Romans
9
- I speak the truth in Christ--I am not lying,
my conscience confirms it in the Holy Spirit --
- I have great sorrow and unceasing anguish
in my heart.
- For I could wish that I myself were cursed
and cut off from Christ for the sake of my brothers, those of my own race,
- the people of Israel. Theirs is the adoption
as sons; theirs the divine glory, the covenants, the receiving of the law,
the temple worship and the promises.
- Theirs are the patriarchs, and from them
is traced the human ancestry of Christ, who is God over all, forever praised!
Amen.
- It is not as though God's word had failed.
For not all who are descended from Israel are Israel.
- Nor because they are his descendants are
they all Abraham's children. On the contrary, "It is through Isaac that
your offspring will be reckoned."
- In other words, it is not the natural children
who are God's children, but it is the children of the promise who are regarded
as Abraham's offspring.
- For this was how the promise was stated:
"At the appointed time I will return, and Sarah will have a son."
- Not only that, but Rebekah's children had
one and the same father, our father Isaac.
- Yet, before the twins were born or had done
anything good or bad--in order that God's purpose in election might stand:
- not by works but by him who calls--she was
told, "The older will serve the younger."
- Just as it is written: "Jacob I loved,
but Esau I hated."
- What then shall we say? Is God unjust? Not
at all !
- For he says to Moses, "I will have
mercy on whom I have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I have compassion."
- It does not, therefore, depend on man's
desire or effort, but on God's mercy.
- For the Scripture says to Pharaoh: "I
raised you up for this very purpose, that I might display my power in you
and that my name might be proclaimed in all the earth."
- Therefore God has mercy on whom he wants
to have mercy, and he hardens whom he wants to harden.
- One of you will say to me: "Then why
does God still blame us? For who resists his will ?"
- But who are you, O man, to talk back to
God? "Shall what is formed say to him who formed it, 'Why did you make
me like this ?'"
- Does not the potter have the right to make
out of the same lump of clay some pottery for noble purposes and some for
common use ?
- What if God, choosing to show his wrath
and make his power known, bore with great patience the objects of his wrath--prepared
for destruction ?
- What if he did this to make the riches of
his glory known to the objects of his mercy, whom he prepared in advance for
glory --
- even us, whom he also called, not only from
the Jews but also from the Gentiles ?
- As he says in Hosea: "I will call them
'my people' who are not my people; and I will call her 'my loved one' who
is not my loved one,"
- and, "It will happen that in the very
place where it was said to them, 'You are not my people,' they will be called
'sons of the living God.'"
- Isaiah cries out concerning Israel: "Though
the number of the Israelites be like the sand by the sea, only the remnant
will be saved.
- For the Lord will carry out his sentence
on earth with speed and finality."
- It is just as Isaiah said previously: "Unless
the Lord Almighty had left us descendants, we would have become like Sodom,
we would have been like Gomorrah."
- What then shall we say? That the Gentiles,
who did not pursue righteousness, have obtained it, a righteousness that is
by faith;
- but Israel, who pursued a law of righteousness,
has not attained it.
- Why not? Because they pursued it not by
faith but as if it were by works. They stumbled over the "stumbling stone."
- As it is written: "See, I lay in Zion
a stone that causes men to stumble and a rock that makes them fall, and the
one who trusts in him will never be put to shame."
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