9
“They Stumbled Over the ‘Stumbling Stone’ ”
1 I am speaking, in union with the Messiah, the complete truth, and am not lying—as my conscience, under the governance of the Holy Spirit, also confirms—
2 when I say that there is in my heart a deep grief and continual anguish,
3 so deep, in fact, that I could wish myself cursed, cut off from the Messiah, if this would save my brothers and sisters, my kinsmen according to human descent,
4 who are Israelites, to whom belongs the adoption to sonship and the Glory and the covenants and the giving of Torah and the priestly service and the promises,
5 who descend from the patriarchs and from whom, with respect to his human descent, came the Messiah, who is God over all creation, blessed into the ages.+ Amen.
6 Now, does this situation mean that God’s promise has failed? By no means! Not all of Israel’s offspring, you see, are Israel,
7 nor are all children simply because they descend from Abraham. On the contrary, “it is through Isaac that ˢyour seed will be designated,”+
8 meaning that it is not the children produced by mortal processes who are children of God, but it is the children produced as a result of God’s promise who are regarded as seed.
9 The word of promise, you see, is this: “About this time next year I will return, and Sarah will have a son.”+
10 Now, what I’m saying is also seen in the case of Rebekah. Even though the two babies in her womb had the same father—our ancestor Isaac—
11 before they were born or had done anything good or evil, so that the plan of God which operates by sovereign choice would continue—
12 not by deeds, but by the one who summons—she was told, “the older will serve the younger.”+
13 As it is written, “Jacob I chose, but Esau I rejected.”+
14 What, then, shall we say? That God is unrighteous? Absolutely not!
15 It is to Moses, after all, that he says, “I will show mercy to whom I choose to show mercy and compassion to whom I choose to show compassion.”+
16 So then, it depends not on the person who resolves, nor on the person who is running, but on God, who chooses to show mercy.
17 For the Scripture says to Pharaoh, “This is the reason I chose to appoint ˢyou king: To display my power through my dealings with ˢyou, and to make my name known throughout the earth.”+
18 So then, to whomever he wishes God shows mercy, and whomever he wishes he hardens.
19 “But if this is so,” ˢyou will say to me, “why does God still charge people with fault? His will, after all, who can resist?”
20 O puny human, who in the world are ˢyou to take issue with God? “Will what is molded say to the one who molded it, ‘ Why did ˢyou make me like this?’ ”+
21 Surely a potter has the right to decide what he does with his clay, doesn’t he? Of course! He is free to form one vessel whose use will result for it in honor, and another vessel whose use will result for it in dishonor, out the very same lump.
22 Now, what if God, wanting to display his wrath and make known his power, very patiently formed instruments of wrath, reshaped for uses that will result for them in utter ruin,
23 so that he might also make the riches of his glory known toward instruments of mercy, prepared beforehand for uses that will result for them in glory—
24 such instruments as which he has also summoned us, not only from among the Jews, but also from among the Gentiles?
25 As he says, too, in the prophecy of Hosea:
“I will call Not-My-People, ‘My People,’
and she who is Unloved, ‘Beloved.’ ”+
26 and,
“It will come to pass that in the place where it was said to them, ‘ᵖYou are not my people,’
there they will be called ‘sons of the living God.’ ”+
27 Isaiah, moreover, cries out concerning Israel:
“Even though the people of Israel are as many as the grains of sand by the sea,
it is only the remnant that will be saved.
28 For the LORD will execute in the land+ his sentence,
fully and without delay.”+
29 And just as Isaiah said earlier,
“If the LORD of Heaven’s Armies had not allowed some from our nation to survive,
we would have been wiped out just like Sodom, and completely destroyed just like Gomorrah.”+
30 What, then, shall we say? That Gentiles, who weren’t chasing hard after righteousness, have taken hold of righteousness, that is, a righteousness that is by faith.
31 Israel, however, who was chasing hard after a Torah of righteousness, to Torah did not catch up.
32 Why? Because they pursued it not by faith, but (as if it were possible) by deeds. They stumbled over “the stumbling stone,”+
33 just as it is written:
“Listen! I am going to place in Zion a stone that will cause people to stumble,
a rock that will cause anger and offense.
But those who place their faith in him will not be disappointed.”+