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Some important parts of the letter that Paul wrote to the Christians at Rome
(From the book in the Holy Bible called Romans)
About this letter
Paul wrote this letter about 2,000 years ago, about 20 years after Jesus went back to heaven, and it is now in the Holy Bible.
Paul wrote this letter to the Christians that were living in the city called Rome, in the country called Italy, where Italian people come from. At that time Rome was a very important city.
Some of the Christians in Rome were Jews. That means that they belonged to the same nation as Jesus, and Paul, and most of the other people in the Holy Bible. But some other Christians in Rome were not Jews.
A long time before Paul wrote this letter, God gave a special law to the Jews. He didn’t give that law to other people, that were not Jews. But some Christian Jews in Rome thought that God would not save anyone that didn’t follow that law. So Paul wrote this letter to tell them that God will save anyone that believes in Jesus. The law is important, but it isn’t the way for God to save people.
We have translated the parts of this letter that are important for people that are not Jews, like Indigenous Australians and most of the other people in Australia. We have not yet translated the parts of this book that are mainly talking to Jewish people.
This book has a lot of good messages for everyone, about how God saves people, and about how the Holy Spirit helps them. So it is very important for us today.
1
1 I am Paul, and this letter is from me. I work for Jesus Christ, and God picked me to be Jesus’s special worker, to go and tell people the good news that he will save them. 2 A long time ago, God promised to do that. He got some of his men to tell people about it, and they wrote about it in God’s book. 3-4 That good news is about our leader Jesus Christ. He was born into David’s family. David was the big boss of the Jewish nation a long time ago. Jesus was born as a human being into David’s family, but really, Jesus is God’s own son. God showed us in a powerful way that Jesus is his son. He did it like this. People killed Jesus, but God used his Holy Spirit to make him alive again.
5 And you know, God is very good to me. He picked me to be Jesus’s special worker. He told me to go to people that are not Jews to tell them about Jesus, and get them to believe in him and do whatever he says. 6 And God wanted you to believe in him and to do what he says too. God picked you, so now you belong to Jesus Christ.
7 I’m sending this letter to all you people that belong to God, and that live in the city called Rome. God picked you to follow him, and to be his people.
I’m asking God our father, and Jesus Christ our leader, to be good to you, and to make you feel happy and quiet inside yourselves.
8 The first thing I want to do is to say thank you to my God. I can talk to God and say thank you because Jesus Christ made us God’s friends. I thank God for all of you Christian mob there. You really believe in Jesus now, and people everywhere in the world are talking about how you really trust in Jesus. 9 I pray to God all the time, and I ask him to help you. That’s true. God knows it’s true. I work hard for God, I tell everyone the good news about his son. 10 Whenever I pray to him, I ask him that, if he agrees, he will let me come and see you soon. 11 I have been waiting for a long time. I really want to see you. I want to help you get more power from God to make you strong. 12 Then I will see how much you trust God and you will see how much I trust God, and that will make all of us happy. 13 You know, friends, I tried to come and see you lots of times, but God stopped me every time. I want to come and work there with you and get more people to follow Jesus, just like I do at other places.* Acts 19:21 14 I’ve got to tell God’s word to all sorts of people. I have to tell it to people that have my culture, and to people that have other cultures. I have to tell it to people that can think good and to people that can’t think good. I have to tell everybody God’s word. 15 So I want to come to Rome and tell God’s good news to all you mob there too.
16 I don’t feel any shame about God’s good news. It is a really good story because it has God’s power in it. Whenever people believe this good news, God saves them. It is the same for everybody, for Jewish people and for people that are not Jews.* Mark 8:38 17 God’s good news is this. God saves people that trust him, and he makes them properly good. God says this in his book,
“If you trust God, he will say you are good, and you will really live.”* Habakkuk 2:4
If we do bad things, it makes God angry
18 God in heaven gets very angry with people that do bad things. He gets angry whenever they do things against him, and whenever they do bad things to other people. They go against God, but that’s not all, they try to stop other people hearing the true story about God. And that makes God very angry.
19 God clearly shows everybody enough for us to understand the true story about him. Everybody knows about him. 20 Even though we can’t see God, we can know about him. If we look at the things he has made, we can know about him, that he is really great and really strong. Ever since he made the world, we can look at everything that he made, and we can know about him from those things. So nobody can say that they don’t know about God. 21 The trouble was this. Even though people could work that out about God, they really didn’t want to know him. They didn’t want to say to him, “Thank you, you really are the true God.” They couldn’t think properly about him. They could only think in stupid ways. They didn’t understand anything.* Ephesians 4:17-18 22 They told everybody that they could think really good, but they were fools. 23 They didn’t respect the wonderful God that never dies, but instead they made models of things that do die. They made things that look like people, or birds, or animals, or snakes, or those sorts of things, and they respected those things. They didn’t respect God.* Deuteronomy 4:16-18
24 So God let them go their own way, and they did whatever they felt like doing. They did whatever their dirty minds thought about, so they did bad things with each other’s bodies. 25 They didn’t want the true story about God. They wanted to believe a lie, and they respected the things that God made instead of respecting God himself. You know, God is really great, and everyone has to tell him, “You are really good.” And they have to keep on doing it for ever. Yes, that’s right, but people didn’t respect God like that.
26 So, after people turned away from God, he let them do whatever dirty things they thought about. Even women didn’t want to sleep with men any more, like wives do with their husbands, but instead they did things with each other that were not normal. 27 And men too did the same sort of thing. They didn’t want to sleep with women any more, they wanted to sleep with other men, as if they were women. They did bad things with each other, and that gave them real problems. And those problems were the right thing for them.
28 You see, they didn’t like to even think about God, so he let them think about lots of bad things, and they did all sorts of wrong things. 29 They are very bad, and they are greedy, they want lots of money and things. And they are really horrible. They want to take things that belong to other people. They murder people, they argue, they cheat other people, and they do mean things to people. They gossip, 30 they say bad things about other people, they are cheeky, and they hate God. They think that they themselves are never wrong. They think they are great, and that is what they tell everybody. They always think up new ways to do something bad, and they never respect their parents. 31 They are stupid, they don’t do what they say they will do, they don’t love anybody, and they never feel sorry for anybody. 32 A long time ago, God said, “Anyone that does these sorts of things has to die.” That is true, and those people know that God said that, but they don’t take any notice of him. They keep on doing those bad things, and worse still, they push other people to do them.

- Romans
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*1:13 Acts 19:21

*1:16 Mark 8:38

*1:17 Habakkuk 2:4

*1:21 Ephesians 4:17-18

*1:23 Deuteronomy 4:16-18

© 2019 The Plain English Project