Romans
I am telling you the truth in Messiah. I am not lying! My conscience is
testifying with me in holy spirit
that I have great sadness and unceasing
distress in my heart.
For I could even wish that I myself were cursed, cut off from Messiah for my people’s sake, my physical relatives,
the Israelites. To them
belong the sonship, the glory, the covenants, the giving of the Law,
the
temple service, and the promises.
To them belong the fathers, and from them
is the Messiah by physical descent.
May God who is over all be blessed
forever. Amen.
But it is not as though the Gospel-word of God has failed. For not all who are
descended from Israel are the true Israel,
nor are they Abraham’s children just because they are his descendants. Instead, “Through Isaac your descendants will be counted.”
That is, it is not the children of physical descent who are children
of God, but the children of the promise are counted as true descendants.
For these are the words of the promise: “About this time next year I will return and Sarah will have a son.”
Not only that, but Rebekah conceived twins by one man,
by our forefather Isaac.
Even before the twins were born, before either had done anything good or bad — so that the purpose of God in election might stand, not by works but by Him who calls —
Rebekah was told, “The
older brother will serve the younger one.”
As it is written, “Jacob I loved,
but Esau I hated.”
What shall we say then? Is there injustice with God? Absolutely not!
As He said to Moses, “I will have mercy on whom I have mercy, and I will
have compassion on whom I have compassion.”
So then, it does not depend on
human will or efforts, but on God who has mercy.
For Scripture says to
Pharaoh: “For this very purpose I caused you to be put on the human scene,
so that I would show through you My power, and so that My name would be
proclaimed throughout all the earth.”
So then, God has mercy on those whom He
wants to have mercy, and He hardens those He wants to.
You will say to me, “Then why does God find fault? For who
can resist His will?”
But who are you, a human being, to talk back to
God in this way? Will the thing formed ask the one who formed it, “Why did
you make me like this?”
Does not the potter have the right to make from the
same lump of clay one vessel for special use and another for ordinary use?
But what if God, although willing to show His anger and make His power known, has endured with much patience vessels of wrath ready for destruction?
He is willing to do this to make known the riches of His glory on vessels of
mercy which He prepared ahead of time for glory —
us whom He called,
not from the Jews only, but also from the Gentiles.
As He says in Hosea, “I
will call them ‘My people’ who were not My people, and ‘My beloved’ those
who were not beloved.
It will be that 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.’”
Isaiah calls out concerning Israel: “Although the number of the children
of Israel is like the sand of the sea, it is only a remnant that will be saved.
For the
Lord will quickly and decisively finish His work of judgment on the
earth.”
As Isaiah predicted, “Unless the Lord of Hosts had left us
descendants,
we would have become like Sodom, and would have been
like Gomorrah.”
What shall we say then? That the Gentiles, who did not pursue the way
of being right, attained to it — being right based on belief.
But Israel
pursued being right based on the Law and did not attain to it.
Why? Because they did
not pursue it by belief, but, as if it were possible, by works. They stumbled
over the stumbling stone,
just as is written: “Look, I am placing in Zion a
stumbling stone, a rock of offense. But the person who believes in him will not
be put to shame.”
Romans