Paul speaks against Peter
11 But later, when Peter came to Antioch, I spoke against him. I told him clearly that he had done something wrong. 12 When he first arrived in Antioch, Peter had been eating meals with the Gentile believers there. Then James sent some Jewish believers from Jerusalem to Antioch. After those men had arrived, Peter started to keep himself separate from the Gentiles. He stopped eating meals with them. He was afraid of those Jews who wanted to circumcise the Gentile believers. 13 The other Jewish believers in Antioch also did what Peter did. They became hypocrites like him. Even Barnabas agreed and he copied their example.
14 But I could see that they were wrong to do this. They were not living in a way that agrees with God's true message. So I spoke to Peter in front of all of them. I said to him, ‘You were born as a Jew, but you have been living like a Gentile. As a believer, you no longer obey all the Jewish rules. So do not try to make Gentile believers obey those Jewish rules.’
15 We were born as Jewish people. We are not Gentiles who have never obeyed God's rules. 16 But we do not become right with God because we obey his Law. We know that. A person only becomes right with God when they believe in Jesus Christ. And we, as Jewish believers, have believed in Christ Jesus. We trust in what Christ has done. Because of that, we have become right with God. It is not because we obey God's Law that he accepts us. Nobody becomes right with God only because they obey the rules in God's Law.
17 So, we Jews become right with God when we believe in Christ. As a result, we realize that we may not always obey all the Jewish rules. But that does not mean that Christ causes us to do wrong things. Certainly, it does not mean that! 18 I would really be doing something wrong if I tried to obey all those rules again. I would be building again something that I had destroyed. That would really be against God's Law. 19 God's Law showed me that I could never obey all its rules. So I became like a dead person, free from the authority of those rules. That means that I can now live to please God.
20 Christ died on the cross on my behalf. It is as if I died there with him. So I do not live my own life any more. Instead, Christ lives in me. That is the life that I now live in my body. I live because I trust what Christ, the Son of God, has done for me. He loved me so much that he died on my behalf. 21 So I do not refuse to accept the kind gift of God. If the rules of God's Law could make me right with him, then Christ would have died for no reason!
