Romans 8:15

Plain English Version

God didn’t give you his Holy Spirit to make you frightened of him. No, he gave you his spirit to make you his kids. You are not like a prisoner that has to work for a cheeky boss, and that boss makes him frightened all the time. No way. You have God’s spirit in you, so you can talk to God and say, “Dad, you are my own good father.”

Cross References

Mark 14:36

He said to God, “Father, you can do anything. You can take this trouble away from me. It’s too hard for me. But you do what you want to do, not what I want.”

John 16:8

After he comes, he will show people in the world that they go against God and do bad things. And he will show people that they don’t live the right way. And he will show people that one day God will judge everyone.

John 20:17

Jesus said, “Don’t hold on to me. I haven’t gone up to my father yet. I want you to go to my followers and tell them that I am going back up to my father, and he is the father of all of you too. He is my God, and he is your God too.”

Acts 16:29

The jail boss told somebody to bring some lights, then he ran into the jail and got down in front of Paul and Silas, to show them respect. He was so frightened that he was shaking.

Acts 2:37

All the people heard the things that Peter said, and they felt a lot of shame. So they said to Peter, and to Jesus’s other special workers, “Friends, what can we do?”

Romans 8:16

And his spirit in us talks to our own spirits, and he tells us, “That is right, you really are God’s kids.”

Romans 8:23

And we get trouble too. We are Christians, and we have the Holy Spirit in us, but we still get trouble. God gave us that Holy Spirit to show us a little bit of the good that will come later. But right now, we get pain and problems too. So we just wait for God to fix everything up and to really make us his family. Then he will give us new bodies, just like he promised us.

Romans 8:26

And we can be sure too that the Holy Spirit will always help us. We know that we are weak, and we don’t understand very much, so sometimes we don’t know what to pray for. But the Holy Spirit prays with us and talks to our father for us. He even groans with words that nobody can properly say.

1 Corinthians 2:12

And remember this, God didn’t get us to think the way the people of this world think. No. God gave us his spirit, and his spirit helps us, so we can understand all the good things God gave us.

Galatians 5:1

Listen, Jesus Christ has set us free, and we are properly free. So be strong and stay free. Don’t let anyone make you follow that law again. If you do, it’s like they make you a prisoner again, because they say you have to do everything that law says.

Ephesians 1:5

so he got Jesus to bring us into his family, and now we can be God’s own kids. God did that because it is what he really wanted to do.

2 Timothy 1:7

God’s spirit in us doesn’t make us frightened, but he helps us be strong so that we do great things, and he helps us love people, and he helps us control ourselves.

James 2:19

You believe that there is only one God. That’s good, but even the bad spirits believe that. They believe that there is only one God, and if they think about him, they get really frightened of him. They get so frightened that they shake.