1In the past you didn’t know about Jesus. It is just like your spirit was dead.
2You didn’t do what God wants. You used to do some bad things, just like the other people in this world do. You used to do the things the devil wants. He is the boss of those strong bad spirits that are in the air. That devil is working now inside everyone that will not do what God wants.
3And it wasn’t only you mob that were bad. We were all bad. We were like those other people in this world. We did whatever we wanted to do. We did whatever our own bodies and minds told us to do. And this made God angry with us, just like he is angry with everyone else.
4But God didn’t punish us. He felt very sorry for us. God loved us, even though we were doing bad things. It is like our spirits were dead. But he was very good to us, and he saved us. He loved us so much that he made our spirits alive, just like he made Jesus Christ alive.
6And God joined us to him, and he lifted us up to sit with Jesus Christ, where he is the boss of spiritual things.
7God did those things to show everyone that he is very good to us. He showed this to people in the past, and he shows it to us now, and he will keep on showing it to everyone for ever. He is showing them that he is better than anyone else. He is really good to everyone that belongs to Jesus Christ.
8God is really good to you. You believed in Jesus and God saved you. You didn’t do anything good, but God saved you anyway. It didn’t cost you anything.
9You can’t save yourself by the things you do, not even if you do a lot of good things. No way. God saves you. Nobody can say, “I’m really good, that is why God saved me.” Nobody can talk like that. No way.
10God is the one that made us what we are, and he wants us to do good things. He has already got those good things ready for us to do. He turned us into new people, and joined us to Jesus Christ, so now we can do those good things.
11Think about what you were before. You were not Jews, so you didn’t belong to that special mob called Israel. You didn’t know that God promised to send Jesus Christ to save us. God didn’t promise to look after you, like he did for the Israel mob. And you didn’t agree to keep his law, like the Israel mob did. You didn’t know anything about those things. You were living without God, and there was nothing good for you in this world. You didn’t know anything about the young man’s operation that God told the Jewish people to do on all their boys. That’s why the Jewish people rubbish you. But don’t worry about that. They are only talking about the operation that people do to their bodies. They are not talking about the job that God does inside us.
13At first you were far away from God. But then you believed that Jesus died, and his blood came out for you, so now God has joined you to Jesus Christ and brought you really close to himself.
14But at first you mob, that are not Jews, were enemies with us Jewish mob. There was something that made us be enemies with each other. It was like a wall standing between us. But Jesus broke down that wall, and he brought us together, and he made us become one new group. He has made us friends with each other now.
15He let people kill his body, and he died for all of us. In that way he made all those Jewish laws useless, and he stopped the Jews from being enemies with other people.
16Jesus Christ died on the cross for everybody, for the Jewish people and for the people that are not Jews. That is the way he brought both mobs back to God, to be God’s friends. He stopped them from being enemies with each other, and he brought them together into one new group.
17Jesus came and told people God’s message. He told them they could be friends with God and with each other. He told that story to you mob that are not Jews. You were far away from God at that time. And he told that story to us Jewish mob too. We were close to God at that time.
18Jesus Christ died for all of us, so now the Holy Spirit helps us all to come close to God, our Father. It is the same Holy Spirit that helps us both. He helps Jews, and he helps people that are not Jews.
19And now, you mob that are not Jews, you are not strangers any more. You don’t belong to a different tribe any more, but you belong to God’s family, and you are in God’s mob now.
20It is like God has built a special house for himself. At first he used Jesus Christ. He is the most important one. Then God used Jesus’s close followers, and the people that told God’s messages. They are like the cement slab that the house sits on. Now God is using you mob, with us Jewish mob, to make the rest of the house. It is like we are the bricks and the wood. You mob are not Jews, but you are still part of that house. God’s Spirit carefully joins us together, to make that house bigger all the time, and God lives in his special house. That picture of a house shows us that God is living in us all the time.
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