[19] One of you will say to me: “Then why does God still blame us? For who is able to resist his will?” [20] But who are you, a human being, to talk back to God? “Shall what is formed say to the one who formed it, ‘Why did you make me like this?’ ” [21] Does not the potter have the right to make out of the same lump of clay some pottery for special purposes and some for common use? [22] What if God, although choosing to show his wrath and make his power known, bore with great patience the objects of his wrath—prepared for destruction? [23] What if he did this to make the riches of his glory known to the objects of his mercy, whom he prepared in advance for glory— [24] even us, whom he also 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 loved one’ who is not my loved one,” [26] and, “In the very place where it was said to them, ‘You are not my people,’ there they will be called ‘children of the living God.’ ” [27] Isaiah cries out concerning Israel: “Though the number of the Israelites be like the sand by the sea, only the remnant will be saved. [28] For the Lord will carry out his sentence on earth with speed and finality.” [29] It is just as Isaiah said previously: “Unless the Lord Almighty had left us descendants, we would have become like Sodom, we would have been like Gomorrah.” [30] What then shall we say? That the Gentiles, who did not pursue righteousness, have obtained it, a righteousness that is by faith; [31] but the people of Israel, who pursued the law as the way of righteousness, have not attained their goal. [32] Why not? Because they pursued it not by faith but as if it were by works. They stumbled over the stumbling stone. [33] As it is written: “See, I lay in Zion a stone that causes people to stumble and a rock that makes them fall, and the one who believes in him will never be put to shame.”
