Study Desk

It does not, therefore, depend on human desire or effort, but on God's mercy.^(af)

For Scripture says to Pharaoh: "I raised you up for this very purpose, that I might display my power in you and that my name might be proclaimed in all the earth."^[g](ag)

Therefore God has mercy on whom he wants to have mercy, and he hardens whom he wants to harden.^(ah)

One of you will say to me:^(ai) "Then why does God still blame us?^(aj) For who is able to resist his will?"^(ak)

But who are you, a human being, to talk back to God?^(al) "Shall what is formed say to the one who formed it,^(am) ‘Why did you make me like this?'"^[h](an)

Does not the potter have the right to make out of the same lump of clay some pottery for special purposes and some for common use?^(ao)

What if God, although choosing to show his wrath and make his power known, bore with great patience^(ap) the objects of his wrath—prepared for destruction?^(aq)

What if he did this to make the riches of his glory^(ar) known to the objects of his mercy, whom he prepared in advance for glory^(as)—

even us, whom he also called,^(at) not only from the Jews but also from the Gentiles?^(au)

As he says in Hosea: "I will call them ‘my people' who are not my people; and I will call her ‘my loved one' who is not my loved one,"^[i](av)

and, "In the very place where it was said to them, ‘You are not my people,' there they will be called ‘children of the living God.'"^[j](aw)

Isaiah cries out concerning Israel: "Though the number of the Israelites be like the sand by the sea,^(ax) only the remnant will be saved.^(ay)

For the Lord will carry out his sentence on earth with speed and finality."^[k](az)

It is just as Isaiah said previously: "Unless the Lord Almighty^(ba) had left us descendants, we would have become like Sodom, we would have been like Gomorrah."^[l](bb)

What then shall we say?^(bc) That the Gentiles, who did not pursue righteousness, have obtained it, a righteousness that is by faith;^(bd)

but the people of Israel, who pursued the law as the way of righteousness,^(be) have not attained their goal.^(bf)

Why not? Because they pursued it not by faith but as if it were by works. They stumbled over the stumbling stone.^(bg)

As it is written: "See, I lay in Zion a stone that causes people to stumble and a rock that makes them fall, and the one who believes in him will never be put to shame."^[m](bh)