¹I am a follower of Christ, and the Holy Spirit is a witness to my conscience. So I tell the truth and I am not lying when I say ²my heart is broken and I am in great sorrow. ³I would gladly be placed under God’s curse and be separated from Christ for the good of my own people. ⁴They are the descendants of Israel, and they are also God’s chosen people. God showed them his glory. He made agreements with them and gave them his Law. The temple is theirs and so are the promises that God made to them. ⁵They have those famous ancestors, who were also the ancestors of Jesus Christ. I pray that God, who rules over all, will be praised forever! Amen.

⁶It cannot be said that God broke his promise. After all, not all of the people of Israel are the true people of God. ^7-8 In fact, when God made the promise to Abraham, he meant only Abraham’s descendants by his son Isaac. God was talking only about Isaac when he promised ⁹Sarah, "At this time next year I will return, and you will already have a son."

¹⁰ Don’t forget what happened to the twin sons of Isaac and Rebekah. ^11-12Even before they were born or had done anything good or bad, the Lord told Rebekah that her older son would serve the younger one. The Lord said this to show that he makes his own choices and that it wasn’t because of anything either of them had done. ¹³That’s why the Scriptures say that the Lord liked Jacob more than Esau.

¹⁴Are we saying that God is unfair? Certainly not! ¹⁵The Lord told Moses that he has pity and mercy on anyone he wants to. ¹⁶Everything then depends on God’s mercy and not on what people want or do. ¹⁷In the Scriptures the Lord says to Pharaoh of Egypt, "I let you become Pharaoh, so that I could show you my power and be praised by all people on earth." ¹⁸Everything depends on what God decides to do, and he can either have pity on people or make them stubborn.

¹⁹Someone may ask, "How can God blame us, if he makes us behave in the way he wants us to?" ²⁰But, 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? ²¹Doesn’t a potter have the right to make a fancy bowl and a plain bowl out of the same lump of clay?"

²²God wanted to show his anger and reveal his power against everyone who deserved to be destroyed. But instead, he patiently put up with them. ²³He did this by showing how glorious he is when he has pity on the people he has chosen to share in his glory. ²⁴Whether Jews or Gentiles, we are those chosen ones, ²⁵just as the Lord says in the book of Hosea,

"Although they are not
my people,
  I will make them my people.
I will treat with love
those nations
  that have never been loved.
26"Once they were told,
  ‘You are not my people.’
But in that very place
they will be called
  children of the living God."

²⁷And this is what the prophet Isaiah said about the people of Israel,

"The people of Israel
  are as many
as the grains of sand
  along the beach.
But only a few who are left
  will be saved.
28The Lord will be quick
  and sure to do on earth
what he has warned
  he will do."

²⁹Isaiah also said,

"If the Lord All-Powerful
had not spared some
  of our descendants,
we would have been destroyed
like the cities of Sodom
  and Gomorrah."

³⁰What does all of 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. ^31-32It also means that the people of Israel were not acceptable to God. And why not? It was because they were trying[c] 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, ³³just as God says in the Scriptures,

"Look! I am placing in Zion
a stone to make people
  stumble and fall.
But those who have faith
in that one
will never
  be disappointed."