Romans 9

Paul’s grief for his people

1I am telling the truth in Christ—I am not lying—and my conscience bears witness with me in the Holy Spirit: 2there is great sorrow in me, and a pain in my heart that never lets up. 3I could wish myself accursed and cut off from the Christ for the sake of my brothers, my own flesh and blood. 4They are Israelites. Theirs is the adoption as sons, the glory, the covenants, the giving of the law, the worship, the promises. 5Theirs are the patriarchs, and from them, as to the flesh, came the Christ, who is over all, God blessed forever. Amen. 6It is not that God’s word has fallen through. Not everyone descended from Israel is Israel, 7and not all of Abraham’s offspring are his children. No: “It is through Isaac that your offspring will be named.” 8That is to say, it is not the children of the flesh who are God’s children; it is the children of the promise who are counted as offspring. 9For this was the word of promise: “About this time I will come, and Sarah will have a son.” 10And not only that: there is Rebecca too, who conceived by one man, our father Isaac. 11Before the children were born, before they had done anything good or bad—so that God’s purpose of choosing might stand, resting not on works but on the one who calls— 12she was told, “The older will serve the younger.” 13As it stands written: “Jacob I loved, but Esau I hated.”

The potter and the clay

14What shall we say, then? Is there injustice in God? Never. 15For he says to Moses, “I will have mercy on whomever I have mercy, and I will have compassion on whomever I have compassion.” 16So it does not depend on human wanting or human running, but on God, who shows mercy. 17For the Scripture says to Pharaoh, “This is the very reason I raised you up: to display my power in you, and to have my name announced through all the earth.” 18So God has mercy on whom he chooses, and hardens whom he chooses. 19You will say to me, then, “Why does he still find fault? Who has ever resisted his will?” 20But who are you, my friend, to answer God back? Will the thing that was shaped say to the one who shaped it, “Why did you make me like this?” 21Does the potter not have the right over the clay to make out of the same lump one vessel for honor and another for dishonor? 22And what if God, wanting to display his wrath and make his power known, bore with great patience the vessels of wrath, fitted out for destruction, 23in order to make known the wealth of his glory to the vessels of mercy, which he had prepared beforehand for glory? 24And those vessels are us, called by him not only from among the Jews but also from among the Gentiles. 25As he says in Hosea: “I will call those who were not my people ‘my people,’ and her who was not loved ‘loved.’ 26And in the very place where they were told, ‘You are not my people,’ there they will be called sons of the living God.” 27And Isaiah cries out over Israel: “Though the number of the sons of Israel be like the sand of the sea, only a remnant will be saved. 28For the Lord will carry out his word on the earth, completely and without delay.” 29And as Isaiah said beforehand: “If the Lord of Hosts had not left us offspring, we would have turned out like Sodom, we would have been made like Gomorrah.”

The stumbling stone

30What shall we say, then? That Gentiles, who were not chasing after righteousness, laid hold of righteousness—the righteousness that comes from faith; 31while Israel, chasing after a law of righteousness, never arrived at that law. 32Why? Because they went after it not by faith but as though it came by works. They tripped over the stumbling stone, 33as it stands written: “Look, I am laying in Zion a stone that makes people stumble, a rock that trips them up; and whoever believes in him will not be put to shame.”