2
God is really good to us
1 You know, in the past you mob did lots of bad things. You couldn’t be friends with God. It was like your spirits were dead.* 2 You didn’t do what God wants, but instead, you always did bad things, just like the other people in this world do. You used to do the things the devil wants. He is the boss over those strong bad spirits that are in the air. That devil is working now inside everyone that will not do what God wants. 3 And it wasn’t only you mob that were bad. We were all bad. We were like those other people in this world. We did whatever we wanted to do. We did whatever made us feel good. We did whatever our own bodies and minds told us to do. And that made God angry with us, just like he is angry with everyone else.
4-5 But God didn’t punish us. He felt very sorry for us. He loved us, even though we were doing bad things. It is like our spirits were dead. But he was very good to us, and he saved us. He loved us so much that he made our spirits alive, just like he made Jesus Christ alive. 6 And God joined us to Jesus, and God lifted us up to sit with Jesus Christ in heaven. 7 God did those things to show everyone that he is very good to us. He showed those things to people in the past, and he shows them to us now, and he will keep on showing them to everyone for ever. He is showing everyone that he is better than anyone else. He is really good to everyone that belongs to Jesus Christ. 8 God is really good to you. You believed in Jesus, and God saved you. You didn’t do anything good, and you didn’t pay God anything, but he saved you anyway. 9 You can’t do things to save yourself. Even if you do a lot of good things, you can’t save yourself. No way. It is God that saves you. Nobody can say, “I’m really good, that is the reason why God saved me.” Nobody can talk like that. No way. 10 God is the one that made us what we are, and he wants us to do good things. He already has those good things ready for us to do. He turned us into new people, and he joined us to Jesus Christ, so now we can do those good things.
Jesus Christ brings us all together, Jews and other people
11-12 Think about what you were at first. You were not Jews, so you didn’t belong to the special mob called Israel. And at that time you were not friends with Jesus Christ. You didn’t know that God promised to send him to save us. And before, when God promised to look after the Israel mob if they agreed to keep his law, he didn’t promise that to you. You didn’t know anything about those things. You were living without God, and there was nothing good for you in this world. You didn’t know anything about the young man operation that God told the Jewish people to do on all their boys. That’s the reason why the Jewish people rubbish you. But don’t worry about that. They are only talking about the operation that people do to their bodies. They are not talking about the job that God does inside us. 13 But now it is different for you. At first you were far away from God, but then you believed in Jesus. You believed that he died, and that his blood came out for you. Then God joined you to Jesus Christ, and he brought you really close to himself.
14 You see, you mob that are not Jews, you were enemies with us Jewish mob at first. There was something that made us enemies with each other. It was like a wall standing between us. But Jesus broke down that wall, and he brought us together, and he made us become one new group. He has made us friends with each other now. 15-16 You know, Jesus let people kill his body, and he died for all of us. When he did that, he made all those Jewish laws useless, along with all their rules. Jesus Christ died on the cross for everybody. He died for the Jewish people, and he died for the people that are not Jews. When he died, he stopped the Jews from being enemies with other people, and he brought both mobs to God, to be God’s friends. He brought them together into one new group.*
17 Jesus came and told people God’s message. He said that everyone can be friends with God, and they can be friends with each other. He said that you mob that are not Jews, can be friends with God. You mob were far away from God at that time. And he also said that us Jewish mob can be friends with God. We were more close to God at that time.* 18 So now the Holy Spirit helps us all to come close to God our father, because Jesus Christ died for all of us. It is the same Holy Spirit that helps us both. He helps Jews, and he helps people that are not Jews.
19 So now, you mob that are not Jews, you are not strangers any more. You don’t belong to a different nation any more, but you belong to God’s family, and you are in God’s mob now. 20-22 I will use a house as a picture story. It is like God used Jesus and all his people to build a special house for himself. He used Jesus Christ to start building that house. He is the most important one. Then God used Jesus’s special workers, and the other people that told God’s messages. They are like the cement slab that the house sits on. Now God is using you mob, with us Jewish mob, to make the rest of the house. It is like God’s people are the bricks and the wood. You mob are not Jews, but you are still part of that house. God’s spirit carefully joins us together, to make that house bigger all the time, and God lives in his special house. That picture of a house shows us that God is living in us all the time.
* 2:1 Colossians 2:13-14 * 2:15-16 Colossians 1:20 * 2:17 Isaiah 57:19