9:1  I speak the truth in Christ—I am not lying, my conscience confirms it in 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 brothers, those of my own race,

9:4  the people of Israel. Theirs is the adoption as sons; 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 Christ, who is God over all, forever 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 natural children 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 had one and the same father, 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 man's desire or effort, but on God's mercy.

9:17  For the 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 resists his will?"

9:20  But who are you, O man, to talk back to God? "Shall what is formed say to him 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 noble purposes and some for common use?

9:22  What if God, 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,
"It will happen that in the very place where it was said to them,
'You are not my people,'
they will be called 'sons 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 Israel, who pursued a law of righteousness, has not attained it.

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 men to stumble
and a rock that makes them fall,
and the one who trusts in him will never be put to shame."