God

Who will bring any charge against God’s elect? It is God who justifies.

Who is there to condemn us? For Christ Jesus, who died, and more than that was raised to life, is at the right hand of God—and He is interceding for us.

neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.

the people of Israel. Theirs is the adoption as sons; theirs the divine glory and the covenants; theirs the giving of the law, the temple worship, and the promises.

Theirs are the patriarchs, and from them proceeds the human descent of Christ, who is God over all, forever worthy of praise! Amen.

It is not as though God’s word has failed. For not all who are descended from Israel are Israel.

So it is not the children of the flesh who are God’s children, but it is the children of the promise who are regarded as offspring.

Yet before the twins were born or had done anything good or bad, in order that God’s plan of election might stand,

So it is written: “Jacob I loved, but Esau I hated.”

What then shall we say? Is God unjust? Certainly not!

For He says to Moses: “I will have mercy on whom I have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I have compassion.”

So then, it does not depend on man’s desire or effort, but on God’s mercy.

For the Scripture says to Pharaoh: “I raised you up for this very purpose, that I might display My power in you, and that My name might be proclaimed in all the earth.”

Therefore God has mercy on whom He wants to have mercy, and He hardens whom He wants to harden.

But who are you, O man, to talk back to God? Shall what is formed say to Him who formed it, “Why did You make me like this?”

What if God, intending to show His wrath and make His power known, bore with great patience the vessels of His wrath, prepared for destruction?

What if He did this to make the riches of His glory known to the vessels of His mercy, whom He prepared in advance for glory—

including us, whom He has called not only from the Jews, but also from the Gentiles?

As He says in Hosea: “I will call them ‘My People’ who are not My people, and I will call her ‘My Beloved’ who is not My beloved,”

and, “It will happen that in the very place where it was said to them, ‘You are not My people,’ they will be called ‘sons of the living God.’”

For the Lord will carry out His sentence on the earth thoroughly and decisively.”

as it is written: “See, I lay in Zion a stone of stumbling and a rock of offense; and the one who believes in Him will never be put to shame.”

Brothers, my heart’s desire and prayer to God for the Israelites is for their salvation.

For I testify about them that they are zealous for God, but not on the basis of knowledge.

Because they were ignorant of God’s righteousness and sought to establish their own, they did not submit to God’s righteousness.