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God’s word makes you grow
1 So clean up your lives and stop doing bad things. Don’t tell lies, but tell the straight and true story. Don’t say you are good if you are not. Stop being jealous of other people, don’t hate them because they have something that you don’t have. And don’t rubbish another person.
2 Instead, you have to keep learning more of God’s word. Think about little babies. They always want milk. It makes them grow and get strong. Well, they are a picture of you Christians. You have to keep wanting more of God’s word, and it will make you believe more strongly, and then God will save you.
3 You already know that Jesus Christ is really good to you, so you have to live his way.
We are joined to Jesus
4 I will tell you a picture story about how people build a house out of stone. At first they put one good stone in its place. That stone is the important one. They join all the other stones together on to this important stone. Well, that is a picture of Jesus Christ and us. He is like that most important stone. Other people didn’t want him, but God picked him to be the most important one. So come to Jesus, and join up with him.
5 Just like stones join together to make a house, you join up with Jesus to make a special house for God, so he will live with you. And Jesus will help you do good things and make God happy, just like the men that look after God’s ceremonies gave him good things to show him respect and make him happy.
6 You see, God says this in his book,
“Look, I picked out a person that is very special to me.
He is like that most important stone.
And I put him among my people in my special city called Jerusalem.
And if you trust him, you will always know that you are going the right way, and he will save you.”
That’s what God said.
7 And you mob do that. You trust Jesus. You know that he is important. But people that don’t trust him don’t know that he is important. God says this about them in his book,
“Some work-men built a house out of stones, but the work-men thought one of the stones was rubbish, so they chucked it away.
They were wrong. That stone was properly good, and now God made it the most important stone of all.”
8 God says this about Jesus too, in his book,
“He will be like a stone that people trip over,
so that they fall down and hurt themselves.”
You see, people that don’t trust in Jesus, they go wrong and stop following God. It’s like they fall down and hurt themselves. They go wrong because they don’t listen to God’s word, and they don’t do what it says. You know, God planned all that trouble for them a long time ago.
9 But you are the people God picked out for himself. Together you work for him, like the men that looked after his ceremonies. You are his own family. God called you away from doing bad things, so you can do good things. It is like you used to live in the dark so that nobody could see you do bad things there, but now he called you away from that to live in his good light. So let’s tell everyone that God is really great and really good.
10 At one time you were not God’s family, but now, you are his family. At one time you didn’t understand that God is very good, but now you know that he is. He felt sorry for you, and he was very good to you. He saved you.
Keep on doing whatever is right and good
11 My friends, you belong to God. You don’t belong to this world. Right now you are like strangers here in this world. So I’m telling you this really strongly. Sometimes you will really want to do something bad, like the people that belong to this world do, but you have to be strong and leave it. You will think, “I really want to do that bad thing,” but then you will think, “My spirit is telling me that it is the wrong thing to do.” So you’ve got to leave it.
12 You live in the same place with people that don’t follow Jesus. So you have to make up your mind to always do things that are good. Sometimes people might tell lies and blame you and say you have done wrong. But if you always keep on doing whatever is right, they will see that you do good things. Later, after God comes to judge everybody, they will remember the good things you did, and they will respect him.
Do what government leaders say
13 Our leader, Jesus, wants you to listen to your community leaders and government leaders, and do what they say. You have to do that for the biggest government boss,
14 and do it too for the other bosses, like police and judges. The biggest boss gave them those jobs, to punish anyone that does wrong. They also know about the people that do the right things, and they tell everybody that those people are good.
15 God wants you to live the right way, and if you do that, nobody will have anything bad to say against you. Those people that want to blame you for no reason or tell lies about you, they will not be able to say anything.
16 You know that you are free from that old Jewish law, but that doesn’t mean that you can do things that are wrong. You belong to God, and you work for him, so you have to do whatever is right.
17 You have to respect everyone. And love other Christians a lot. And thank God and respect him for being good and great. And respect the big government boss too.
Be like Jesus
18-19 Some of you are workers that belong to your bosses. Maybe your boss is good to you, or maybe your boss is hard on you. It doesn’t matter. You have to listen carefully to your boss anyway and do what your boss tells you. Sometimes you don’t do anything wrong, but your boss makes trouble for you or hits you because you are following Jesus. You have to respect your boss anyway and take it quietly. Don’t try to do payback to your boss. Then God will be pleased with you, and he will say that you are good.
20 But if you do something wrong and your boss hits you, and if you take it quietly, that is just the way it goes. Everyone knows you did something wrong, so nobody will say that you are good for taking it quietly. But sometimes somebody might punish you for doing something good. You have to be like Jesus and take it quietly. If you do that, then God will say that you are good.
21 Jesus Christ did nothing wrong, but people hurt him and killed him. And God wants you to be like Jesus, and to live the same way that he lived.
22 God says this in his book,
“He never did anything bad,
he never lied or tried to trick anyone.”
23 People rubbished him, but he didn’t rubbish them back. They hit him with whips, but he didn’t talk to them in a bad way. No, he trusted God. God is the one that judges fairly.
24 Jesus never did anything bad, but he died instead of us there on the cross. He took the payback for the bad things that we did. He died so that we can stop doing bad things, so that instead, we will do the right things. Jesus let them hurt him so that God can make us clean on the inside. It’s like we are sick, but God can make us better.
25 Before that, you were going the wrong way and getting lost like sheep. But now you have come to Jesus, and he looks after you and shows you the right way to live, just like a man looks after his sheep.