Galatians 2:15-18

Consider what is involved in our having embraced Christianity. We were Jews by birth, and not Gentiles, whom the Jews look down upon as -sinners". We were convinced that man cannot be accounted righteous before God on the score of a perfect obedience to the law, but that he is so accounted for the merits" sake of Christ through faith. We, I say, believed in Christ, that we might be justified as the result of such faith and not of obedience to the law. We had cast aside all trust in the law, and earnestly sought to be saved only by Christ through faith. If we were mistaken, if instead of being justified (i.e. perfectly righteous before God in the imputed righteousness of Christ), we were found to be unjustified and therefore -sinners", like those Gentiles on whom we used to look down, Christ instead of being "the end of the law for righteousness," would virtually be the minister of sin all His work having failed to justify us, He would have ministered to a state of sin. But such a thought is not to be entertained for a moment. For to insist on the necessity of legal obedience for salvation is to build up an edifice which I formerly overthrew, and to reduce myself to the old position of a transgressor.

Jews by nature by birth, not even proselytes.

sinners of the Gentiles Rather, from among the Gentiles.