New Testament in a Year

¹⁶ So then it is not of him that willeth, nor of him that runneth, but of God who showeth mercy.

¹⁷ For the Scripture saith unto Pharaoh, “Even for this same purpose have I raised thee up, that I might show My power in thee, and that My name might be declared throughout all the earth.”

¹⁸ Therefore hath He mercy on whom He will have mercy, and whom He will, He hardeneth.

¹⁹ Thou wilt say then unto me, “Why doth He yet find fault, for who hath resisted His will?”

²⁰ But nay, O man, who art thou that repliest against God? Shall the thing formed say to him that formed it, “Why hast thou made me thus?”

²¹ Hath not the potter power over the clay to make from the same lump one vessel unto honor and another unto dishonor?

²² What if God, choosing to show His wrath and to make His power known, endured with much longsuffering the vessels of wrath fitted for destruction;

²³ and this, that He might make known the riches of His glory on the vessels of mercy, whom He had prepared before unto glory,

²⁴ even us whom He hath called, not of the Jews only, but also of the Gentiles?

²⁵ As He saith 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 that in the place where it was said unto them, ‘Ye are not My people,’ there shall they be called the children of the living God.”

²⁷ Isaiah also crieth concerning Israel: “Though the number of the children of Israel be as the sand of the sea, a remnant shall be saved.

²⁸ For He will finish the work and cut it short in righteousness, because a short work will the Lord make upon the earth.”

²⁹ And as Isaiah said before: “Except the Lord of Sabaoth had left us a seed, we would have been as Sodom and been made like unto Gomorrah.”

³⁰ What shall we say then? That the Gentiles, who followed not after righteousness, have attained to righteousness, even the righteousness which is by faith;

³¹ but Israel, who followed after the law of righteousness, hath not attained to the law of righteousness.

³² Why so? Because they sought it not 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 whosoever believeth in Him shall not be ashamed.”