¹⁸

Therefore He has mercy on whom He wills, and whom He wills He hardens.

¹⁹

You will say to me then, "Why does He still find fault? For who has resisted His will?"

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But indeed, O man, who are you to reply against God? Will the thing formed say to him who formed it, "Why have you made me like this?"

²¹

Does not the potter have power over the clay, from the same lump to make one vessel for honor and another for dishonor?

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What if God, wanting to show His wrath and to make His power known, endured with much longsuffering the vessels of wrath prepared for destruction,

²³

and that He might make known the riches of His glory on the vessels of mercy, which He had prepared beforehand for glory,

²⁴

even us whom He 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 in the place where it was said to them, 'You are not My people,' There they shall be called sons of the living God."

²⁷

Isaiah also cries out concerning Israel:"Though the number of the children of Israel be as the sand of the sea, The remnant will be saved.

²⁸

For He will finish the work and cut it short in righteousness, Because the LORD will make a short work upon the earth."

²⁹

And as Isaiah said before:"Unless the LORD of Sabaoth had left us a seed, We would have become like Sodom, And we would have been made like Gomorrah."

³⁰

What shall we say then? That Gentiles, who did not pursue righteousness, have attained to righteousness, even the righteousness of faith;

³¹

but Israel, pursuing the law of righteousness, has not attained to the law of righteousness.

³²

Why? Because they did not seek it by faith, but as it were, by the works of the law. For they stumbled at that stumbling stone.

³³

As it is written:"Behold, I lay in Zion a stumbling stone and rock of offense, And whoever believes on Him will not be put to shame."