Romans 9:14-33 - God's Sovereign Choice To Show Mercy

¹⁴ What shall we say then? Is there unrighteousness with God? May it never be. ¹⁵ For he said to Moses, "I will have mercy on whom I have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I have compassion."

¹⁶ So then it is not of him who wills, nor of him who runs, but of God who has mercy. ¹⁷ For the Scripture says to Pharaoh, "For this very purpose I caused you to be raised up, that I might show in you my power, and that my name might be proclaimed in all the earth."

¹⁸ So then, he has mercy on whom he desires, and he hardens whom he desires.

¹⁹ You will say then to me, "Why does he still find fault? For who withstands his will?" ²⁰ But indeed, O man, who are you to reply against God? Will the thing formed ask him who formed it, "Why did you make me like this?" ²¹ Or hasn't the potter a right over the clay, from the same lump to make one part a vessel for honor, and another for dishonor? ²² What if God, willing to show his wrath, and to make his power known, endured with much patience vessels of wrath made for destruction, ²³ and that he might make known the riches of his glory on vessels of mercy, which he prepared beforehand for glory, ²⁴ us, whom he also called, not from the Jews only, but also from the Gentiles? ²⁵ As he says also in Hosea, "I will call them 'my people,' which were not my people; and her 'beloved,' who was not beloved."

²⁶ "It will be that in the 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, "If the number of the sons of Israel are as the sand of the sea, it is the remnant who will be saved; ²⁸ for the Lord will fulfill his word completely and without delay upon the earth."

²⁹ As Isaiah has said before, "Unless the Lord of hosts had left us a seed, we would have become like Sodom, and would have been made like Gomorrah."

³⁰ What shall we say then? That the Gentiles, who did not follow after righteousness, attained to righteousness, even the righteousness which is of faith; ³¹ but Israel, following after a law of righteousness, did not arrive at that law. ³² Why? Because they did not seek it by faith, but as it were by works. They stumbled over the stumbling stone; ³³ even as it is written, "Behold, I lay in Zion a stumbling stone and a rock that will make them fall; and no one who believes in him will be put to shame."