Rô-ma 9

Paul’s grief for Israel

¹I am telling the truth in Christ; I am not lying. My conscience, in the Holy Spirit, bears witness with me ²that my sorrow is great and the pain in my heart never stops. ³I could even wish that I myself were under a curse, cut off from Christ, on behalf of my brothers and sisters, my own people by human descent. ⁴They are Israelites. Theirs is the adoption as God’s children, theirs the glory, the covenants, the giving of the law, the worship and the promises. ⁵The patriarchs are theirs, and from them, by human descent, comes Christ, who is God over all, blessed forever. Amen.^a

God’s word has not failed

⁶But this does not mean that God’s word has failed. For not everyone descended from Israel truly belongs to Israel. ⁷Nor are they all Abraham’s children just because they are his descendants. Rather, “It is through Isaac that your offspring will be named.” ⁸This means that it is not the children born by natural descent who are God’s children. It is the children of the promise who are counted as Abraham’s offspring. ⁹For this is what the promise said: “At this time I will come back, and a son will be born to Sarah.” ¹⁰And that is not all. Rebecca also conceived children by one man, our forefather Isaac. ¹¹The children were not yet born and had done nothing good or bad. Yet so that God’s purpose in choosing might stand, ¹²a purpose that rests not on works but on the one who calls, Rebecca was told, “The older will serve the younger.” ¹³As it is written, “I loved Jacob, but Esau I hated.”^bc

Is God unjust?

¹⁴What then are we to say? Is there injustice on God’s part? Certainly not! ¹⁵For God says to Moses, “I will have mercy on whomever I have mercy, and I will show compassion to whomever I show compassion.” ¹⁶So it is not a matter of what a person wants or how hard a person strives, but of God, who shows mercy. ¹⁷For Scripture says to Pharaoh, “This is the very reason I raised you up: to display my power in you, and so that my name would be made known through the whole earth.” ¹⁸So then God has mercy on whomever he chooses, and he hardens whomever he chooses.

The potter and the clay

¹⁹So you will say to me, “Why does God still find fault, then?” For who can stand against his will? ²⁰But who are you, a mere human being, to answer back to God? Will what was shaped say to the one who shaped it, “Why did you make me this way?” ²¹Has the potter no right over the clay? From one and the same lump he may make one pot for honored use and another for common use. ²²What if God, wanting to show his wrath and to make his power known, has borne with great patience the vessels of wrath, made ready for destruction? ²³What if he did this to make known the riches of his glory to the vessels of mercy, which he prepared in advance for glory, ²⁴that is, to us, whom he has called not only from among the Jews but also from among the Gentiles? ²⁵As he says in Hosea, “Those who were not my people I will call ‘my people,’ and her who was not loved I will call ‘loved.’”^{de 26}“And in the place where they were told, ‘You are not my people,’ that is where they will be called children of the living God.” ²⁷And Isaiah cries out about Israel: “Though the people of Israel are as many as the grains of sand by the sea, the remnant will be saved.”^{f 28}“For on the earth the Lord will carry out his sentence, fully and without delay.”^{gh 29}And as Isaiah said earlier, “If the Lord of hosts had not left us some descendants, we would have become like Sodom and been made like Gomorrah.”

Israel and the stone of stumbling

³⁰What then are we to say? That Gentiles, who were not pursuing righteousness, have obtained it, the righteousness that comes by faith. ³¹But Israel, who pursued a law that held out righteousness, did not reach that law.^{i 32}Why not? Because they did not pursue it by faith, but as though it came by works. They stumbled over the stone that makes people stumble, ³³as it is written, “See, I am setting in Zion a stone to stumble on, a rock that makes them fall, and whoever believes in him will not be put to shame.”^j