Romans 3:17-21

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.