- God's Sovereign Choice
- 1
- I speak the truth in Christ--I am not lying,
- my conscience confirms it in the Holy Spirit--
- 2
- I have great sorrow and unceasing anguish in my heart.
- 3
- 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,
- 4
- 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.
- 5
- Theirs are the patriarchs, and from them is traced the human ancestry of Christ,
- who is God over all, forever praised! Amen.
- 6
- It is not as though God's word had failed.
- For not all who are descended from Israel are Israel.
- 7
- 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."
- 8
- 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.
- 9
- For this was how the promise was stated:
- "At the appointed time I will return, and Sarah will have a son."
- 10
- Not only that, but Rebekah's children had one and the same father, our father Isaac.
- 11
- Yet, before the twins were born or had done anything good or bad--
- in order that God's purpose in election might stand:
- 12
- not by works but by him who calls--she was told,
- "The older will serve the younger."
- 13
- Just as it is written: "Jacob I loved, but Esau I hated."
- 14
- What then shall we say? Is God unjust? Not at all!
- 15
- For he says to Moses, "I will have mercy on whom I have mercy,
- and I will have compassion on whom I have compassion."
- 16
- It does not, therefore, depend on man's desire or effort, but on God's mercy.
- 17
- 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."
- 18
- Therefore God has mercy on whom he wants to have mercy,
- and he hardens whom he wants to harden.
- 19
- One of you will say to me:
- "Then why does God still blame us? For who resists his will?"
- 20
- 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?'"
- 21
- 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?
- 22
- 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?
- 23
- 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--
- 24
- even us, whom he also called, not only from the Jews but also from the Gentiles?
- 25
- 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,"
- 26
- 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.'"
- 27
- Isaiah cries out concerning Israel: "Though the number of the Israelites
- be like the sand by the sea, only the remnant will be saved.
- 28
- For the Lord will carry out his sentence on earth with speed and finality."
- 29
- 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."
- Israel's Unbelief
- 30
- What then shall we say? That the Gentiles, who did not pursue righteousness,
- have obtained it, a righteousness that is by faith;
- 31
- but Israel, who pursued a law of righteousness, has not attained it.
- 32
- Why not? Because they pursued it not by faith but as if it were by works.
- They stumbled over the "stumbling stone."
- 33
- 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."