Romans 8:7-15

⁷That bad part inside us fights against God, so if we do whatever it says we don’t do the things that God says. If we are like that we can never follow God’s laws. If we live like that we can never make God happy.

⁹But I know that you aren’t like that any more. You haven’t let that bad part of you be your boss, but you have joined up with the Holy Spirit and now he lives inside you. That’s right. If people don’t have the spirit of Jesus Christ in them, they don’t belong to him.

¹⁰But Jesus Christ does live inside you. Yes, you did bad things, so your bodies will die, but God says that you are all right now, so his spirit makes you alive.

¹¹Remember that Jesus died but God made him alive again. And God will do that for you too. Your bodies will die, but after that God will make them alive again. His spirit will do that. He lives inside you.

¹²So, my friends, you don’t have to do bad things any more. You don’t have to do whatever that bad part of you tells you to do.

¹³If you do those things, you will die. But if God’s spirit is in you he can help you block that bad part of you, like you kill it, and then you will not do those bad things, and you will live.

¹⁴It is like this. God’s children are those people that listen to his spirit and follow him.

¹⁵God didn’t give you his Holy Spirit to make you frightened of him. No, he gave you his spirit to make you his children. You are not like a prisoner that has to work for a cheeky boss, and that boss makes him frightened all the time. No way. You have God’s spirit in you, so you can talk to God and say, “Dad, you are my own good Father.”