But sometimes I go to parties and eat good food, and sometimes I drink wine, and even though I’m God’s special man from heaven, you rubbish me too. You say, ‘He eats too much, and he drinks too much. He’s a friend of those bad men that get tax money from people and give it to the Roman government, and he’s a friend of other bad people that don’t follow the law properly.’ But really, John and me, we are both wise. And you can know if somebody is wise or not. Just look at what they do, and see if they do good things or not.” (We have not yet translated 11:20-24. You can read that message in Luke 10:13-15.)
Romans 6:7Plain English VersionYou know, if something is dead, it can’t do anything. Well, that bad old part of us is dead now, so it can’t make us do bad things any more. See the chapter |
8 Cross References
No way. Just think about that baptism ceremony. Church leaders baptised us to show that we joined up with Jesus Christ. And you know that Jesus died, and they buried him, but God, our really great father, made him alive again. And we joined up to him, so we can’t think about doing bad things any more. It is like we died to those bad things. And it is like God makes us alive again to do good things. That baptism ceremony was to show that we died to bad things and got buried, just like Jesus Christ died and got buried, but God gave us new life too, just like Jesus came back to life. If we live in a new way like that, we will not go wrong any more. So if we start to think about doing something bad, we have to remember that we are dead to doing bad things, and so we can’t do it. We have to live in a new way like that all the time.
I’ll talk about one part of the law to show you what I mean. That law says that a woman is only allowed to marry one man. If a married woman sleeps with a man that is not her husband, as if he is her husband, she breaks that law, and she is guilty. But if her husband dies, then she can marry another man and sleep with him, and she will not be breaking any law.
You know that Jesus died for us. His body was dead on the cross. And, my friends, you believe in Jesus, so it is like you died too. So that old law is not for you any more. You belong to Jesus now. He came alive again, and it’s like you have a new life now too. God gave you that life so that you can do a lot of good things for him.
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