24. For we are the people he called, not only from among the Jews but also from among the Gentiles.
25. This is what he says in the book of Hosea:“The people who were not mineI will call ‘My People’.The nation that I did not loveI will call ‘My Beloved’.
26. And in the very place where they were told, ‘You are not my people,’there they will be called the children of the living God.”
27. And Isaiah exclaims about Israel: “Even if the people of Israel are as many as the grains of sand by the sea, yet only a few of them will be saved;
28. for the Lord will quickly settle his full account with the world.”
29. It is as Isaiah had said before, “If the Lord Almighty had not left us some descendants, we would have become like Sodom, we would have been like Gomorrah.”
30. So we say that the Gentiles, who were not trying to put themselves right with God, were put right with him through faith;
31. while God's people, who were seeking a law that would put them right with God, did not find it.
32. And why not? Because they did not depend on faith but on what they did. And so they stumbled over the “stumbling stone”
33. that the scripture speaks of:“Look, I place in Zion a stonethat will make people stumble,a rock that will make them fall.But whoever believes in him will not be disappointed.”