3
Nobody is really good
9 So what about those of us that are Jewish people? Will God be more good to us than to other people? No way. Both Jewish people and other people do bad things, just like I already said.
10 It is like God says in his book,
“Nobody is really good, not even one person,
11 nobody understands about God, nobody even tries to get to know him.
12 Everybody turns away from God,
they all go wrong,
not even one of them does good things.
13 They say things that make big trouble for other people,
whenever they talk, they tell lies and trick people.
Their words hurt people, their mouths are just as bad as cheeky snakes.
14 They swear at other people and say bad things about them.
15 They are always ready to kill other people.
16 Wherever they go, they hurt people and make them really sad.
17 They don’t know how to live without fighting.
18 They don’t respect God or take any notice of him.”
19-20 You know, it’s like this. God gave his law to the Jewish people for them to follow. And God is the judge of everybody in the whole world. And nobody has kept all of that law, so nobody can argue with him. Nobody can tell God, “I have kept all those laws, so I’m all right. You can’t punish me.” We can’t say that, because we all broke that law at some time.
So why is the law there? It is there just to let us know that we always go wrong. That’s what it is there for.
If we believe in Jesus, God says we are all right
21-22 But now it is different. God showed us a different way. And if we follow his way, he will be happy with us and say that we are all right. His way is not about that law, it is about us trusting Jesus Christ. God tells us about this in his book. God says that if we trust in Jesus, he will save us. It doesn’t matter who we are. God treats everybody the same.
23 We all went the wrong way, and we did bad things. Nobody is properly good, like God wants us to be.
24 But Jesus Christ died for us. He took the payback for those bad things that we did. So now God is really good to us, and he says that we are all right now, and he will not blame us any more. And we don’t have to pay anything.
25 God sent Jesus to die for us, so that, if we believe that Jesus died for us, God isn’t angry with us any more. Jesus let people kill him, and his blood came out, so now, if we trust him, God says we are all right. That shows that God was right and fair in the past, at those times when he didn’t punish people for the bad things they did.
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.
27 So none of us can talk up big about anything that we ever did. The only thing that matters is this, we believe in Jesus.
28 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.
29 So now, what do you reckon? Is God just the God of the Jewish people, or is he the God of other people that are not Jews too? Of course he is God of both. He is God for the people that are not Jewish as well as for the Jews.
30 There is only one God. He makes Jewish people all right if they believe in Jesus, and he makes other people all right if they believe in Jesus too.
31 So what do you reckon about God’s law? We believe in Jesus now, so do we have to forget everything God said in his law? No way. If we believe in Jesus, we agree that the law is from God.