Galatians 2 - Plain English Version(PEV)

The church leaders in Jerusalem agreed with Paul

1-2Then, 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.

3-4You 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 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.

5But we didn’t listen to them, not even a little bit. We knew they were wrong. So we didn’t tell Titus to have that young man operation. You see, we only want to teach the true message about Jesus, and we want you mob to keep on believing that true message.

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.

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.” But they are not right.

18You see, it is like this. I used to try to follow that law to get God to say that I’m all right, but then I found out that I just have to believe in Jesus. So now I can’t go back and think that law will make me all right. If I do that, then I really will be guilty.

Jesus lives in his people

19-20You 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 that 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 do that, it would mean that Jesus died for nothing. But, of course, he didn’t.