1I speak the truth in Christ, I am not lying. My conscience also bears witness with me in the Holy Spirit,
2that I have great heaviness and constant sorrow in my heart.
3For I could wish that I myself were cursed and cut off from Christ, for the sake of my brothers and sisters, my own people by birth.
4They are Israelites. To them belong the adoption, and the glory, and the covenants, and the giving of the law, and the worship of God, and the promises.
5The fathers are theirs, and from them, as far as human descent goes, Christ came, who is over all, God blessed for ever. Amen.
6It is not as though the word of God has failed. For not everyone descended from Israel is Israel.
7And not all are children just because they are the descendants of Abraham. But it says, "Through Isaac your descendants will be named."
8That is, the children born in the ordinary way are not the children of God. It is the children of the promise who are counted as the descendants.
9For this is the word of promise: "At this time I will come, and Sara shall have a son."
10And that is not all. Rebecca also conceived children by one man, our father Isaac.
11(The children were not yet born, and had done nothing good or evil. This was so that God's purpose, which works by his own choosing, might stand. It does not depend on works, but on him who calls.)
12It was said to her, "The elder shall serve the younger."
14What shall we say then? Is God unjust? Certainly not.
15For he says to Moses, "I will have mercy on whom I will have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I will have compassion."
16So then it does not depend on the person who wants it, or on the person who runs for it, but on God who shows mercy.
17For the scripture says to Pharaoh, "I raised you up for this very purpose: to show my power in you, and so that my name might be declared through all the earth."
18So then he has mercy on whom he will, and whom he will he makes hard.
19You will say to me then, "Why does he still find fault? For who has resisted his will?"
20But, man, who are you to answer God back? Shall the thing that was made say to the one who made it, "Why have you made me like this?"
21Does the potter not have power over the clay? From the same lump he can make one pot for honour and another for dishonour.
22What if God, wanting to show his wrath and to make his power known, put up with great patience the vessels of wrath that were ready for destruction?
23And what if he did it to make known the riches of his glory on the vessels of mercy, which he had prepared beforehand for glory?
24That means us, whom he has called, not from the Jews only, but also from the Gentiles.
25As he also says in Osee, "I will call them my people, who were not my people; and her beloved, who was not beloved."
26"And in the place where it was said to them, 'You are not my people,' there they shall be called the children of the living God."
27Esaias also cries out about Israel, "Though the number of the children of Israel be as the sand of the sea, only a remnant shall be saved."
28"For he will finish the work, and cut it short in righteousness. For the Lord will make a short work upon the earth."
29And as Esaias said before, "Unless the Lord of Sabaoth had left us descendants, we would have been like Sodoma, and been made like Gomorrha."
30What shall we say then? That the Gentiles, who were not pursuing righteousness, have obtained righteousness, the righteousness that comes by faith.
31But Israel, pursuing the law of righteousness, has not reached the law of righteousness.
32Why not? Because they did not seek it by faith, but as if it came by the works of the law. For they stumbled over that stumbling stone,
33as it is written, "Look, I lay in Sion a stumbling stone and a rock that makes people fall. And whoever believes in him shall not be put to shame."