Romans 16:17-25

¹⁷Listen, my friends. I tell you this really straight. You’ve got to be really careful about people that make you split up and argue with each other. Remember that you heard the true message about Jesus Christ and you learned to follow his road, but there are some people that want you to leave that road and go another way. They tell you a different story. That is the way they make you argue with each other. So don’t listen to them. Keep away from them.

¹⁸They don’t work for our leader, Jesus Christ, but they just work for themselves. They try to trick people. They talk really nice to people and tell them that they are good. They do this to get whatever they want for themselves. They trick the people that don’t wake up to them.

¹⁹But don’t let them trick you. Everyone knows that you do whatever God wants, so I’m happy about you. But I also want to tell you to be careful. I want you to understand the things that are good, and don’t even think about doing the things that are bad.

²⁰God is the one that makes us good and quiet inside ourselves. He will soon beat the boss of the devils, called Satan. You will win, and Satan will have to lie down under your feet. I ask our leader, Jesus, to be really good to you.

²⁵God is really great and powerful so everybody has to tell him he is good. He can make you strong. This is his message. It is the good news about Jesus Christ. A long time ago God decided to get everybody to believe in him and do whatever he wants, both Jewish people and you that are not Jewish. But at first he kept this a secret and just got the Jewish people to follow him. Then he got the men that wrote his book to tell ahead of time about you people that are not Jewish. Now his good news about Jesus makes it clear that everybody everywhere can trust him, and they can do whatever he wants. God is the only one that can think good enough to make it all work out like that. So everybody has to tell God and Jesus Christ, “You are great.” They have always got to do this, for ever. From Paul