1 Timothy 1:12Plain English VersionI really want to thank our leader Jesus Christ. He makes me strong enough to do this job. He thought I will do this work properly, so he picked me out to do it for him, and I thank him for that. See the chapter |
26 Cross References
But Saul told those people about Jesus. The Jewish people in Damascus argued with him, but he showed them that Jesus really is the man that God promised to send to save us, the man that is called the Christ. Saul got better and better at showing them he was right, and they couldn’t show that he was wrong. And they didn’t like it.
But God was very good to me. He changed me and made me the way I am now. And so more people heard the good news about Jesus. You see, I’ve worked harder than any of his other special workers. But it wasn’t really me that did that work. No. It was God that gave me the power to do his work, so he is the one that did it.
Just think about Apollos and me, Paul. We are not important bosses. We are only workers for God. God gave each of us our jobs, and we helped you believe in Jesus Christ. I’ll use picture talk now. Think about a garden. One worker plants seeds, and another worker puts water on the young plants to help them grow properly. But it is God that makes the seeds grow up to be big plants. The worker that plants the seeds is not important, and the worker that gives water to the plants is not important. The important one is God. He makes the plants grow. Well, that picture story about a garden is a picture of you mob. God is making you grow like he makes those plants grow. And Apollos and me, we work in God’s team, just like those workers in that garden. I started telling you about Jesus, and Apollos taught you more about him. We both want you to have life, but we can’t give you new life. God is the one that gives you new life. We are just his workers, and you know, God will pay each of us for our work.
You are all joined to Jesus Christ, so you are all joined to each other. You are not different from each other any more. It doesn’t matter if you are a Jew or not. It doesn’t matter if you are a man or a woman. It doesn’t matter if somebody keeps you like a prisoner, or if you are free. None of that matters. You are all joined to Jesus Christ, so you are all the same as each other.
Dear Timothy, I am Paul, and this letter is from me. God picked me to be Jesus Christ’s special worker. Those 2, God and Jesus, they told me to do this work. God is the one that will save us, and we can be sure that Jesus will always look after us. They gave me this job, to tell everybody this message about them. Timothy, I told you about Jesus, and you really believed in him, so now I love you like you are my own son. I pray to God our father, and to Jesus Christ our leader, that they will show you that they love you. I am asking them to be good to you, and to make you feel happy and quiet inside yourself.
You know about God. He makes things live. And you know about Jesus. People took him to Pontius Pilate, and he told that boss the true story about himself. Well, God is watching us now, and Jesus is listening to us. So I want you to promise me this one thing with both of them listening to you. I want you to promise me that you will do everything that I’m telling you to do in this letter. Promise me that you will do it all properly, so that nobody can say you did it wrong. And keep on doing it until we see Jesus Christ come back again.
But God stood there beside me, and he made me strong, so that I could tell his message properly to everybody in that court. Those people there were not Jews, so maybe that was the first time they heard about God. In the end the judge didn’t sentence me to death, so they didn’t give me to the lions to eat.
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