Philippians 3:19Plain English VersionThey don’t listen to God. They listen to their own bodies, and they do bad things so that their bodies feel good. They do those bad things, but they don’t feel shame. Instead, they think they are smart. They only think about the things that belong to this world. And in the end God will finish them up for ever. See the chapter |
The judge didn’t answer her. He took no notice of her, and he wouldn’t listen to her. But she kept on asking him, and for a while he kept on taking no notice of her. But after a while he said to himself, ‘This woman is making me go crazy. Even though I don’t respect God, and I don’t care about people, I will make sure she gets a fair go. I will give her what she wants. If I don’t do that, she will keep on asking me, and I’m getting sick of it.’ ”
Even though you are Christians you still don’t live like Christians. You still let your old human spirits control you. You want things that other people have. And you argue with each other. That shows that you are letting your human spirits control you, not the Holy Spirit. You are still like people that don’t know God.
So stop telling everyone that you are properly good. It’s not true. Let me tell you a picture story about baking powder. We put a little bit of baking powder into the flour when we make damper. And that little bit of baking powder goes into all the flour in the bowl and makes all the dough swell up.
Then that really bad man will come with that power, and he will show himself to everyone. That bad man never does anything that God wants. But then later, Jesus our leader will come and kill him. Jesus will just talk, and his words will kill that man. Jesus will finish him up when he comes with power.
Then they keep on arguing with each other. You see, they listened to those wrong teachers and those teachers tricked them. Those wrong teachers made them think the wrong way, so they don’t really know the true message. They think that if they follow God’s way they will get a lot of money, but they are wrong.
In God’s book we read about his people a long time ago. Sometimes some liars started to teach God’s people things that were wrong. They reckoned they were saying God’s words, but they were lying. And the same sort of thing will happen now. There will be people among you that will teach things that are wrong. If you listen to them, you will go wrong, and it will be bad for you. Those people will even turn against Jesus. He is our leader, and he died to save them. And one day soon, God will punish them for that wrong thing they do.
They do a lot of things that hurt other people, so God will hurt them. He will do payback to them. They think it’s fun to do any bad thing that they want to do, even in the day-light. And whenever you Christians have dinner together, they join in with you, and they laugh about their lies and the bad things they do. Now think about a white shirt. If it just has a few dirty spots on it, people say that the whole shirt is dirty. Well, you good people are like that white shirt, and those people are like the dirty spots on it. There are only a few of them, but they do bad things, and they shame all of you.
That mob are always complaining and saying that they aren’t happy with things. They are always saying that other people have done things wrong. But they do all the bad things they want to do. They say very good things about themselves and tell everybody they are important. But they only say good things about other people when they want to get something from them.
I talk like this because there are some bad people that secretly came into your group. That mob don’t want to do the things that God wants. Instead, they do all the bad things that they want to do. They reckon it is all right to do those bad things. They say, “God is good to us, so he lets us do these bad things.” Whenever they say that, they are really trying to change God’s true message. And they are turning away from Jesus, our only true boss. But God says in his book that he will punish those bad people.