9:1 I speak the truth in Christ - I am not lying, my conscience confirms it through the Holy Spirit -
9:2 I have great sorrow and unceasing anguish in my heart.
9:3 For I could wish that I myself were cursed and cut off from Christ for the sake of my people, those of my own race,
9:4 the people of Israel. Theirs is the adoption to sonship; theirs the divine glory, the covenants, the receiving of the law, the temple worship and the promises.
9:5 Theirs are the patriarchs, and from them is traced the human ancestry of the Messiah, who is God over all, forever praised!* Amen. / *Or Messiah, who is over all. God be forever praised! Or Messiah. God who is over all be forever praised!
9:6 It is not as though God’s word had failed. For not all who are descended from Israel are Israel.
9:7 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.”* / *Gen. 21:12
9:8 In other words, it is not the children by physical descent who are God’s children, but it is the children of the promise who are regarded as Abraham’s offspring.
9:9 For this was how the promise was stated: “At the appointed time I will return, and Sarah will have a son.”* / *Gen. 18:10,14
9:10 Not only that, but Rebekah’s children were conceived at the same time by our father Isaac.
9:11 Yet, before the twins were born or had done anything good or bad - in order that God’s purpose in election might stand:
9:12 not by works but by him who calls - she was told, “The older will serve the younger.”* / *Gen. 25:23
9:13 Just as it is written: “Jacob I loved, but Esau I hated.”* / *Mal. 1:2,3
9:14 What then shall we say? Is God unjust? Not at all!
9:15 For he says to Moses, “I will have mercy on whom I have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I have compassion.”* / *Exodus 33:19
9:16 It does not, therefore, depend on human desire or effort, but on God’s mercy.
9:17 For 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.”* / *Exodus 9:16
9:18 Therefore God has mercy on whom he wants to have mercy, and he hardens whom he wants to harden.
9:19 One of you will say to me: “Then why does God still blame us? For who is able to resist his will?”
9:20 But who are you, a human being, to talk back to God? “Shall what is formed say to the one who formed it, ‘Why did you make me like this?’”* / *Isaiah 29:16; 45:9
9:21 Does not the potter have the right to make out of the same lump of clay some pottery for special purposes and some for common use?
9:22 What if God, although choosing to show his wrath and make his power known, bore with great patience the objects of his wrath - prepared for destruction?
9:23 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 -
9:24 even us, whom he also called, not only from the Jews but also from the Gentiles?
9:25 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,”* / *Hosea 2:23
9:26 and, “In the very place where it was said to them, ‘You are not my people,’ there they will be called ‘children of the living God.’”* / *Hosea 1:10
9:27 Isaiah cries out concerning Israel: “Though the number of the Israelites be like the sand by the sea, only the remnant will be saved.
9:28 For the Lord will carry out his sentence on earth with speed and finality.”* / *Isaiah 10:22,23 (see Septuagint)
9:29 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.”* / *Isaiah 1:9
9:30 What then shall we say? That the Gentiles, who did not pursue righteousness, have obtained it, a righteousness that is by faith;
9:31 but the people of Israel, who pursued the law as the way of righteousness, have not attained their goal.
9:32 Why not? Because they pursued it not by faith but as if it were by works. They stumbled over the stumbling stone.
9:33 As it is written: “See, I lay in Zion a stone that causes people to stumble and a rock that makes them fall, and the one who believes in him will never be put to shame.”* / *Isaiah 8:14; 28:16