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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, for ever praised! Amen.
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.’
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.’
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.’
9:13  Just as it is written: ‘Jacob I loved, but Esau I hated.’
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.’
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.’
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?”’
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,’
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.”’
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.’
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.’
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.’