Romans 9:20-33 ▼

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 from the same lump of clay one vessel for special occasions and another for common use?

22 What if God, intending to show His wrath and make His power known, bore with great patience the vessels of His wrath, prepared for destruction?

23 What if He did this to make the riches of His glory known to the vessels of His mercy, whom He prepared in advance for glory—

24 including us, whom He has 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 Beloved’ who is not My beloved,”

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 is like the sand of the sea, only the remnant will be saved.

28 For the Lord will carry out His sentence thoroughly and decisively in righteousness, because He will cut short the matter on the earth.”

29 It is just as Isaiah foretold: “Unless the Lord of Hosts had left us descendants, we would have become like Sodom, we would have resembled Gomorrah.”

30 What then will 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 their pursuit was not by faith, but as if it were by works of the law. For they stumbled over the stumbling stone,

33 as it is written: “See, I lay in Zion a stone of stumbling and a rock of offense; and the one who believes in Him will never be put to shame.”