Romans 9
1 With Christ as my witness, I speak with
utter truthfulness. My conscience and the Holy Spirit confirm it.
2 My heart is filled with bitter sorrow
and unending grief
3 for my people, my Jewish brothers and
sisters. I would be willing to be forever cursed—cut off from Christ!—if that
would save them.
4They are the people of Israel, chosen to be
God’s adopted children. God revealed his glory to them. He made covenants with
them and gave them his law. He gave them the privilege of worshiping him and
receiving his wonderful promises.
5 Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob are their
ancestors, and Christ himself was an Israelite as far as his human nature is
concerned. And he is God, the one who rules over everything and is worthy of
eternal praise! Amen.
6 Well then, has God failed to fulfill his
promise to Israel? No, for not all who are born into the nation of Israel are
truly members of God’s people!
7 Being descendants of Abraham doesn’t
make them truly Abraham’s children. For the Scriptures say, “Isaac is the son
through whom your descendants will be counted,” though Abraham had other
children, too.
8 This means that Abraham’s physical
descendants are not necessarily children of God. Only the children of the
promise are considered to be Abraham’s children.
9 For God had promised, “I will return
about this time next year, and Sarah will have a son.”
10 This son was our ancestor Isaac. When he
married Rebekah, she gave birth to twins.
11 But before they were born, before they
had done anything good or bad, she received a message from God. (This message
shows that God chooses people according to his own purposes;
12 he calls people, but not according to
their good or bad works.) She was told, “Your older son will serve your younger
son.”
13 In the words of the Scriptures, “I loved
Jacob, but I rejected Esau.”
14 Are we saying, then, that God was
unfair? Of course not!
15 For God said to Moses, “I will show
mercy to anyone I choose, and I will show compassion to anyone I choose.”
16 So it is God who decides to show mercy.
We can neither choose it nor work for it.
17For the Scriptures say that God told Pharaoh,
“I have appointed you for the very purpose of displaying my power in you and to
spread my fame throughout the earth.”
18 So you see, God chooses to show mercy to
some, and he chooses to harden the hearts of others so they refuse to
listen.
19Well then, you might say, “Why does God blame
people for not responding? Haven’t they simply done what he makes them
do?”
20 No, don’t say that. Who are you, a mere
human being, to argue with God? Should the thing that was created say to the
one who created it, “Why have you made me like this?”
21 When a potter makes jars out of clay,
doesn’t he have a right to use the same lump of clay to make one jar for
decoration and another to throw garbage into?
22 In the same way, even though God has the
right to show his anger and his power, he is very patient with those on whom
his anger falls, who are destined for destruction.
23 He does this to make the riches of his
glory shine even brighter on those to whom he shows mercy, who were prepared in
advance for glory.
24 And we are among those whom he selected,
both from the Jews and from the Gentiles.
25 Concerning the Gentiles, God says in the
prophecy of Hosea, “Those who were not my people, I will now call my people.
And I will love those whom I did not love before.”
26 And, “Then, at the place where they were
told, ‘You are not my people,’ there they will be called ‘children of the
living God.’”
27 And concerning Israel, Isaiah the
prophet cried out, “Though the people of Israel are as numerous as the sand of
the seashore, only a remnant will be saved.
28 For the LORD will carry out his sentence
upon the earth quickly and with finality.”
29 And Isaiah said the same thing in
another place: “If the LORD of Heaven’s Armies had not spared a few of our
children, we would have been wiped out like Sodom, destroyed like
Gomorrah.”
30 What does all this mean? Even though the
Gentiles were not trying to follow God’s standards, they were made right with
God. And it was by faith that this took place.
31But the people of Israel, who tried so hard to
get right with God by keeping the law, never succeeded.
32 Why not? Because they were trying to get
right with God by keeping the law instead of by trusting in him. They stumbled
over the great rock in their path.
33 God warned them of this in the
Scriptures when he said, “I am placing a stone in Jerusalem that makes people
stumble, a rock that makes them fall. But anyone who trusts in him will never
be disgraced.”
Romans 10
1 Dear brothers and sisters, the longing
of my heart and my prayer to God is for the people of Israel to be saved.
2 I know what enthusiasm they have for
God, but it is misdirected zeal.
3 For they don’t understand God’s way of
making people right with himself. Refusing to accept God’s way, they cling to
their own way of getting right with God by trying to keep the law.
4 For Christ has already accomplished the
purpose for which the law was given. As a result, all who believe in him are
made right with God.
5 For Moses writes that the law’s way of
making a person right with God requires obedience to all of its commands.
6 But faith’s way of getting right with
God says, “Don’t say in your heart, ‘Who will go up to heaven?’ (to bring
Christ down to earth).
7And don’t say, ‘Who will go down to the place
of the dead?’ (to bring Christ back to life again).”
8 In fact, it says, “The message is very
close at hand; it is on your lips and in your heart.” And that message is the
very message about faith that we preach:
9 If you openly declare that Jesus is Lord
and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be
saved.
10 For it is by believing in your heart
that you are made right with God, and it is by openly declaring your faith that
you are saved.
11 As the Scriptures tell us, “Anyone who
trusts in him will never be disgraced.”
12 Jew and Gentile are the same in this
respect. They have the same Lord, who gives generously to all who call on
him.
13 For “Everyone who calls on the name of
the LORD will be saved.”
14 But how can they call on him to save them
unless they believe in him? And how can they believe in him if they have never
heard about him? And how can they hear about him unless someone tells
them?
15 And how will anyone go and tell them
without being sent? That is why the Scriptures say, “How beautiful are the feet
of messengers who bring good news!”
16 But not everyone welcomes the Good News,
for Isaiah the prophet said, “ LORD, who has believed our message?”
17 So faith comes from hearing, that is,
hearing the Good News about Christ.
18 But I ask, have the people of Israel
actually heard the message? Yes, they have: “The message has gone throughout
the earth, and the words to all the world.”
19 But I ask, did the people of Israel
really understand? Yes, they did, for even in the time of Moses, God said, “I
will rouse your jealousy through people who are not even a nation. I will
provoke your anger through the foolish Gentiles.”
20 And later Isaiah spoke boldly for God,
saying, “I was found by people who were not looking for me. I showed myself to
those who were not asking for me.”
21 But regarding Israel, God said, “All day
long I opened my arms to them, but they were disobedient and rebellious.”
