Romans 3:28

Plain English Version

It is like this. We believe in Jesus, so God tells us, “You are all right now.” But if we only think about that law and try to do the things it says, God will not tell us that we are all right.

Cross References

John 5:24

Listen, I am telling you straight, God is the one that sent me. If anyone listens to what I say and trusts God, they will live with him for ever. He will say they are not guilty, and he will not punish them. You see, they were going to die, and they were going to stay dead for ever. But now it is different for them. They will live with God for ever.

John 6:40

Everyone that takes notice of me and believes in me will live with God for ever. That’s what God, my father, wants. On the day when the world will finish up, I will make them alive again.”

Romans 3:26

And it shows that he is fair at this time now, when he tells everyone that believes in Jesus that they are all right now.

Romans 5:1

So we believe in Jesus now, and God says we are all right, and he will not punish us. God is really good to us. Jesus Christ, our leader, did all that for us. Now we can be happy and think about how good it will be for us later, when we will be with God. God will show us how great he is, and he will make us great too.

Romans 8:3

You see, the law that came from Moses couldn’t help us. We were too weak. If we thought about some bad thing that we wanted to do, then we couldn’t help ourselves, we just did it. That law just made us think about those bad things, and then we wanted to do them. But God set us free from all that. He sent his own son to us. Jesus had the same sort of body that we bad people have. Then God punished him instead of us. Jesus died instead of us.

1 Corinthians 6:11

And I know that some of you used to be bad people like that before. You did that sort of bad thing, but now you believe in Jesus Christ and let him be your boss. And God’s spirit came into you and washed you inside, and he made you God’s own special people, so that God says you are all right now.

Galatians 2:16

And we know that if people just try to follow that law, they can’t do it properly, so God will not say they are all right. He will only do that for people that trust Jesus Christ. And we trusted Jesus Christ, so now God will say we are all right. You see, if we believe in Jesus, God will say we are all right, and he will not punish us. If we only think about following the law, we will never do it properly, so he will never say we are all right. Nobody can get God to say they are all right by just following the law.

Galatians 3:8

And, you know, God’s book says what will happen. It says that if anyone believes God, God will say they are all right. God will even say that to people that are not Jews. God told Abraham, “I will use your family to do good things for all the nations.”

Ephesians 2:9

You can’t do things to save yourself. Even if you do a lot of good things, you can’t save yourself. No way. It is God that saves you. Nobody can say, “I’m really good, that is the reason why God saved me.” Nobody can talk like that. No way.

Philippians 3:9

and belong to him properly. I have stopped trying to follow that Jewish law to get God to say that I’m all right. Instead of that, I trust in Jesus Christ, and that is the reason why God will say that I’m all right. God makes us right because we believe in Jesus.

Titus 3:7

God was very good to us, and he did all that for us. So now we are his friends, we are in his family, and we are sure that we will live with him for ever. So we can be very happy.

James 2:18

Maybe you reckon, “Some people can believe in Jesus, and other people can do the good things that Jesus says to do.” I answer you like this, “If you don’t do the things that Jesus says, you can’t show me that you believe in him. But whenever I do the good things he tells me to do, I show you that I do believe in him.”

James 2:20

If you don’t do the things that Jesus says, it is no good to say that you believe in him. If you don’t know much, and if you want to argue with me, just think about the story of Abraham, our grand-father that lived a long time ago. God told Abraham to give him his son Isaac. To do that, Abraham had to kill Isaac, and burn his body on a table made of stones. Abraham believed that somehow God would make it end up all right, so he started to do that hard thing that God said. He was going to kill Isaac. But just then, God told him to stop. You see, God says this in his book, “Abraham believed what God said, so God was really happy with him, and told him, ‘You believe me, so now I’m saying you are properly good, like you never did anything wrong.’ ” And that is how it happened. In another place it says that Abraham not only believed God, but he also did that hard thing God told him to do, so Abraham was a friend of God.

James 2:24

We can learn from that story about Abraham. If people believe God so much that they do whatever he says, like Abraham did, then God will say they are all right. But he will not say that to people that don’t do what he says, even if they reckon they believe in God.