1Then after a period of fourteen years I went up again to Jerusalem with Barnabas, taking Titus also with me. 2I went up by revelation, and I laid before them the Good News which I preach among the Gentiles, but privately before those who were respected, for fear that I might be running, or had run, in vain. 3But not even Titus, who was with me, being a Greek, was compelled to be circumcised. 4This was because of the false brothers secretly brought in, who stole in to spy out our liberty which we have in Christ Jesus, that they might bring us into bondage, 5to whom we gave no place in the way of subjection, not for an hour, that the truth of the Good News might continue with you. 6But from those who were reputed to be important—whatever they were, it makes no difference to me; God doesn’t show partiality to man—they, I say, who were respected imparted nothing to me, 7but to the contrary, when they saw that I had been entrusted with the Good News for the uncircumcised, even as Peter with the Good News for the circumcised— 8for he who worked through Peter in the apostleship with the circumcised also worked through me with the Gentiles— 9and when they perceived the grace that was given to me, James and Cephas and John, those who were reputed to be pillars, gave to Barnabas and me the right hand of fellowship, that we should go to the Gentiles, and they to the circumcision. 10They only asked us to remember the poor—which very thing I was also zealous to do.
11But when Peter came to Antioch, I resisted him to his face, because he stood condemned. 12For before some people came from James, he ate with the Gentiles. But when they came, he drew back and separated himself, fearing those who were of the circumcision. 13And the rest of the Jews joined him in his hypocrisy, so that even Barnabas was carried away with their hypocrisy. 14But when I saw that they didn’t walk uprightly according to the truth of the Good News, I said to Peter before them all, “If you, being a Jew, live as the Gentiles do, and not as the Jews do, why do you compel the Gentiles to live as the Jews do?
15“We, being Jews by nature and not Gentile sinners, 16yet knowing that a man is not justified by the works of the law but through faith in Jesus Christ, even we believed in Christ Jesus, that we might be justified by faith in Christ and not by the works of the law, because no flesh will be justified by the works of the law. 17But if while we sought to be justified in Christ, we ourselves also were found sinners, is Christ a servant of sin? Certainly not! 18For if I build up again those things which I destroyed, I prove myself a law-breaker. 19For I through the law died to the law, that I might live to God. 20I have been crucified with Christ, and it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me. That life which I now live in the flesh, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself up for me. 21I don’t reject the grace of God. For if righteousness is through the law, then Christ died for nothing!”
In Rom 10:3, Paul states that Jews who reject Jesus seek to establish their own righteousness: i.e. to earn God’s favor by their own efforts to obey the Mosaic law (cf. Rom 10:5). This righteousness Paul declares worthless when he asserts that no one can be justified by the works of the law (Rom 3:20; Gal 2:16). Because “all have sinned” (Rom 3:23), he reasons, all who seek salvation by the law are subject to a curse (Gal 3:10; Deut 27:26), and the Jews’ quest to obtain salvation through their own righteousness is correspondingly doomed to failure.
What Jews, like all human beings, need, according to Paul, is “the righteousness of God” (Rom 1:17; 3:22; 10:3; 2 Cor 5:21; Phil 3:9): i.e. the righteousness of Christ, which God imputes, or credits (Rom 5:18-19), to all believers in Jesus (Rom 1:16-17; 4:5). In comparison with this righteousness, Paul counts all of the achievements, whereby he sought to please God before his conversion, as loss and dung (Phil 3:7-8). He gladly forsakes them in order to “win Christ, and be found in him, not having mine own righteousness, which is of the law, but that which is through the faith of Christ, the righteousness which is of God by faith” (Phil 3:8-9). In order to attain salvation, Paul teaches in Romans 10 and elsewhere, the unbelieving Jews likewise must forsake all pretensions to their own righteousness and receive by faith the imputed righteousness of Christ.