Romans 9:18-33 (Epistle)
- 18
- Therefore He has mercy on whom He wills, and whom He wills He hardens.
- 19
- You will say to me then, “Why does He still find fault? For who has resisted His will?”
- 20
- But indeed, O man, who are you to reply against God? Will the thing formed say to him who formed it, “Why have you made me like this?”
- 21
- Does not the potter have power over the clay, from the same lump to make one vessel for honor and another for dishonor?
- 22
- What if God, wanting to show His wrath and to make His power known, endured with much longsuffering the vessels of wrath prepared for destruction,
- 23
- and that He might make known the riches of His glory on the vessels of mercy, which He had prepared beforehand for glory,
- 24
- even us whom He called, not of the Jews only, but also of the Gentiles?
- 25
- As He says also in Hosea: “I will call them My people, who were not My people, and her beloved, who was not beloved.
- 26
- And it shall come to pass in the place where it was said to them, ‘You are not My people,’ there they shall be called sons of the living God.”
- 27
- Isaiah also 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 will finish the work and cut it short in righteousness, because the LORD will make a short work upon the earth.”
- 29
- And as Isaiah said before: “Unless the LORD of Sabaoth had left us a seed, we would have become like Sodom, and we would have been made like Gomorrah.”
- 30
- What shall we say then? That Gentiles, who did not pursue righteousness, have attained to righteousness, even the righteousness of faith;
- 31
- but Israel, pursuing the law of righteousness, has not attained to the law of righteousness.
- 32
- Why? Because they did not seek it by faith, but as it were, by the works of the law. For they stumbled at that stumbling stone.
- 33
- As it is written: “Behold, I lay in Zion a stumbling stone and rock of offense, and whoever believes on Him will not be put to shame.”