2 Timothy 2:21Plain English VersionWell, it is like that too with people that belong to God. If you stop doing bad things, you are like gold things or silver things, and God will use you for the good jobs. You will live in a clean way, and you will be ready for God to use you any way he wants to. See the chapter |
That is a picture of that one person in your mob that does bad things. He is like that baking powder in the picture story. He will get all of you mob to go wrong, like that baking powder made all the dough swell up. So get rid of that bad person. Then you will be straight and clean, like new clean dough that hasn’t got any baking powder in it. And really, you are clean like that. Remember, Jesus Christ died for us to clean us from the wrong things we did, so we are like that clean dough. Jesus is like the young sheep that the Jews kill and eat at their ceremony called Passover. Well, just like that young sheep dies, Jesus died for us. And think about this. Before that ceremony, they have to get rid of all that stuff that makes damper swell up, and then they eat flat damper.
But Timothy, you belong to God. So you’ve got to keep away from all those bad things that I just told you about. Instead, you’ve got to try to do the right thing all the time, and try to do things that make God happy, and try to trust him more, and try to love people better, and try to keep going when things are tough, and try to be easy on other people, not hard on them. Those are the things you have to try to do all the time.
You know about gold. It is very special. People put that gold into a fire to make it really clean. The fire makes it better, it burns away all the rubbish that isn’t real gold. But even gold will not last for ever. It belongs to this world. Now think about the troubles that come to us. They make us better because they show that we really trust God. If we keep on trusting him, God will say, “You are very special to me. You are much more special to me than gold.” So keep on trusting God, and after Jesus comes again, God will talk to you like that, and he will make you important.