Romans 9

New International Version

• 1. I speak the truth in Christ--I am not lying, my conscience confirms it in the Holy Spirit--
• 2. I have great sorrow and unceasing anguish in my heart.
• 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,
• 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.
• 5. Theirs are the patriarchs, and from them is traced the human ancestry of Christ, who is God over all, forever praised! Amen.
• 6. It is not as though God's word had failed. For not all who are descended from Israel are Israel.
• 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."
• 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. For this was how the promise was stated: "At the appointed time I will return, and Sarah will have a son."
• 10. Not only that, but Rebekah's children had one and the same father, our father Isaac.
• 11. Yet, before the twins were born or had done anything good or bad--in order that God's purpose in election might stand:
• 12. not by works but by him who calls--she was told, "The older will serve the younger."
• 13. Just as it is written: "Jacob I loved, but Esau I hated."
• 14. What then shall we say? Is God unjust? Not at all!
• 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."
• 16. It does not, therefore, depend on man's desire or effort, but on God's mercy.
• 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."
• 18. Therefore God has mercy on whom he wants to have mercy, and he hardens whom he wants to harden.
• 19. One of you will say to me: "Then why does God still blame us? For who resists his will?"
• 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?'"
• 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?
• 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?
• 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--
• 24. even us, whom he also called, not only from the Jews but also from the Gentiles?
• 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,"
• 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.'"
• 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.
• 28. For the Lord will carry out his sentence on earth with speed and finality."
• 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."
• 30. What then shall we say? That the Gentiles, who did not pursue righteousness, have obtained it, a righteousness that is by faith;
• 31. but Israel, who pursued a law of righteousness, has not attained it.
• 32. Why not? Because they pursued it not by faith but as if it were by works. They stumbled over the "stumbling stone."
• 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."

New International Version