1Dear Timothy This letter is from me, Paul. God picked me out to be his special messenger to tell people about Jesus Christ. Those 2, God and Jesus, they told me to do this work. God is the one that will save us, and Jesus is the one we can be sure about, that he will always look after us. They gave me this job, to tell everybody this message about them. Timothy, at first I told you about Jesus and you really believed in him, so now I love you like you are my own son. I pray to God, and to Jesus Christ our leader, that they will show you that they love you. I am asking them to be good to you, and to make you feel happy and quiet inside yourself.
3Do you remember the time that we were in Ephesus, and I got up to go to Macedonia? At that time I wanted you to straighten out those people in Ephesus that teach the wrong message, so I told you to stay there. Those people think a lot about old time stories that are not true, and they think about the lists of names of people in their family. Then from there they teach people lies. People that listen to them just get into useless arguments. People shouldn’t do that, but they have to learn about God and the way he works. They have to learn to believe in God and to do whatever he wants. So I want you to tell those lying teachers to stop teaching those wrong things.
5You see, you have to teach people to do what is right, and to believe in God properly, and to never think about bad things. Then they will properly love each other all the time. We want people to follow these things that we teach and to live that way.
6But those lying teachers don’t do this. They go all wrong. They just talk about useless things all the time.
7They reckon they teach the law that God gave to Moses and they want everybody to respect them, but they don’t understand that law properly. They talk up strongly and tell people to do things, but they don’t know what they are talking about.
8We all know that the law that God gave to Moses is good so long as people teach it the right way.
9We have to remember that God gave that law to punish the people that do wrong, not the people that do the right thing. That law is there to stop crooks, and cheeky ones, and those that forget about God and everything that belongs to God. It is there to stop those that want to murder other people, and even murder their own father or mother.
10That law is there to stop those people that just want to play around with anyone, and sleep with them, to do what married people do together. It is there to stop men that want to sleep with other men, as if they are women. It is there to stop those that grab other people to make them prisoners and force them to work for no pay. It is there to stop those people that trick other people by lying to them. That law is there to stop all those kinds of bad things that people do if they don’t listen to God’s word.
11They do all kinds of bad things. But if we think about that good story about Jesus we know all those things are wrong. And I go and tell that good story about Jesus to everybody. That’s my job. Our wonderful God gave me this job.
12I really want to thank our leader, Jesus Christ. He makes me strong enough to do this job. He reckoned I will do this work properly, so he picked me out to do it for him, and I thank him for that.
13I used to be really cheeky to Jesus Christ before I ever believed in him. I used to say bad things about Jesus and I used to make trouble for anybody that believed in Jesus. I didn’t believe in Jesus at that time, so I didn’t know the true story. But God was really good to me. He let me turn around and join up with Jesus Christ, and Jesus helps me to really trust God properly and to love everyone properly.
15You sometimes hear people say this, “Jesus Christ came into this world to save bad people, so as to make them into better people.” This is very true, and everybody has to believe it. And it tells the story about me too. I was really bad. I was worse than anybody else.
16But God wanted to show everybody that he will save anyone, even really bad people, if they believe in Jesus, so he picked me to be an example. Jesus waited for me, so everybody can know that he will wait for them too. They can believe in him too, and he will save them and they will live for ever.
17This shows that God is so great. He is the biggest boss and he lives for ever, even though nobody can see him. He is the only one that is God. Everybody has to really praise him for ever and ever. Amen.
18You are like a son to me, Timothy, so I’m telling you to do these things. Do you remember, some time ago, the Holy Spirit told the Christians there a message about you? Well, you think about that message so that you can stand up against things that are wrong, like a soldier that stands up and fights against an enemy.
19You have to keep on believing God’s word and keep on doing the right thing, so that you will never feel bad about yourself. Some people heard about God but they didn’t try to go the right way, and now they don’t believe in God any more.
20Those 2 men, called Hymenaeus and Alexander, they are like that. So I asked God to let the boss of the bad spirits, called Satan, to punish those 2 men so that they will learn not to tell lies about God.
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