Beginning
We can live by God's Spirit
8 Now we know this: God has forgiven those people who are united with Christ Jesus. God will never say that they are guilty. 2 If you belong to Christ Jesus, God's Spirit has given you a new life. God's Spirit now rules in your life and he has made you free. Sin and death no longer have authority over you.
3 The Law that God gave to Moses could not make us free like that. We were too weak to obey his Law because we are human. But God has done what his Law could not do. He sent his own Son to become a person like us. His human body was like the body of people who do wrong things. God's Son died as a sacrifice to take away the punishment for our sins. In that way, God destroyed the power of sin over people who are weak and human. 4 God did this so that we could become right with him. God's Law showed us how to be right with him. And now we can be right with God, if we live with God's Spirit as our guide. We do not do what our weak human thoughts want us to do.
5 Some people do what their weak human thoughts want them to do. They think about the things that will make themselves happy. But people who live with God's Spirit as their guide think about what will make God's Spirit happy. 6 People who let their human thoughts rule them will die. But people who think about what God's Spirit wants will have life with God. They will have peace inside themselves. 7 If our weak human thoughts rule us, we become God's enemies. People like that do not want to obey God's Law. They are not even able to obey it. 8 People who let their human thoughts rule them cannot make God happy.
9 But you are not like that. You no longer obey your weak human thoughts. Instead, you obey God's Spirit as your guide. That is true if God's Spirit is really living in you. But if anyone does not have Christ's Spirit in them, that person does not belong to Christ. 10 But, if Christ lives in you, you have a new life because of his Spirit. Your body will die one day because of the power of sin. But your spirit lives because Christ has made you right with God. 11 God raised Jesus, to make him alive again after his death. Now God's Spirit lives in you. So God, who raised Christ from death, will also cause your human bodies to live again. He will do that by his Spirit who lives in you.
12 So, my Christian friends, we must not obey what our weak human thoughts tell us to do. We no longer have to live like that. 13 If you agree to live in that way, you will die. Instead, you should let God's Spirit help you with his power. Then you can stop doing the wrong things that your bodies want to do. As a result, you will have life with God.
14 All those people who live with God's Spirit as their guide are God's children. 15 The Spirit that you have received from God does not make you serve him like slaves. That would make you afraid again. No. The Spirit that God has given to you causes you to become God's children. Now he takes care of you. God's Spirit makes us call God: ‘Abba, our Father.’ 16 God's Spirit himself causes us to know that we are God's children. God's Spirit and our own spirits agree that this is true. 17 Because we are God's children, we also know that we will receive good things from him. Those are the things that he has promised to give to his children. Together with Christ, we will receive the things that God has kept for him. That is true if we agree to have troubles like Christ did. Then we will also enjoy life in heaven like Christ does.
God has prepared great things for his people
18 During this time now, we have troubles and pain. But I am sure that these troubles are not really very great. One day God will show us all the great things he has prepared for us. That will make the troubles that we have now seem very small. 19 The whole universe that God has made now waits for something great to happen. Everything is waiting with hope to find out who God's children really are.
20 God has caused everything in the universe to lose its purpose. It did not choose to be like that. It was God who decided that it should be like that. Then it could hope for something better in a future time. 21 At that time, the universe will not continue to become worse and worse, as it does now. It will become free from that power. It will be free to enjoy great things from God, as God's children are also free.
22 We know that everything in the universe is still in great pain now. Everything cries together in pain, like a woman who is ready to have a baby. 23 It is the same for us who are believers. We have received God's Spirit as the first of his gifts to us, but we also cry inside ourselves. We are waiting for the time when God will finish his great work. Then we will belong to him completely as his children. Our bodies will be free from the power of sin.
24 Ever since God saved us, we have continued to wait for this to happen. One day, we will receive what we have hoped for. Then we will not need to hope for it any more. Nobody continues to hope for something that he has already. 25 But we continue to hope for what we do not yet see. And so, we wait for it patiently.
26 God's Spirit also helps us to do this. Because we are weak, we do not know how we ought to pray. But God's Spirit himself prays for us. He cries to God on our behalf in a way that nobody could say with words. 27 God sees deep inside us, and he knows our thoughts. He understands what is in the mind of his Spirit. When the Holy Spirit prays on behalf of God's people, he prays as God wants him to pray.
28 We know that God works to help those people who love him. He uses everything that happens to them to bring something good. He does this for those people that he has chosen to serve him. 29 God already had those people in his thoughts from the beginning. He decided that they should become like his Son. So then, his Son would have many younger brothers and sisters. 30 God had already chosen those people to be his children. Because of that, he called them to come to him. He accepted those people as right with himself. And those that he accepted, he also caused them to become great.
