1 I say the truth in Christ, I do not lie, my conscience bearing witness with me in the Holy Spirit,
2 that I have great sorrow and unceasing anguish in my heart.
3 For I could wish that I myself were anathema from Christ for the sake of my brothers, my kinsmen according to the flesh,
4 who are Israelites; theirs are the adoption and the glory and the covenants and the giving of the law and the service and the promises;
5 theirs are the fathers, and from them, according to the flesh, is the Christ, who is over all, God blessed forever. Amen.
6 But it is not as though the word of God has come to nothing. For not all who are of Israel are Israel;
7 nor, because they are the seed of Abraham, are they all children; but, "In Isaac your seed will be called."
8 That is, it is not the children of the flesh who are children of God, but the children of the promise are reckoned as seed.
9 For this is the word of promise: "At this season I will come, and Sarah will have a son."
10 And not only so, but Rebecca also, when she had conceived by one man, our father Isaac;
11 for though the children were not yet born, nor had done anything good or evil, that the purpose of God according to election might stand, not of works but of him who calls,
12 it was said to her, "The older will serve the younger."
13 Even as it is written, "Jacob I loved, but Esau I hated."
14 What, then, shall we say? Is there unrighteousness with God? May it never be!
15 For he says to Moses, "I will have mercy on whom I have mercy, and I will have pity on whom I have pity."
16 So then it is not of him who wills, nor of him who runs, but of God who has mercy.
17 For the Scripture says to Pharaoh, "For this very thing I raised you up, that I might show in you my power, and that my name might be declared in all the earth."
18 So then on whom he wills he has mercy, and whom he wills he hardens.
19 You will say to me, then, "Why does he still find fault? For who has withstood his will?"
20 No, but who are you, O man, to answer back to God? Will the thing formed say to him who formed it, "Why did you make me like this?"
21 Or does the potter not have authority over the clay, to make from the same lump one vessel for honor and another for dishonor?
22 And what if God, willing to show his wrath and to make known his power, endured with much longsuffering vessels of wrath fitted for destruction,
23 and that he might make known the riches of his glory upon vessels of mercy, which he prepared beforehand for glory,
24 even us, whom he also called, not of the Jews only but also of the Gentiles?
25 As he says also in Hosea, "I will call that which was not my people, my people; and her who was not beloved, beloved."
26 "And it will be, in the place where it was said to them, 'You are not my people,' there they will be called sons of the living God."
27 And Isaiah cries out concerning Israel, "Though the number of the children of Israel be as the sand of the sea, the remnant will be saved;
28 for he is bringing the word to completion and cutting it short in righteousness; for the Lord will carry out a word cut short upon the earth."
29 And even as Isaiah said before, "Unless the Lord of Sabaoth had left us a seed, we would have become like Sodom, and been made like Gomorrah."
30 What, then, shall we say? That Gentiles who did not pursue righteousness laid hold of righteousness, even the righteousness that is of faith;
31 but Israel, pursuing a law of righteousness, did not attain to the law of righteousness.
32 Why? Because they sought it not by faith, but as it were by the works of the law. For they stumbled at the stone of stumbling,
33 even as it is written, "Look, I lay in Zion a stone of stumbling and a rock of offense; and everyone who believes on him will not be put to shame."