10. Do you think I am trying to make people accept me? No! God is the One I am trying to please. Am I trying to please men? If I wanted to please men, I would not be a servant of Christ.
11. Brothers, I want you to know that the Good News I preached to you was not made by men.
12. I did not get it from men, nor did any man teach it to me. Jesus Christ showed it to me.
13. You have heard about my past life. I belonged to the Jewish religion. I hurt the church of God very much and tried to destroy it.
14. I was becoming a leader in the Jewish religion. I did better than most other Jews of my age. I tried harder than anyone else to follow the old rules. These rules were the customs handed down by our ancestors.
15. But God had special plans for me even before I was born. So he called me through his grace that I might
16. tell the Good News about his Son to the non-Jewish people. So God showed me about his Son. When God called me, I did not get advice or help from any man.
17. I did not go to Jerusalem to see those who were apostles before I was. But, without waiting, I went away to Arabia and later went back to Damascus.
18. After three years I went to Jerusalem to meet Peter and stayed with him for 15 days.
19. I met no other apostles, except James, the brother of the Lord.
20. God knows that these things I write are not lies.
21. Later, I went to the areas of Syria and Cilicia.
22. In Judea the churches in Christ had never met me.
23. They had only heard this about me: “This man was trying to hurt us. But now he is preaching the same faith that he once tried to destroy.”
24. And these believers praised God because of me.