Romans 5:3-12

³We can be happy now, too, even if things go wrong for us and we get trouble. We know that God lets us get trouble to make us strong, so that we will always be able to handle problems, and never stop believing.

⁴And after we learn to keep on believing, then we will become better people. And after we become better people, we can think about the time that will come, the time when everything will be good for us.

⁵And the Holy Spirit is in us, so we know that God loves us. Yes, God gave us his Holy Spirit and now his spirit in us makes us really love everybody.

⁶Jesus Christ died for us while we were still really weak. At that time we didn’t care about God at all. But he came, just at the right time, and he died instead of us.

⁷You know, people don’t usually agree to die instead of somebody else, not even for a good person. (Maybe there is somebody that will risk their life for a really good person.)

⁸But Jesus Christ died for us while we were still really bad people. This shows that God really loves us very much.

⁹And that’s not all. Jesus Christ bled and died for us, so now God tells us, “You are all right,” and there is no way that he will get angry with us or punish us.

¹⁰It is like this. We were God’s enemies, then his son Jesus died for us, so now we are God’s friends. And that’s not all. Now that we are God’s friends Jesus lives in us and saves us.

¹¹So we are really happy now, because Jesus has saved us and made us good friends with God.

¹²Think about the story about Adam. God told him, “If you eat any fruit from that tree you will die.” He did wrong, he ate that fruit, so he died. And that is the way it is with all of us people now. We all came from Adam, we all do wrong, and so we all die.