1Then, 14 years later, God told me to go to Jerusalem again. This time I went with Barnabas, and I took Titus with me too. We had a little meeting there, with just the important church people, and I told them all about the message that I teach to the people that are not Jews. I wanted to see if they agreed with what I was doing. I didn’t want anyone to mess up my work.
3You see, Titus was there with me, and he is a Greek man, not a Jew. But there were some Jewish men that came secretly into the church in Jerusalem. They reckoned they believed in Jesus, but they didn’t really trust him properly. They only came into the church to see what we were doing. And they reckoned that Titus had to follow the Jewish law and have a young man’s operation. But, you see, if we belong to Jesus Christ we are free from that law. But those men wanted to force us to keep that law.
5You know, we want you mob to keep on believing the true message about Jesus, so we didn’t agree with those Jewish men at all, not even a little bit. The church leaders in Jerusalem agreed with us, and they didn’t tell Titus to have a young man’s operation.
6The Christians in Jerusalem reckon their leaders are important, but it doesn’t matter to me if they are important, or not. God treats everybody the same way. Anyway, those leaders didn’t tell me to teach anything more in my message.
7No, instead of that, they understood that God already gave me a special job, just like he already gave Peter a special job. God told me to tell the good news about Jesus to the people that are not Jews. And he told Peter to tell that same good news to the Jewish people.
8God gave Peter the power to be a special messenger to the Jews. And God gave me the power to be a special messenger to the people that are not Jews.
9The 3 very important leaders in Jerusalem were James, Peter and John. They heard how much God helped Barnabas and me in our work, and they understood that God gave me this special job. Then they were happy with us, and they shook hands with us to show that they are our friends. They agreed that we were the special workers of Jesus that go to the people that are not Jews, and they themselves had to go to the Jewish people.
10The only other thing that they asked us to do was to help the poor Christians. And that was what I myself really wanted to do.
11You know, Peter came to the city called Antioch to visit us Christians there. At that time I had to straighten him out. I stood up in front of everybody and I said, “Peter, you are wrong.”
12You see, it was like this. Peter is a Jewish man, and at first he was friendly with the Christians at Antioch that were not Jews. He even broke the Jewish rules and he ate meals with them. But then James sent some other Jewish men to Antioch, and after they got there, Peter changed. These new men reckoned that every Christian has to become a Jew, and Peter was frightened of them. He went back to following the Jewish rules and stopped eating meals with those people that were not Jews. All the other Jewish Christians at Antioch were frightened too, and they did the same as Peter, even though they knew it was wrong. And Barnabas did that too. He stopped eating meals with people that are not Jews.
14I knew that they were not properly following God’s true message, so I talked straight to Peter in front of everyone. I said, “Listen, Peter, you are wrong. You are a Jew, but you have been living here like you are not a Jew. So you can’t turn around now and agree with this new mob. You can’t try to force these people that are not Jews to follow the same rules as us Jews.”
15You see, Peter and me are Jews, and our Jewish people taught us God’s law. We Jews are not like you people that are not Jews. Nobody taught you mob God’s law.
16And we know that if somebody just tries to follow that law they will not be good enough for God to say they are all right. He will only do that for people that trust Jesus Christ. And we trusted Jesus Christ, so now God will say we are all right. You see, if we believe in Jesus, God will say we are all right and he will not punish us. If we only think about following the law, we will never do it properly, so he will never say we are all right. Nobody can get God to say they are all right by just following the law.
17Yes, we trusted Jesus Christ, and now God says we are all right. But some people might reckon, “You left God’s law, so now God will say you are guilty. Jesus got you to do something bad.” That’s not right. No way.
18You see, it is like this. I used to try to follow that law to get God to say I’m all right, but then I stopped doing that and I believed in Jesus. And now I can’t change my mind and go back that other way. If I did that, then I really will be guilty.
19You see, I used to try to follow that law, so that law controlled me. I tried to do everything in that law, but I couldn’t do it, so the law said I had to die. But then I stopped thinking about that law and I turned around to follow Jesus, and now he controls me, and God makes me properly alive. And you know that Jesus died on a cross. Well, I believe in Jesus, so it is like I died there too. But Jesus is alive now, so I’m alive now too. You see, Jesus lives inside me, right here in my body. And he gets me to do the things that God wants me to do. He is God’s son. He loved me, and he gave up his life and died for me.
21Yes, God is really good to us, and he really did a lot for us. I will never change my mind about that. You see, we can’t become good people by following the law. If we could, it would mean that Jesus died for nothing. But, of course, he didn’t.
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