Philippians 3:6

¹³For you have heard of my way of living in time past in the Jews’ religion, how that beyond measure I persecuted the assembly of God and ravaged it. ¹⁴I advanced in the Jews’ religion beyond many of my own age among my countrymen, being more exceedingly zealous for the traditions of my fathers.

³But Saul ravaged the assembly, entering into every house and dragged both men and women off to prison.

⁹“I myself most certainly thought that I ought to do many things contrary to the name of Jesus of Nazareth. ¹⁰I also did this in Jerusalem. I both shut up many of the saints in prisons, having received authority from the chief priests; and when they were put to death I gave my vote against them.

³“I am indeed a Jew, born in Tarsus of Cilicia, but brought up in this city at the feet of Gamaliel, instructed according to the strict tradition of the law of our fathers, being zealous for God, even as you all are today. ⁴I persecuted this Way to the death, binding and delivering into prisons both men and women,

³¹but Israel, following after a law of righteousness, didn’t arrive at the law of righteousness. ³²Why? Because they didn’t seek it by faith, but as it were by works of the law. They stumbled over the stumbling stone,

⁵having known me from the first, if they are willing to testify, that after the strictest sect of our religion I lived a Pharisee.

²⁰For I tell you that unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, there is no way you will enter into the Kingdom of Heaven.

²⁵“Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you clean the outside of the cup and of the platter, but within they are full of extortion and unrighteousness.

²⁰They, when they heard it, glorified God. They said to him, “You see, brother, how many thousands there are among the Jews of those who have believed, and they are all zealous for the law.

⁹I was alive apart from the law once, but when the commandment came, sin revived and I died.