Romans 8

₁If you belong to Christ Jesus, God will not punish you. ₂The Holy_Spirit, who gives you true_life because you believe in Christ Jesus, has made you free from the law that says: ‘You have sinned, therefore you will die_forever.’ Now you are free to do what God wants. That is why God will not punish you. ₃God did what his laws could not do. He saved us. The laws could not do it because people are too weak to obey those laws. God sent his Son and He became a Man, a human like the people who sin, and God punished Him for their sin. That is how God punished the sin which ruled over people. ₄God did this so that we can really do what his laws say, because we don't do the bad things that sinful people always want to do. We do what the Holy_Spirit tells us to do. ₅The people who do sinful things think only of themselves and they want to do things that are wrong. But people who listen to the Holy_Spirit always think of the things that the Holy_Spirit wants them to do. ₆There are people who always think about the bad things that they want to do. God will cause them to die_forever. But there are people who always think of the things that the Holy_Spirit wants them to do. God will give them eternal_life and peace. ₇People who always think of the bad things that they want to do are God's enemies. They don't listen to God's laws, and they can not obey God. ₈The people who always do the bad things that they want to do can not do what God wants.

₉But you don't do what you want to do, because the Holy_Spirit is in your hearts and you listen to the Spirit of God. People who do not have the Holy_Spirit, the Spirit of Christ, in their hearts do not belong to Christ. ₁₀Your bodies will die because sin came into the world. But now Christ is in you. God has made you righteous and the Holy_Spirit has given you true_life. ₁₁Jesus died, but the Spirit of God made Him live again. That same Spirit lives in your hearts and that is why He will also make you live again, you who have bodies that will die. The Spirit of God who lives in your heart will raise you as He raised Jesus.

₁₂Friends, we must live in the right way. We must not do the bad things which people like to do. Those things are wrong. ₁₃If you live like sinful people want to live, God will cause you to die_forever. But if you listen to the Holy_Spirit and you don't do what your bodies want to do, God will give you eternal_life. ₁₄Because if you listen to the Holy_Spirit and He rules your lives, then you are children of God. ₁₅God gave his Holy_Spirit to you. That is why you are not like slaves. You must not be afraid of God. No, God has adopted you, you are now his children and the Holy_Spirit helps us to say to God: ‘You are my Father.’ ₁₆Yes, the Holy_Spirit helps us to know and to be sure that we are children of God. ₁₇We are God's children and that is why God will give us what He has promised. We must suffer with Christ so that we can be like Him, like Christ who is King. Then we will be with Christ and we will get everything that God gives Him.

₁₈We are suffering now, but I know that God will bless us later. He will give us something much better, something wonderful, and we will see it. ₁₉God made everything and everyone is waiting and hoping that the day will come when God will show everyone who his children are. ₂₀God made everything, but everything He made became bad because of sin and it could not do what God wanted it to do. It did not become like that because it wanted to. God said it must become like that. But all are waiting ₂₁for the day when God will free it from everything that made it weak and bad. God will change everything that He has made and it will be free and important like the children of God. ₂₂God made the world and everything in it and we know that everything He made is suffering and groaning now, like a woman does when she is having a baby. ₂₃But it is not only the world that is suffering. We are groaning too, we who have the Holy_Spirit that God has given us. Now we know that God will give us everything that He has promised. Yes, we are waiting and hoping that God will show everyone that we are his children. We are waiting for Him to make us completely free. ₂₄God has saved us and He gave us this hope, to wait for something wonderful. When something has happened to people, they do not hope that it will still come, because it has happened already. ₂₅But we hope that something wonderful, something that has not happened yet, will happen to us. That is why we hope and keep on waiting for it.

₂₆The Holy_Spirit helps us when we pray. We can not pray like God wants us to pray because we are weak, but the Spirit of God helps us and He prays for us in a way that is too difficult for people to say in words or signs. ₂₇God can see inside us and He knows what we think and what the Holy_Spirit thinks. The Spirit of God prays to help the believers in the way that God wants.

₂₈The people who love God should know that everything that happens to them is good for them. God makes it happen that way because long ago He decided to choose them to belong to Him. ₂₉God decided that they must belong to Him. He decided it before He made anything. He decided that they would be like his Son, because God wanted Christ to be his most important Child, the older Brother of all God's children. ₃₀Yes, God decided that they must be his children. God also told them to belong to Him. He made them righteous and He also gave them some of his glory.

₃₁So, because of all these things, we can say this: ‘We know that God is with us, and that is why we are not afraid of anyone.’ ₃₂God did not help his Son when He saw how his Son suffered on the cross. God gave his Son and He let Him die to save us all. This is how we know that God is very good to us and that He will give us everything that is good, just as He did to his Son when He made Christ live again. ₃₃God chose us to belong to Him, and now no one can say that we are guilty, because God has made us righteous. ₃₄No one can say that God must punish us, because Christ died but God raised Him and made Him live again and He sits at the most important place next to God in heaven and He asks God to forgive our sins. ₃₅Can anyone stop Christ from loving us? No, never. No one can stop Him, not even when we suffer, or when we are afraid, or when people oppress us, or when we are hungry, or when we have no clothes, or when we have enemies, or when people want to kill us. ₃₆It is like the words that are written in the Old_Testament:

₃₇God loves us, so when all these bad things happen to us, we always win. _38-39I know that God loves us because Jesus Christ, our Lord, has shown it to us. There is nothing that can take away God's love from us, not death, nothing that is alive, not angels, no one and nothing who wants to rule the world, nothing that is here now and nothing that will come later, nothing that is stronger than people, nothing above the earth and nothing under the earth, nothing and no one.