Romans 9

1I am telling the truth in Christ; I am not lying. My conscience, guided by the Holy Spirit, agrees with me:

2I have great sorrow and constant pain in my heart.

3For I could almost wish that I myself were cursed and cut off from Christ for the sake of my own people, my own flesh and blood.

4They are the people of Israel. God made them His children. He gave them His glory, His agreements, the law, the worship, and the promises.

5They are descended from the great ancestors, and from them, as a human being, came Christ, who is God over all, blessed forever. Amen.

6It is not as though God's word has failed. For not everyone descended from Israel really belongs to Israel.

7And not all of Abraham's descendants are his true children. Instead, God said: Your descendants will come through Isaac.

8In other words, it is not the natural children who are God's children. It is the children of the promise who are counted as Abraham's descendants.

9For this is what the promise said: At the right time I will come back, and Sarah will have a son.

10Not only that, but Rebecca's two children had the same father, our ancestor Isaac.

11Yet before the children were born, before they had done anything good or bad — so that God's plan to choose people might stand, not based on works but on the One who calls —

12she was told: The older will serve the younger.

13As the Scripture says: I loved Jacob, but I rejected Esau.

14So what should we say? Is God unfair? No, never!

15For God said to Moses: I will have mercy on whomever I choose, and I will show pity to whomever I choose.

16So it does not depend on human wanting or human effort, but on God, who shows mercy.

17For the Scripture says to Pharaoh: I raised you up for this very reason: so that I might show my power through you, and so that my name might be told all over the earth.

18So then, God has mercy on whomever He chooses, and He hardens whomever He chooses.

19So you might say to me: Then why does God still blame us? For who can resist His will?

20But who are you, a mere human, to argue with God? Should the thing that was made say to the one who made it: Why did you make me like this?

21Does the potter not have the right to make, from the same lump of clay, one pot for special use and another for ordinary use?

22What if God, wanting to show His anger and make His power known, patiently put up with the objects of His anger, which were ready to be destroyed?

23What if He did this to make known the riches of His glory to the objects of His mercy, whom He prepared in advance for glory —

24That is, to us, whom He called, not only from the Jews but also from the other nations?

25As God says in Hosea: I will call them my people who were not my people, and I will call her my loved one who was not loved.

26And: In the very place where they were told, You are not my people, they will be called children of the living God.

27And Isaiah cries out about Israel: Even if the people of Israel are as many as the sand of the sea, only a few will be saved.

28For the Lord will carry out his sentence on the earth quickly and completely.

29As Isaiah also said before: If the Lord of heaven's armies had not left us some descendants, we would have become like Sodom, and would have been like Gomorrah.

30So what should we say? That the other nations, who were not even chasing after a right standing with God, have received it — a right standing that comes by faith.

31But Israel, who chased after a law that would make them right, did not reach it.

32Why not? Because they did not seek it by faith, but as if it could come by works. They tripped over the stumbling stone,

33As the Scripture says: Look, I am laying in Zion a stone that makes people trip and a rock that makes them fall. But the one who trusts in Him will never be put to shame.