Galatians 1

1From Paul, an apostle sent not from any human source, nor through any human go-between, but through Jesus Christ and God the Father, who raised him from the dead, 2and from all the brothers and sisters who are with me, to the churches of Galatia. 3Grace and peace to you from God the Father and our Lord Jesus Christ, 4who gave himself for our sins to rescue us from this present evil age, as our God and Father willed. 5To him be the glory for ever and ever. Amen.

6I am astonished that you are so quickly turning away from God, who called you by the grace of Christ, and going over to a different gospel. 7But there is no second gospel. There are only some people who are unsettling you and want to twist the gospel of Christ into something else. 8But even if we ourselves, or an angel from heaven, should preach to you a gospel other than the one we preached to you, let that one be under God’s curse. 9We have said it before, and now I say it again: if anyone preaches to you a gospel other than the one you received, let that one be under God’s curse.

10Is it people I am trying to win over now, or God? Or is my aim to please people? If I were still out to please people, I would be no servant of Christ.

11For I want you to know, brothers and sisters, that the gospel I preached is no human invention. 12I did not receive it from any human being, and nobody taught it to me. It came to me through a revelation of Jesus Christ.

13You have heard about the way I once lived in Judaism: how fiercely I persecuted God’s church and set out to destroy it. 14I was moving ahead in Judaism faster than many people my age among my own people, because I was far more zealous for the traditions handed down from my ancestors. 15But God set me apart from birth and called me by his grace, and when he chose 16to reveal his Son in me so that I would proclaim the gospel about him among the Gentiles, I did not at once turn to any human being for advice. 17I did not go up to Jerusalem to see those who were apostles before me. Instead I went away to Arabia, and afterward I came back to Damascus.

18Three years later I did go up to Jerusalem, to get to know Cephas, and I stayed with him for fifteen days. 19Apart from James, the Lord’s brother, I did not see any of the other apostles. 20Now, as God sees me, I am not lying in what I write to you. 21After that I went into the regions of Syria and Cilicia. 22The churches of Judea that are in Christ still did not know me by sight. 23They only kept hearing it said, “The man who used to persecute us is now proclaiming the faith he once set out to destroy.” 24And because of me they glorified God.