A foolish person {\cf2\super [75]} says in his heart,\par “There is no God.”\par Foolish people do terrible, rotten things.\par Not even one of them does good.\par
But \{even after he did this,\} all of us wandered away like sheep. We all went our own way. \{We did this after\} the Lord \{freed us from our guilt and\} put all our guilt on him.
We are all dirty with sin.\par Even our good works \{are not pure\}.\par They are like blood-stained rags.\par We are all like dead leaves.\par Our sins have carried us away like wind.\par
“My people have done two evil things.\par They turned away from me\par (I am the spring of living water),\par and they dug their own water cisterns.\par (They turned to other gods.)\par But their cisterns are broken.\par Those cisterns can’t hold water.\par
Then I will sprinkle pure water on you and make you pure. I will wash away all your filth. I will wash away the filth from those nasty idols and make you pure.”
Dear friends, we have these promises \{from God\}. So we should make ourselves pure—free from anything that makes our body or our soul unclean. We should try to become perfect in the way we live, because we respect God.
In the past, all of us lived like those people. We lived trying to please our sinful selves. We did all the things our bodies and minds wanted. We were \{evil\} people. We should have suffered God’s anger because of the way we were. We were the same as all other people.