God loves us very much
31 So, because of all the things that God does for us, we can say this: If God is working on our behalf, nobody can really do anything against us. 32 God did not even keep his own Son safe. Instead, he gave his Son to die on behalf of all of us. So certainly, God will continue to be kind to us. As well as his Son, he will give to us all things that we need. 33 Nobody can say that God's people are guilty. God himself has accepted us as right with him. 34 So nobody can say that God should still punish us. Nobody can say that, because Christ Jesus himself died on our behalf. And God raised him so that he became alive again after his death. Now Christ is sitting at God's right side in heaven.[a] He himself is praying to God on our behalf.
35 Christ will always continue to love us. Nothing can stop that! We may have troubles. Things may make us sad or afraid. People may do bad things to us. We may have no food or no clothes. There may be great danger. People may even try to kill us. But none of these things can stop Christ from loving us. 36 As it says in the Bible:
‘Because we are your people, God,
people try to kill us all the time.
They think that we are like sheep,
and we are ready to be killed.’[b]
37 Because God loves us, none of these troubles can ever beat us. He makes us win against them. 38-39 I am sure of this. Nothing can stop God from loving us. Death cannot do that. Life cannot do that. Angels cannot do that, nor can demons do that. Nothing that happens to us now, or that will happen in a future time can do that. No powerful spirits can do that. Nothing that is high above the world can do that, nor anything that is deep down below the ground. Nothing else in the whole universe can stop God from loving us. Because of our Lord Christ Jesus, we know how much God loves us.
The Jews have not believed in Christ
9 What I am telling you is true. I speak as someone who belongs to Christ. I am not telling lies. God's Holy Spirit rules my thoughts and I am sure that I am right. 2 I tell you this: Deep inside myself, I am always very sad and upset because of Israel's people. 3 I belong to the same family as they do. They are my own people. I really want them to believe in Christ too. If it would help them, I would even ask God to curse me. I would ask him to make me separate from Christ.
4 They are Israelite people. God chose them to belong to him as his own children. He showed them that he is very great. He made many agreements with them and he gave his Law to them. He showed them how they should worship him. He promised many good things to them. 5 It was their ancestors that God chose to make great many years ago.[c] And Christ himself, as a man, was born to an Israelite family. Christ is God, who rules over all things. We should praise him for ever! This is true! Amen.
6 God promised good things to Israel's people. But I am not saying that what God promised did not happen. It is clear that not all of Israel's people are God's true people. 7 Not all of them are true descendants of Abraham. God told Abraham, ‘It is only Isaac that I will call the father of your descendants.’
8 This means that not all of Abraham's children are really God's children. It is only those children who were born as a result of God's promise. Only they are the people that God calls true descendants. 9 This is what God promised to Abraham: ‘At this time next year I will come back. Then Sarah, your wife, will have a son.’[d]
10 Remember this too: Later, Isaac's wife, Rebekah, gave birth to twins. Those two sons had the same father, who was our ancestor, Isaac. 11 And God spoke to Rebekah before her sons were born. God spoke before the boys had done anything either good or bad. God did this to show clearly that he himself was choosing one child. He was not choosing someone because of what that person had done. He himself decided who he would choose. 12 God said to Rebekah, ‘The older son will serve the younger son.’ 13 This is written in the Bible: ‘I loved Jacob, but I hated Esau.’[e]
14 Because of this, someone might say that God is not fair. No! We should never say that! 15 Think about this. God said to Moses, ‘I will be kind to whoever I choose to be kind to. I will feel sorry for whoever I choose to feel sorry for.’[f] 16 So then, it is God who decides these things. It is not because of what people want. It is not because of what people do. It is because God chooses to be kind.
17 The Bible tells us what God said to Pharaoh: ‘This is why I caused you to be king of Egypt. My purpose was to show how powerful I am. As a result, people everywhere would know that I am great.’[g] 18 So we see this: God is kind to some people and he forgives them. But he causes some people, like Pharaoh, to turn against him. He chooses what he will do with each person.
God himself decides when he will be angry or kind
19 One of you may say to me, ‘God always does what he wants to do. Nobody can change what God makes them do. So God should not say that people have done wrong things.’ 20 But you are only human. You have no authority to speak against God like that. God has made you. A pot cannot speak against the person who made it! It cannot ask him, ‘Why did you make me like this?’ 21 Somebody who makes pots can choose to make any kind of pot. He can use the same piece of clay to make two different pots. One of the pots may be for special parties. The other pot is for dirty things.
