Colossians 4:12Plain English VersionAnd Epafras is another one of your mob that is here with me. He says hello to you too. He works for Jesus too, and he is always praying strongly for you. He prays that you will keep on trusting God, and that you will properly know everything that God wants you to do. See the chapter |
I’m writing this for you, my good friend Thiofilus. A lot of great things happened here, and the people that saw those things happen told everyone what they saw, and a lot of people wrote down those stories that they heard. After that, I read those stories, and I talked to the people that saw those things, and I checked up on everything they said, right from the start. So now I am carefully sorting out those stories, and I am writing them in this book for you.
My Christian friends, I’m sure that you already know about the things that I wrote in this letter. Before I started to write this letter, I remembered that you are good people and that you know a lot, and you even teach each other about the things I wrote about. But I got brave and started to write to you anyway, to get you to think a bit more about some of those things. God is good to me,
My Christian friends, don’t be like little kids in the way you think. You know, little kids don’t know much about anything. They don’t understand really bad things. So whenever you think about bad things, be like little kids. But whenever you think about anything else, be grown up people. Think properly and understand things properly.
Listen, I got you to believe in Jesus, so you are like my own kids to me. But now you are hurting me a lot. You know, when a woman has a baby, that baby gives her a lot of pain. Well, just like that, you are giving me a lot of pain. And I will keep on feeling this pain until you properly change to be like Jesus Christ.
But God sent Jesus Christ to live as a man, in a human body, and then he let people kill Jesus’s body. When Jesus died, he took the payback for the bad things you did, so you can be friends with God. It’s like he washed you of those bad things, so you are properly good and clean inside. So at the time when God will judge everyone, he will see that you are clean and he will not blame you, he will say that you are not guilty.
God is the one that helps people to be happy and quiet inside themselves. I want that for you, and I’m asking God himself to clean you properly inside, so that you will be his special people. I want God to help you be properly good in every way, with your body, and your spirit, and also that part inside you that thinks and that gives you your feelings. Yes, God can clean you and help you be properly good, so that at the time when our leader, Jesus Christ, comes back, God will not blame you for doing anything wrong.
So whenever you go wrong and do bad things, don’t try to say that you are still good. No. Tell each other the true story about the bad things that you did. Then you can pray for each other, so that God can make you good again. Whenever a good person prays to God about something, then God uses his power and does whatever that good person asks for.
I am Peter, and this letter is from me. My other name is Simon. I work for Jesus Christ. I am one of his special workers. You people believe in Jesus Christ, just like I do, so I’m writing this letter to you. Jesus helps us trust him, and that is really special for us. Jesus Christ is God, and he saves us. He is always right, and he is always fair.
All right, I’ll finish my letter now. God can keep you safe so that you don’t go the wrong way. He can make you good and clean inside yourself, so that there aren’t any bad parts in you. Yes, one day, he will make you properly good, so that he can bring you close to himself. You will come near to the beautiful light that shines from him. He is very great and good, and you will stand with him. And you will be very, very happy.