On the contrary, friend, who are you anyway that you would answer back to God? Can the clay that is molded ask the man who molds it, "Why did you make me like this?"

As Isaiah again has foretold, "Unless the Lord of hosts had left us some descendants, we would have fared as Sodom did and would have been like Gomorrah."

while Israel, though ever in pursuit of a law that would bring right standing, did not attain to it.

For they were ignorant of God's way of right standing and were trying to set up one of their own, and so would not surrender to God's way of right standing.

But if it is by His unmerited favor, it is not at all conditioned on what they have done. If that were so, His favor would not be favor at all.

Now through the unmerited favor God has shown me I would say to every one of you not to estimate himself above his real value, but to make a sober rating of himself, in accordance with the degree of faith which God has apportioned to him.

For I would venture to mention only what Christ has accomplished through me in bringing the heathen peoples to obedience, by word and by work,