This is a title and whatever other stuff you might want to go near the top of the page.
Chapter 1
3. The purpose of this letter is to give you a better grasp of how very much God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ favor you, and that they are intent on giving you wholeness in your souls, filling in all the gaps with the goodness of Christ.
4 Because Jesus Christ has sacrificed Himself to cover for our sins, God, who is our real Father, has committed Himself to rescue and deliver us from the eternal harm this fallen world wants to inflict on us. 5. It is important to understand that ALL the credit for our deliverance from sin and its eternal consequences goes to God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ ALONE. ONLY Them! Because They have done ALL the work to deliver us. And this will continue to be true throughout all the ages to come.
----------------------------------------------
6 & 7. You have really surprised me, and not in a good way! It astonishes me to see that you are so quickly deserting the One who has called you. For you were originally called into such an extraordinary measure of God’s favor and mercy and blessing, and you have now abandoned that. And what have you abandoned it for? For a set of false promises! Yes, it seems you are turning your backs on the reality of what Christ has accomplished for you and grabbed a set of empty promises instead. Whoever has incited you to do this is bringing a LOT of trouble your way. 8. No matter who is doing this to you, even if it was an angel or even us, let that person be treated as though they were doomed by God to eternal destruction. They are not preaching a better way for you to get God’s blessings, but they are actually perverting the truth and purity and magnitude of what Jesus Christ has already fully accomplished for you. 9. Just to be clear, I repeat myself and this is no exaggeration. Anyone who is preaching something different from what you originally heard from us, that person is doomed by God to bear the full weight of their own sin forever!
10. What do you think? Am I seeking an endorsement from people, or from God? Because if what I am preaching sounded good and acceptable to people in general, then I would not be serving Christ.
11 & 12. I think you know the Gospel I’ve been preaching to you is not something I learned from other people. No, I did not get it from others, not even from some Biblical scholar. The Gospel I have been preaching to you came to me by direct revelation from Jesus Christ Himself.
13. You know that before I met Christ, I was fully immersed in the teachings and practices of the Jewish religious scholars. At that time, I was famous for being very passionate about the Jewish party line—so much so, that I was one of Judaism’s chief persecutors of the Christian Church and quite intent on destroying the Church. 14. Everyone knew I was a rising star among the Jewish elite. I had the well-earned reputation for being the most passionate advocate for the time-tested traditions of the Jewish religion. [Just like those who are troubling you now.]
15 & 16. But God had other plans in mind for me. He had already selected me before I was born and still in my mother’s womb to be a favored chosen instrument of His. It was God’s plan to reveal His son in me so that I might go to the nations to proclaim Him among those who are not Jews. Upon meeting the risen Christ, my first response was not to consult with any other human, 17. not even to go consult with the other apostles in Jerusalem, but I went instead into the desert (to be alone with God). After that, I returned to Damascus (not Jerusalem).
18. It wasn’t until three years later that I finally went to Jerusalem and spent 15 days consulting with the Apostle Peter. 19. During that visit, I didn’t meet with any other apostles except for James, the Lord’s brother. 20. (If some of you find any of this hard to believe, I assure you, with God as my witness, all of this is absolutely true.)
21. After that short 15 days with Peter and James, I went directly into the regions of Syria and Cilicia (which you know are even farther away from Jerusalem than Damascus is).
22. Consequently, almost no Christian in the region of Judea around Jerusalem even knew what I looked like. 23. The only thing they knew about me was that the one who used to be persecuting them (me) was now preaching and advocating the very faith he once was destroying. 24. And so they were glorifying God because of me.
New Paragraph
