Galatians 1

Greetings from Paul

¹ This letter is from Paul, an apostle. I was not appointed by any group of people or any human authority, but by Jesus Christ himself and by God the Father, who raised Jesus from the dead.

² All the brothers and sisters^[a] here join me in sending this letter to the churches of Galatia.

³ May God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ^[b] give you grace and peace. ⁴ Jesus gave his life for our sins, just as God our Father planned, in order to rescue us from this evil world in which we live. ⁵All glory to God forever and ever! Amen.

There Is Only One Good News

⁶ I am shocked that you are turning away so soon from God, who called you to himself through the loving mercy of Christ.^[c] You are following a different way that pretends to be the Good News ⁷ but is not the Good News at all. You are being fooled by those who deliberately twist the truth concerning Christ.

⁸ Let God’s curse fall on anyone, including us or even an angel from heaven, who preaches a different kind of Good News than the one we preached to you. ⁹ I say again what we have said before: If anyone preaches any other Good News than the one you welcomed, let that person be cursed.

¹⁰ Obviously, I’m not trying to win the approval of people, but of God. If pleasing people were my goal, I would not be Christ’s servant.

Paul’s Message Comes from Christ

¹¹ Dear brothers and sisters, I want you to understand that the gospel message I preach is not based on mere human reasoning. ¹² I received my message from no human source, and no one taught me. Instead, I received it by direct revelation from Jesus Christ.^[d]

¹³ You know what I was like when I followed the Jewish religion—how I violently persecuted God’s church. I did my best to destroy it. ¹⁴ I was far ahead of my fellow Jews in my zeal for the traditions of my ancestors.

¹⁵ But even before I was born, God chose me and called me by his marvelous grace. Then it pleased him ¹⁶ to reveal his Son to me^[e] so that I would proclaim the Good News about Jesus to the Gentiles.

When this happened, I did not rush out to consult with any human being.^[f] 17 Nor did I go up to Jerusalem to consult with those who were apostles before I was. Instead, I went away into Arabia, and later I returned to the city of Damascus.

¹⁸ Then three years later I went to Jerusalem to get to know Peter,^[g]and I stayed with him for fifteen days. ¹⁹ The only other apostle I met at that time was James, the Lord’s brother. ²⁰ I declare before God that what I am writing to you is not a lie.

²¹ After that visit I went north into the provinces of Syria and Cilicia. ²²And still the Christians in the churches in Judea didn’t know me personally. ²³ All they knew was that people were saying, “The one who used to persecute us is now preaching the very faith he tried to destroy!” ²⁴ And they praised God because of me.