Romans 12:2

Plain English Version

Don’t be like most of the people in the world that like to do bad things. You have to be different from them. You have to let God change the way you think, so that you will become new people. Then you will be able to find out the things that God wants you to do, and you will know what is good, and the things that really make God happy.

Cross References

Psalm 34:8

Find out for yourself that God is really good. Look at all the things he does. Whenever you get trouble, ask God to look after you. He will do that, and he will make you really happy.

Mark 4:19

but after that, they let other things stop them, so they don’t live properly for God. They worry too much about the things they want in this life. They start to think too much about money, and they trick themselves. They want a lot of different things all the time, and they worry too much about all those things. They just think about what they want for themselves, and that stops them listening properly to God’s word, so they can’t live properly for God.

John 14:30

All right, I will not tell you much more, because the boss over the bad spirits is getting close now. He is the boss over this world, but he is not my boss, so he can’t tell me what to do.

John 15:19

The people that belong to this world don’t live God’s way. And they only love other people that belong to this world. But you are not like them, so they don’t love you. You see, I picked you out from the people of this world, and now you are different, so they hate you.

John 17:14

I told them your message, and they listened to me, and they believed me. They don’t belong here in this world, just like I don’t belong here. So the people that belong to this world hate them.

John 7:7

The people of this world don’t hate you. But they hate me. I keep on telling them that the things they do are really bad. That is the reason why they hate me.

Romans 12:1

My Christian friends, God is so very good to us. So I really want you to use your bodies to live for him. A long time ago, God told his people to give him animals to show him respect. They did it like this. They used to kill the animals and burn them up. But now it is different. Now you have to use your bodies to live for him and do good things, it’s like you are giving your own bodies to God while you are still alive. If you do that, you will make God happy. That is the proper thing to do to show that you follow God.

Romans 13:14

But instead, you have to be like our leader, Jesus Christ, so that whenever other people look at you, it will be like they see him. And whenever that bad part inside you makes you want to do something bad, take no notice of it. Just don’t think about doing that bad thing.

Romans 7:12

But that law itself is really good. It tells us to do things that God says are right and good.

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 7:22

Really, we ourselves, we want to live the right way,

1 Corinthians 3:19

The people of this world think they are very smart, but God knows they are fools. We can read this in God’s book, “People reckon they are smart, but God uses their own smart ideas like a trap, and he catches them.”

Galatians 1:4

You know, we all did bad things, but Jesus took the payback for all of us. He died instead of us, so now he can save us from this bad world that we live in. That is what God, our father, wanted him to do.

Ephesians 1:18

God promised very great things to his people, and now he has them ready for you. I pray that he will show them to you clearly, like he will switch on a light in your minds, so you can know and be sure about these good things.

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.

Ephesians 5:17

Don’t be fools. But instead, understand what God wants.

Colossians 1:9

Yes, Epafras told us about you, and so now we pray for you all the time. We ask God to help you to know what he wants you to do. And we pray that he will help you to understand spiritual things properly, and think about them properly.

Colossians 3:10

You are now living a new way. God made you a new person, and he is helping you to know him properly. He is the one that made you, and now he is making you more like himself.

Colossians 4:12

And 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.

1 Thessalonians 4:3

This is what God wants. He wants you to be properly good and to keep away from everything that is wrong. If somebody is not your own wife or husband, don’t sleep with them as if you are married to them.

Titus 3:5

God saved us, but he didn’t save us because we did good things. No. He saved us because he felt really sorry for us. Then his Holy Spirit washed us so that we are really clean inside, and he made us like we got born again as new people.

James 1:27

And God also wants you to look after people that need help. He wants you to look after people that haven’t got any money to buy food, like kids that haven’t got a mother or a father, or women whose husbands have died. If you do that sort of thing, God will be happy with you. But God will not be happy with you if you just look after yourself, like the people that belong to this world do.

James 4:4

If you are like that, it shows that you left God. You stopped following him and joined the other people in the world that hate God. They are God’s enemies. So if you join up with people like that, you make yourself God’s enemy. You ran away from God. You are just like a woman that leaves her husband and runs away with another man.

1 Peter 1:14

In the past, you didn’t know that God was good. So at that time you did all the bad things you wanted to do. But now you are God’s kids. So you have to stop doing those bad things,

1 Peter 1:18

Your grand-parents and elders tried to teach you the way to live, but they didn’t teach you God’s way. That old way was useless, and you weren’t free. But God has saved you from that wrong way. He paid a lot to set you free from that old way. Sometimes people pay money to get somebody out of prison and let them go free. But money doesn’t last for ever.

1 Peter 2:3

You already know that Jesus Christ is really good to you, so you have to live his way.

1 Peter 4:2

It shows that you want to do the things that God wants. So whenever you want to do something bad, you have to turn away from it and live God’s way.

2 Peter 1:4

And he promised us some very important things, and they are very special to us. He promised that we can think the way he thinks, so that we become really good people. He says that we can get away from bad things. We are not like the people that belong to this world. They want to do bad things, then they go and do those bad things, and they become bad people. But God says that we can get away from all that.

2 Peter 2:20

Jesus Christ is our leader, and he is the one that saves us. At one time, those liars knew Jesus, and he helped them get away from the dirty things that the people in this world do. But now they are leaving him, and they are getting mixed up again with those bad things. Those bad things are now their boss, and they are worse off now than before.