John 8:34

Plain English Version

Jesus said, “Listen, this is the true story. You go against God and do bad things, and everyone that does bad things is like a slave. You can’t stop doing those bad things, so they are your boss.

Cross References

Matthew 5:18

Listen. God’s book is really important. Everything in it will happen. You know, the earth and sky are always here. They don’t change. Well, just like that, God’s word and his laws will not change, not even a little bit. They will stay the same until everything in God’s book happens.

John 3:3

Jesus said to him, “Listen, I am telling you straight, people have to get born again, and then they can be in God’s family.”

Acts 8:23

I can see that you are jealous, and that you want to do bad things, and that those bad things are controlling you.”

Romans 6:12

So don’t just think about the law that comes from Moses. It talks about the bad things people do. If you just think about that, you will want to do those same bad things yourself. Then that law will be your boss, and your bodies will make you want to do bad things too. Don’t be like that. Don’t let any part of your body be your boss. Don’t do whatever it wants. Instead, you have to give your bodies to God and let him use you to do good things. You have to think about him all the time, and remember that he is very good to you, and that he made you alive again in a new way. If you think like that, you will not want to do anything bad. God is really good to you. That law is not your boss any more.

Romans 6:16

You know that if you always do whatever another person wants, you make that person your boss. So if you do bad things all the time, you make those bad things your boss, and in the end you will die. But if you do whatever God wants all the time, you make him your boss, and in the end he will say that you are really good.

Romans 6:6

We know that they nailed Jesus Christ to that cross, and it was like they nailed a part of us there too, that old part of us that makes us do wrong things all the time. It got nailed to that cross with Jesus, and it is dead. So now it doesn’t have any power over us. It can’t make us do bad things.

Romans 7:14

The problem is not the law, it is us. We know this. That law came from God, so there is nothing wrong with that law. But there is something wrong with us. We keep on going wrong. There is a bad part inside us that makes itself our boss, and we do whatever that boss tells us to do.

Romans 7:25

Thank God, Jesus Christ can make us free. He is the answer. God made a way for us to be free. Jesus will be our new leader, and he is stronger than that old boss inside us. This is what I have been saying up until now. We ourselves, we really want to do things that are right, but we have a bad part in us that is our boss, and it makes us do things that are wrong.

Romans 8:21

So now everything in the world is waiting for God to fix things up, so that nothing will go bad and rot away like it does now. And one day, God will fix it all, and at the same time he will show everyone that we are his family.

Ephesians 2:2

You didn’t do what God wants, but instead, you always did bad things, just like the other people in this world do. You used to do the things the devil wants. He is the boss over those strong bad spirits that are in the air. That devil is working now inside everyone that will not do what God wants.

Titus 3:3

You know, we were like that before we believed in Jesus. We did silly things too. We didn’t do what God told us to do. People tricked us, and we believed things that were not true. And we wanted to do all sorts of bad things. We couldn’t stop ourselves. If anybody had a lot of things, we wanted those things for ourselves, and we were angry with those people. We hated people, and people hated us.