1My Christian friends, God is so very good to us. So I really want you to use your bodies to live for him. A long time ago, God told his people to give him animals to show him respect. They did it like this. They used to kill the animals and burn them up. But now it is different. Now you have to use your bodies to live for him and do good things, it’s like you are giving your own bodies to God while you are still alive. If you do that, you will make God happy. That is the proper thing to do to show that you follow God.
2Don’t be like most of the people in the world that like to do bad things. You have to be different from them. You have to let God change the way you think, so that you will become new people. Then you will be able to find out the things that God wants you to do, and you will know what is good, and the things that really make God happy.
3God wants me to tell you this, and he helps me to say it. Don’t think that you are better than you really are, but think properly about yourself. God himself makes it possible for you to believe in him, so think about how much you trust him. That is the important thing.
4I will tell you a picture story. Christians are like a body. You know that we each have a body, but that body has a lot of different parts. Each part of our body has its own job to do. But the parts all belong to that one body, so they all belong to each other.
17If people do some bad things to you, don’t do payback to them. You have to do good things, so that people will know that you are good.
18Try not to argue with anybody, and try not to fight with anybody.
19Listen, my good friends, if somebody does something bad to you, don’t do something bad to them. Don’t do payback to them. No, just wait for God. He will get angry with them, and he will do payback to them one day. We can read this in God’s book,
“God says, ‘It is my job to do payback to people for the bad things they do. I will punish them, so don’t try to do it yourself.’ ”
20Instead of you doing payback to them, you have to do like God says in another place in his book. He says,
“If your enemies are hungry, give them food to eat. If they are thirsty, give them something to drink. Then they will be sorry and feel shame for the bad things they did to you.”
21So don’t do payback to anybody. Don’t do bad things to them. If you do that payback, it is like you let that bad part of you win. But instead, you have to be good to everybody. That’s how you properly win against bad things.
Who We AreWhat We EelieveWhat We Do
2025 by iamachristian.org,Inc All rights reserved.