22 What does that teach us about God? Some people are like pots that are ready for God to destroy. God is angry with people like that. He is ready to show his power against them. But he has chosen to wait patiently. He keeps his anger for later. 23 Other people are like valuable pots that God has chosen to make. God wants to be kind to people like that. He wants to use them to show people how great he is. He has prepared them to be with him for a special party in heaven. 24 We are those people! God has chosen us to be his people. It is not only Jews that he has chosen. He has also chosen Gentiles. 25 God says this in the book of Hosea:
‘I will say to people who were not my people,
“Now you are my people.”
I will say to people that I did not love,
“I love you.” ’[h]
26 ‘God had said to them,
“You are not my people.”
In the same place where he said that,
people will now call them “Children of God, who lives for ever.” ’[i]
27 Also, Isaiah, God's prophet, said this about Israel's people:
‘There are so many of Israel's people, nobody can count them.
They are as many as the bits of sand on the shore of the sea.
But God will save only a few of them.
28 The Lord God will finish his work quickly.
He has warned his people what he will do.
And he will punish them completely.’[j]
29 Isaiah had already said this:
‘The Lord of great power has let some of our children live.
If he had not done that, no descendants would remain.
We would have become like the people in Sodom and Gomorrah.’[k]
30 So, we must think about what all this means. The Gentiles were not trying to become right with God. But some of them have now become right with him. God has accepted them as right, because they have believed in Jesus Christ. 31 But Israel's people tried to find a law that would make them right with God. But they failed to become right with God. 32 They failed because they refused to believe in Christ. Instead, they were trying to do certain things so that God would accept them. Because of that they fell to the ground. Their feet hit the stone which causes people to fall. 33 It says this in the Bible:
‘Look, I am putting a special stone in Zion.
That stone will cause people to fall to the ground.
It is a rock that will make them fall down.
But anyone who believes in him will never be disappointed.’[l]
10 My Christian friends, I want God to save Israel's people. I want that very much. I pray to God that he will save them. 2 I can say this about them: They really want to serve God well. But they do not understand the right way to do this. 3 They have not understood the way that God accepts people. Instead, they tried to make their own way to become right with God. They refused to accept God's way that would make them right with him. 4 God gave his Law to Israel's people for a purpose. But Christ has finished that purpose. So now, every person who believes in Christ becomes right with God.
God wants to save everyone
5 Moses wrote about how God's Law could help people to be right with God. He said, ‘If a person obeys the rules in God's Law, then he will live by them.’[m] 6 But the Bible speaks also about another way. It shows how to become right with God because you trust him. It says: ‘Do not say to yourself, “Someone will have to go up into heaven.” ’ (That means: ‘Someone will have to bring Christ down from up there.’) 7 ‘Do not say to yourself either, “Someone will have to go down into the world below.” ’ (That means: ‘Someone will have to bring Christ up from the place where dead people are.’) 8 But the Bible says: ‘God's message is near you. You can talk about it, and you can think about it.’[n] That is the same message that we are teaching to people. We tell people to believe in Jesus Christ.
9 The message is this: You must say clearly that Jesus is the Lord. Also, you must believe deep inside yourself that God raised him to life again after his death. Then God will save you. 10 God accepts people as right with him when they believe like that, deep inside themselves. And when people say clearly that Jesus is Lord, God saves them. 11 It says in the Bible:
‘Everyone who believes in him will not be disappointed.’[o]
12 It says ‘everyone’. There is no difference between Jews and Gentiles. There is the same Lord for all of them. He helps everyone who asks him with many good things. 13 As it says in the Bible: ‘The Lord God will save everyone who asks him for help.’[p]
14 But people will never ask Christ to help them if they have not believed in him. And they will never believe in him if they have not heard about him. And they will not hear about him unless somebody tells God's message to them. 15 And nobody can go to tell God's message to people unless God sends them. This is written in the Bible: ‘When people arrive to tell us good news, we say “welcome!” ’[q]
16 But not every person who hears the good news obeys its message. Isaiah said this: ‘Lord God, it seems that nobody has believed our message.’[r] 17 So then, people must hear the message before they can trust God. And people hear that message when someone tells them about Christ.
18 Let me ask you this: ‘Did Israel's people hear that message?’ They certainly did! The Bible says:
‘People have spoken God's message everywhere.
People have heard his message in every part of the world.’[s]
19 So I ask this too: ‘When Israel's people heard God's message, did they understand it?’ First, think about what Moses wrote. God said to Israel's people:
‘I will make you jealous because of people who are not my people.
I will make you angry because of people who know nothing about me.’[t]
20 Also, this is what Isaiah said very bravely:
‘God says: Those people who were not looking for me have found me.
I showed myself to people who were not even asking about me.’[u]
21 But Isaiah says this about Israel's people:
‘God says: For a very long time,
I have been asking my people to return to me.
But they refused to obey me.
They turned against me.’[v]
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