1My Christian friends, God is so very good to us. So I really want you to give your bodies to him. In the old days people used to give animals to God to make him happy. They did it like this. They used to kill the animals and burn them up. But now it is different. You will make God happy if your give your bodies to him while you are still alive, and let him use your bodies to do good things. This is the proper thing to do to show that you follow God.
2Don’t be like most of the people in the world that like to do bad things. You have to be different from them. You have to let God change the way you think so that you will become new people. Then you will be able to find out the things that God wants you to do, and you will know what is good and the things that really make God happy.
3God wants me tell you this and he helps me to say it. Don’t think that you are better than you really are, but think properly about yourself. God himself makes it possible for you to believe in him, so think about how much you trust him. That is the important thing.
4I will use the human body as a picture of Christians. You know that we each have a body, but that body has a lot of different parts. Each part has its own job to do. But the parts all belong to that one body, so they all belong to each other.
5Well, this is a picture of us, God’s people. We all belong to Jesus Christ and it is just like each of us is a part of his body. Each of us has our own job to do. We all belong to Jesus so we all belong to each other.
6God is good to us and gives each of us the power to do something properly. So if God gave you the power to tell his message to people, well you have to do this whenever you believe he has a message for you to tell.
7Or maybe God gave you the power to help other people, well this is the thing that you have to do. Or if God gave you the power to teach other people, well this is the thing that he wants you to do.
8Or maybe God gave you the power to cheer people up, well this is your job. Or maybe he gave you the power to share your money and things with other people, well he wants you to share it with people that need things. Or maybe God gave you the power to be a leader, well you have to try to lead people properly. Or if God gave you the power to feel sorry for people that have troubles, and the power to be good to them, well this is his job for you, so be happy while you do it.
9Don’t just pretend to love other people. You have to love them properly. This means you have to hate everything that is bad for them and love everything that is good for them.
10You have to love each other like brothers and sisters that belong to the same family. You have to respect other Christians more than you respect yourself.
11Don’t get lazy as you work for God but get really turned on about it.
12We know that everything will be real good after God fixes everything up, so think about this and you will be really happy. But if people give you trouble now, don’t get angry but stay calm and settled. And keep on talking to God about everything.
13If any of God’s people need anything, you give them whatever you can. And always be happy to have visitors and let them stay at your place.
14If anyone makes trouble for you, don’t ask God to punish them but ask him to help them.
15If somebody is happy, you be happy with them too. If somebody is sad, you be sad with them too.
16Always try to be friends with other people and try to agree with them. Don’t think to yourself, “I’m too good to be with them,” but be happy to sit down with anybody and be their friend. Remember, you don’t know everything.
17If people do some bad things to you, don’t pay them back. You have to do good things, so people will know that you are a good.
18Try not to argue with anybody and try not to fight with anybody.
19Listen, my good friends, if somebody does something bad to you, don’t get up and do something bad to them to pay them back. No, just wait for God, and after he gets angry with them he will pay them back. We read this in God’s book, “It is God’s job to pay people back for the bad things they do. He will punish them, so don’t you try to do it.”
20So you have to do like we read in another place in his book, “If your enemies are hungry, give them food to eat. If they are thirsty, give them something to drink. Then they will get sorry and ashamed for the bad things they did to you.”
21Don’t pay people back and do bad things to them. If you do that, it is like you let that bad part of you win. But instead you have to do good to people. That is the way that you properly win.
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