¹¹I want you to know, brothers and sisters, that the Good News I have spread is not a human message. ¹²I didn’t receive it from any person. I wasn’t taught it, but Jesus Christ revealed it to me.

¹³You heard about the way I once lived when I followed the Jewish religion. You heard how I violently persecuted God’s church and tried to destroy it. ¹⁴You also heard how I was far ahead of other Jews in my age group in following the Jewish religion. I had become that fanatical for the traditions of my ancestors.

¹⁵But God, who appointed me before I was born and who called me by his kindness, was pleased ¹⁶to show me his Son. He did this so that I would tell people who are not Jewish that his Son is the Good News. When this happened, I didn’t talk it over with any other person. ¹⁷I didn’t even go to Jerusalem to see those who were apostles before I was. Instead, I went to Arabia and then came back to Damascus.

¹⁸Then, three years later I went to Jerusalem to become personally acquainted with Cephas.^cI stayed with him for fifteen days. ¹⁹I didn’t see any other apostle. I only saw James, the Lord’s brother. ²⁰(God is my witness that what I’m writing is not a lie.) ²¹Then I went to the regions of Syria and Cilicia. ²²The churches of Christ in Judea didn’t know me personally. ²³The only thing they had heard was this: “The man who persecuted us is now spreading the faith that he once tried to destroy.” ²⁴So they praised God for what had happened to me.

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Footnotes

c 1:18 Cephas is the Aramaic name for the apostle Peter.