1I AM speaking the truth in Christ; I am saying nothing false; my conscience bears witness with me in the Holy Spirit 2that I have great grief and unceasing pain in my heart. 3For I could wish myself to be accursed and cast away from Christ for the sake of my brethren, my kinsmen according to the flesh, 4who are Israelites, whose is the sonship and the glory and the covenants and the reception of the law and the worship and the promises; 5whose are the fathers and from whom by physical descent the Christ came. God who is over all be blessed through the ages! Amen. 6Not that God's word has failed. For not all who are of Israel are Israel; 7nor because they are descendants of Abraham are they all children; but "through Isaac shall your descendants be named." 8That is, not the physical descendants are children, but the children of the promise are counted for descendants. 9For the wording of the promise was, "At this time next year I will come and Sarah shall have a son." 10And not only so, but when Rebecca was about to bear children to our father Isaac, 11though the same man was father of both children and they were not yet born and had done nothing good or bad, in order that the purpose of God according to his choice might stand, not according to their works, but according to his call, 12it was said to her, "The older shall serve the younger." 13In the same way it is written, "Jacob I loved, but Esau I hated." 14What shall we say then? Is there unrighteousness on God's part? Never. 15For he says to Moses, "I will have mercy on whom I have mercy and I will have compassion on whom I have compassion." 16So then it is not a question of the man who wills or who runs, but of God who shows mercy. 17For the Scripture says to Pharaoh, "For this very purpose I raised you up in order to show my power upon you and to have my name proclaimed in all the earth." 18So then he has mercy on whom he chooses and he hardens whom he chooses. 19You will say to me then, "Why does he still find fault? For who has opposed his will?" 20But who are you, O man, who are answering back to God? Does the thing that is moulded say to the moulder, "Why have you made me so?" 21Has not the potter the right to make from the same lump of clay one vessel for honor and another for dishonor? 22What if God, choosing to exhibit his wrath and to make known what he can do, bore in long patience the vessels of wrath made for destruction, 23and in order to make known the richness of his glory upon the vessels of mercy which he had prepared for glory 24called us not only from the Jews but also from the Gentiles? 25As also he says in Hosea, "Those who are not my people I will call my people, and her who has not been beloved I will call beloved, 26and in the place where it was said to them, 'You are not my people,' there they shall be called sons of the living God." 27Isaiah cried aloud regarding Israel, "Though the number of the sons of Israel is as the sand of the sea, only a remnant will be saved. 28For the Lord will execute his sentence on the earth completely and speedily." 29Even as Isaiah predicted, "Unless the Lord of armies had left us some descendants, we should have become like Sodom and should have been made to resemble Gomorrah." 30What shall we say then? That Gentiles who did not pursue righteousness obtained righteousness, the righteousness of faith, 31but Israel pursuing after the Law of righteousness did not attain to the Law. 32Why? Because they pursued it not by faith, but as it were by works. They stumbled over that stumbling stone, 33as it is written, "See, I am laying in Zion a stumbling stone, a rock to trip over, but he who has faith in him will never be put to shame."