18. Everything depends on what God decides to do, and he can either have pity on people or make them stubborn.
19. Someone may ask, “How can God blame us, if he makes us behave in the way he wants us to?”
20. But, my friend, I ask, “Who do you think you are to question God? Does the clay have the right to ask the potter why he shaped it the way he did?
21. Doesn't a potter have the right to make a fancy bowl and a plain bowl out of the same lump of clay?”
22. God wanted to show his anger and reveal his power against everyone who deserved to be destroyed. But instead, he patiently put up with them.
23. He did this by showing how glorious he is when he has pity on the people he has chosen to share in his glory.
24. Whether Jews or Gentiles, we are those chosen ones,
25. just as the Lord says in the book of Hosea,“Although they are notmy people,I will make them my people.I will treat with lovethose nationsthat have never been loved.
26. “Once they were told,‘You are not my people.’But in that very placethey will be calledchildren of the living God.”
27. And this is what the prophet Isaiah said about the people of Israel,“The people of Israelare as manyas the grains of sandalong the beach.But only a few who are leftwill be saved.
28. The Lord will be quickand sure to do on earthwhat he has warnedhe will do.”
29. Isaiah also said,“If the Lord All-Powerfulhad not spared someof our descendants,we would have been destroyedlike the cities of Sodomand Gomorrah.”
30. What does all this mean? It means that the Gentiles were not trying to be acceptable to God, but they found that he would accept them if they had faith.
31-32. It also means that the people of Israel were not acceptable to God. And why not? It was because they were trying to be acceptable by obeying the Law instead of by having faith in God. The people of Israel fell over the stone that makes people stumble,
33. just as God says in the Scriptures,“Look! I am placing in Ziona stone to make peoplestumble and fall.But those who have faithin that one will neverbe disappointed.”