Listen! I, Paul, tell you that if you allow yourselves to be circumcised, it means that Christ is of no use to you at all.

I refuse to reject the grace of God. But if a person is put right with God through the Law, it means that Christ died for nothing!

while God's people, who were seeking a law that would put them right with God, did not find it.

And why not? Because they did not depend on faith but on what they did. And so they stumbled over the "stumbling stone"

They have not known the way in which God puts people right with himself, and instead, they have tried to set up their own way; and so they did not submit themselves to God's way of putting people right.

Moses wrote this about being put right with God by obeying the Law: "Whoever obeys the commands of the Law will live."

For no one is put right in God's sight by doing what the Law requires; what the Law does is to make us know that we have sinned.

A person who works is paid wages, but they are not regarded as a gift; they are something that has been earned.

But those who depend on faith, not on deeds, and who believe in the God who declares the guilty to be innocent, it is this faith that God takes into account in order to put them right with himself.

I am surprised at you! In no time at all you are deserting the one who called you by the grace of Christ, and are accepting another gospel.

But even if we or an angel from heaven should preach to you a gospel that is different from the one we preached to you, may he be condemned to hell!

His choice is based on his grace, not on what they have done. For if God's choice were based on what people do, then his grace would not be real grace.

For how can those who abandon their faith be brought back to repent again? They were once in God's light; they tasted heaven's gift and received their share of the Holy Spirit;

And then they abandoned their faith! It is impossible to bring them back to repent again, because they are again crucifying the Son of God and exposing him to public shame.

My righteous people, however, will believe and live; but if any of them turns back, I will not be pleased with them."

We are not people who turn back and are lost. Instead, we have faith and are saved.

Guard against turning back from the grace of God. Let no one become like a bitter plant that grows up and causes many troubles with its poison.

If people have escaped from the corrupting forces of the world through their knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, and then are again caught and conquered by them, such people are in worse condition at the end than they were at the beginning.

What happened to them shows that the proverbs are true: "A dog goes back to what it has vomited" and "A pig that has been washed goes back to roll in the mud."

But you, my friends, already know this. Be on your guard, then, so that you will not be led away by the errors of lawless people and fall from your safe position.

But continue to grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. To him be the glory, now and forever! Amen.

Think how far you have fallen! Turn from your sins and do what you did at first. If you don't turn from your sins, I will come to you and take your lampstand from its place.