Romans 3:13-28

¹³They say things that make big trouble for other people, Whenever they talk, they tell lies and trick people. Their mouths are like the mouths of a cheeky snakes.

¹⁴They just swear at other people and say bad things about them.

¹⁵They quickly get up and to kill other people,

¹⁶Wherever they go they hurt people and make them really sad.

¹⁷They can’t live without fighting.

¹⁸They don’t respect God or take any notice of him.”

¹⁹You know, it’s like this. God gave the law to the Jewish people and they have to do everything it says. And God is the judge of everybody in the whole world. We all have to answer to him. 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.

²¹But now God shows us a different way. If we follow this way he will be happy with us. It is not about that law, whether we follow it or not, but it is about Jesus Christ, whether we believe in him or not. God tells us about this in his book. (We can read it in the part that has his law as well as in the other part that he got his men to write.) God will save us if we trust in Jesus. It doesn’t matter who we are. God treats everybody the same.

²³We all went wrong and did bad things. None of us is as good as God wants us to be.

²⁴But Jesus Christ took the blame for us. He paid the cost for those bad things that we did, so now God is really good to us and says that we are all right now, he will not blame us any more. And this doesn’t cost us anything.

²⁵God sent Jesus to die for us so that, if we believe that he died for us, God isn’t angry with us any more. Jesus let people kill him and spill out his blood, and now, if we trust him, God says we are all right. In this way God shows that he was right and fair in the past, at those times when he didn’t punish people for the bad things they did,

²⁶and he shows that he is fair at this time now when he tells everyone that believes in Jesus that they are all right now.

²⁷So none of us can talk up big about anything that we ever did. The only thing that matters is this, we believe in Jesus.

²⁸It 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.