The Preacher's Bible

I tell the truth in Christ. I am not lying, my conscience testifying with me in the Holy Spirit ²that I have great sorrow and unceasing pain in my heart. ³For I could wish that I myself were accursed from Christ for my brothers’ sake, my relatives according to the flesh ⁴who are Israelites; whose is the adoption, the glory, the covenants, the giving of the law, the service, and the promises; ⁵of whom are the fathers, and from whom is Christ as concerning the flesh, who is over all, God, blessed forever. Amen.

⁶But it is not as though the word of God has come to nothing. For they are not all Israel that are of Israel. ⁷Neither, because they are Abraham’s offspring, are they all children. But, “your offspring will be accounted as from Isaac.” ⁸That is, it is not the children of the flesh who are children of God, but the children of the promise are counted as heirs. ⁹For this is a word of promise: “At the appointed time I will come, and Sarah will have a son.” ¹⁰Not only so, but Rebekah also conceived by one, by our father Isaac. ¹¹For being not yet born, neither having done anything good or bad, that the purpose of God according to election might stand, not of works, but of him who calls, ¹²it was said to her, “The elder will serve the younger.” ¹³Even as it is written, “Jacob I loved, but Esau I hated.”

¹⁴What shall we say then? Is there unrighteousness with God? May it never be! ¹⁵For he said to Moses, “I will have mercy on whom I have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I have compassion.” ¹⁶So then it is not of him who wills, nor of him who runs, but of God who has mercy. ¹⁷For the Scripture says to Pharaoh, “For this very purpose I caused you to be raised up, that I might show in you my power, and that my name might be proclaimed in all the earth.” ¹⁸So then, he has mercy on whom he desires, and he hardens whom he desires.

¹⁹You will say then to me, “Why does he still find fault? For who withstands his will?” ²⁰But indeed, O man, who are you to reply against God? Will the thing formed ask him who formed it, “Why did you make me like this?” ²¹Or hasn’t the potter a right over the clay, from the same lump to make one part a vessel for honor, and another for dishonor? ²²What if God, willing to show his wrath and to make his power known, endured with much patience vessels of wrath prepared for destruction, ²³and that he might make known the riches of his glory on vessels of mercy, which he prepared beforehand for glory— ²⁴us, whom he also called, not from the Jews only, but also from the Gentiles?

²⁵As he says also in Hosea, “I will call them ‘my people,’ which were not my people; and her ‘beloved,’ who was not beloved.”

²⁶“It will be that in the place where it was said to them, ‘You are not my people,’ there they will be called ‘children of the living God.’”

²⁷Isaiah cries concerning Israel, “If the number of the children of Israel are as the sand of the sea, it is the remnant who will be saved;

²⁸for he will finish the work and cut it short in righteousness, because the Lord will make a short work upon the earth.”

²⁹As Isaiah has said before, “Unless the Lord of Armies had left us a seed, we would have become like Sodom, and would have been made like Gomorrah.” ³⁰What shall we say then? That the Gentiles, who didn’t follow after righteousness, attained to righteousness, even the righteousness which is of faith; ³¹but Israel, following after a law of righteousness, didn’t arrive at the law of righteousness. ³²Why? Because they didn’t seek it by faith, but as it were by works of the law. They stumbled over the stumbling stone,

³³even as it is written, “Behold, I lay in Zion a stumbling stone and a rock of offense; and no one who believes in him will be disappointed.”