1 I say the truth in Christ, I don't lie, my conscience also bearing me witness in the Holy Ghost,
2 That I have great heaviness and continual sorrow in my innermost mind.
3 For I could wish that myself were cursed from Christ for my brothers, my family according to the flesh:
4 Who are Israelites; to whom pertains the placing of mature sons into ruling authority, and the glory, and the covenants, and the giving of the law, and the service of God, and the promises;
5 Whose are the fathers, and of whom as concerning the flesh Christ came, who is over all, God blessed into the coming age. Amen.
6 Not as though the utterance of God has taken none effect. For they are not all Israel, which are of Israel:
7 Neither, because they are the seed of Abraham, are they all children: but, In Isaac shall your seed be called.
8 That is, They which are the children of the flesh, these are not the children of God: but the children of the promise are regarded as the seed.
9 For this is the utterance of promise, At this time will I come, and Sara shall have a son.
10 And not only this; but when Rebecca also had conceived by one, even by our father Isaac;
11 (For the children being not yet born, neither having done any good or evil, that the purpose of God according to election might stand, not of works, but of Him Who calls;)
12 It was said to her, The elder shall serve the younger.
13 As it is written, Jacob have I loved, but Esau have I hated.
14 What shall we say then? Is there unrighteousness with God? God forbid.
15 For he says to Moses, I will have mercy on whom I will have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I will have compassion.
16 So then it is not of desire, nor of running, but of God's mercy.
17 For the scripture says to Pharaoh, Even for this same purpose have I raised you up, that I might show my power in you, and that my name might be declared throughout all the Earth.
18 Therefore He has mercy on whom He desires to have mercy, and whom He desire to harden, He hardens.
19 You will say then to me, Why does he yet find fault? For who has resisted his will?
20 no but, Oh man, who are you who reply against God? Shall the thing formed say to Him Who formed it, Why have you made me thus?
21 has not the potter power over the clay, of the same lump to make one vessel into honor, and another into dishonor?
22 What if God, desiring to show His wrath, and to make His power known, endured with much long-patience the vessels of wrath fitted to destruction:
23 And that He might make known the riches of His glory on the vessels of mercy, which He had before prepared to glory,
24 Even us, whom He has 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, that in the place where it was said to them, you are not my people; there they shall be called the mature sons of the living God.
27 Esaias also cries concerning Israel, Though the number of the mature son of Israel be as the sand of the sea, a remnant shall be saved:
28 For He will finish the thing uttered, and cut it short in righteousness: because the Lord will quickly act rightly on the Earth according to His utterance.
29 And as Esaias said before, Except the Lord of Sabbath had left us a seed, we had been as Sodom, and been made like to Gomorrah.
30 What shall we say then? That the Gentiles, which followed not after righteousness, have attained to righteousness, even the righteousness which is of supernatural belief and trust.
31 But Israel, which followed after the law of righteousness, has not attained to the law of righteousness.
32 Why? Because they didn't seek it by supernatural belief and trust, but as it were by the works of the Law, for they stumbled at that Stumbling Stone;
33 As it is written, "I lay in Zion a Stumbling Stone and Rock of Offense: and whoever believes on Him shall not be ashamed."