Shared Word Translation
Romans 9
God’s Sovereign Choice
I am speaking the truth in Christ—I am not lying; my conscience bearing witness with me in the Holy Spirit— that I have great sorrow and unceasing anguish in my heart.
For I could wish that I myself were accursed and cut off from Christ for the sake of my brothers, my kinsmen according to the flesh, who are Israelites, to whom belong the adoption and the glory and the covenants and the giving of the law and the worship and the promises, whose are the fathers, and from whom is the Christ according to the flesh, who is over all, God blessed forever. Amen.
But it is not as though the word of God has failed. For not all those from Israel are Israel, nor because they are Abraham’s seed are they all children, but “Through Isaac shall your seed be named.”
That is, it is not the children of the flesh who are children of God, but the children of the promise are counted as seed. For this is the word of promise: “At this time I will come, and Sarah shall have a son.”
And not only this, but also Rebekah, having conceived by one man, Isaac our father— for though they were not yet born and had done nothing good or bad, so that the purpose of God according to election might stand, not from works but from the one who calls— it was said to her, “The older will serve the younger.”
Just as it is written, “Jacob I loved, but Esau I hated.”
What then shall we say? Is there injustice with God? May it never be! 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 the one who wills or the one who runs, but on God who shows mercy.
For the Scripture says to Pharaoh, “For this very purpose I raised you up, that I might show my power in you and that my name might be proclaimed in all the earth.” So then he has mercy on whom he wills, and whom he wills he hardens.
You will say to me then, “Why does he still find fault? For who has resisted his will?” But who are you, O man, to answer back to God? Will what is formed say to the one who formed it, “Why did you make me like this?”
Or does the potter not have authority over the clay, to make from the same lump one vessel for honor and another for dishonor?
And what if God, wanting to show his wrath and to make known his power, endured with much patience vessels of wrath prepared for destruction, and in order that he might make known the riches of his glory upon vessels of mercy, which he prepared beforehand for glory—
even us, whom he also called, not only from the Jews but also from the Gentiles?
God Calls Both Jews and Gentiles
As indeed he says in Hosea,
“I will call those who were not my people, ‘My people,’
and her who was not beloved, ‘Beloved.’”
“And it shall be that in the place where it was said to them,
‘You are not my people,’
there they will be called sons of the living God.”
And Isaiah cries out concerning Israel,
“Though the number of the sons of Israel be as the sand of the sea, only the remnant will be saved;
for the Lord will execute his word on the earth, finishing it and cutting it short.”
And just as Isaiah said before,
“Unless the Lord of hosts had left us a seed,
we would have become like Sodom
and been made like Gomorrah.”
Israel’s Unbelief
What then shall we say? That Gentiles, who did not pursue righteousness, attained righteousness—even the righteousness that is by faith; but Israel, pursuing a law of righteousness, did not attain that law.
Why? Because it was not from faith, but as from works; they stumbled over the stone of stumbling,
just as it is written,
“Behold, I lay in Zion a stone of stumbling and a rock of offense,
and the one who believes in him will not be put to shame.”