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9:1  I’m speaking the truth in the Messiah, I’m not lying. I call my conscience as witness, in the holy spirit,
9:2  that I have great sorrow and endless pain in my heart.
9:3  Left to my own self, I am half inclined to pray that I would be accursed, cut off from the Messiah, on behalf of my own family, my own flesh-and-blood relatives.
9:4  They are Israelites: the sonship, the glory, the covenants, the giving of the law, the worship and the promises all belong to them.
9:5  The patriarchs are their ancestors; and it is from them, according to the flesh, that the Messiah has come—who is God over all, blessed forever, Amen!
9:6  But it can’t be the case that God’s word has failed! Not all who are from Israel, you see, are in fact Israel.
9:7  Nor is it the case that all the children count as “seed of Abraham.” No: “in Isaac shall your seed be named.”
9:8  That means that it isn’t the flesh-and-blood children who are God’s children; rather, it is the children of the promise who will be calculated as “seed.”
9:9  This was what the promise said, you see: “Around this time I shall return, and Sarah shall have a son.”
9:10  And that’s not all. The same thing happened when Rebecca conceived children by one man, our ancestor Isaac.
9:11  When they had not yet been born, and had done nothing either good or bad—so that what God had in mind in making his choice might come to pass,
9:12  not because of works but because of the one who calls—it was said to her, “the elder shall serve the younger.”
9:13  As the Bible says, “I loved Jacob, but I hated Esau.”
9:14  So what are we going to say? Is God unjust? Certainly not!
9:15  He says to Moses, you see, “I will have mercy on those on whom I will have mercy, and I will pity those I will pity.”
9:16  So, then, it doesn’t depend on human willing, or on human effort; it depends on God who shows mercy.
9:17  For the Bible says to Pharaoh: “This is why I have raised you up, to show my power in you, and so that my name may be proclaimed in all the earth.”
9:18  So, then, he has mercy on the one he wants, and he hardens the one he wants.
9:19  You will say to me, then, “So why does he still blame people? Who can stand against his purpose?”
9:20  Are you, a mere human being, going to answer God back? “Surely the clay won’t say to the potter, ‘Why did you make me like this?’ ”
9:21  Doesn’t the potter have authority over the clay, so that he can make from the same lump one vessel for honor, and another for dishonor?
9:22  Supposing God wanted to demonstrate his anger and make known his power, and for that reason put up very patiently with the vessels of anger created for destruction,
9:23  in order to make known the riches of his glory on the vessels of mercy, the ones he prepared in advance for glory—
9:24  including us, whom he called not only from among the Jews but also from among the Gentiles?
9:25  This is what he says in Hosea, I will call “not my people” “my people”; and “not beloved” I will call “beloved.”
9:26  And in the place where it was said to them, “You are not my people,” there they will be called “sons of the living God.”
9:27  Isaiah cries out, concerning Israel, Even if the number of Israel’s sons are like the sand by the sea, only a remnant shall be saved;
9:28  for the Lord will bring judgment on the earth, complete and decisive.
9:29  As Isaiah said in an earlier passage, If the Lord of hosts had not left us seed, we would have become like Sodom, and been made like Gomorrah.
9:30  What then shall we say? That the nations, who were not aspiring towards covenant membership, have obtained covenant membership, but it is a covenant membership based on faith.
9:31  Israel meanwhile, though eager for the law which defined the covenant, did not attain to the law.
9:32  Why not? Because they did not pursue it on the basis of faith, but as though it was on the basis of works. They have stumbled over the stumbling stone,
9:33  as the Bible says, Look: I am placing in Zion a stone that will make people stumble, a rock that will trip people up; and the one who believes in him will never be put to shame.