9. I said this before. Now I say it again: You have already accepted the Good News. If anyone tells you another way to be saved, he should be condemned!
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.