For those who are circumcised do not obey the law themselves, but they want you to be circumcised so that they can boast about your flesh.

Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us (because it is written, “Cursed is everyone who hangs on a tree”)

The only thing I want to learn from you is this: Did you receive the Spirit by doing the works of the law or by believing what you heard?

But if I build up again those things I once destroyed, I demonstrate that I am one who breaks God’s law.

What I am saying is this: The law that came four hundred thirty years later does not cancel a covenant previously ratified by God, so as to invalidate the promise.

Why then was the law given? It was added because of transgressions, until the arrival of the descendant to whom the promise had been made. It was administered through angels by an intermediary.

But now that faith has come, we are no longer under a guardian.

These things may be treated as an allegory, for these women represent two covenants. One is from Mount Sinai bearing children for slavery; this is Hagar.

Now an intermediary is not for one party alone, but God is one.

Therefore, brothers and sisters, we are not children of the slave woman but of the free woman.

For through the Spirit, by faith, we wait expectantly for the hope of righteousness.

But when I saw that they were not behaving consistently with the truth of the gospel, I said to Cephas in front of them all, “If you, although you are a Jew, live like a Gentile and not like a Jew, how can you try to force the Gentiles to live like Jews?”

I was advancing in Judaism beyond many of my contemporaries in my nation, and was extremely zealous for the traditions of my ancestors.

I beg you, brothers and sisters, become like me, because I have become like you. You have done me no wrong!

But just as at that time the one born by natural descent persecuted the one born according to the Spirit, so it is now.

For freedom Christ has set us free. Stand firm, then, and do not be subject again to the yoke of slavery.

Now this matter arose because of the false brothers with false pretenses who slipped in unnoticed to spy on our freedom that we have in Christ Jesus, to make us slaves.