be justified by Christ, we ourselves are found to be sinners, is Christ then a minister of sin? God forbid.
18. 18If I rebuild what I destroyed, I make myself a transgressor.
19. 19Through the law, I died to the law so that I could live for God.
20. 20I have been crucified with Christ, and I no longer live; but Christ lives in me. The life I now live in the body, I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.
21. 21I do not frustrate the grace of God, for if righteousness comes through the law, then Christ died for nothing.