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