20. On the contrary, O man, who are you who answers back to God? Will what is molded say to the one who molded it, “Why did you make me like this”?
21. Or does the potter not have authority over the clay, to make from the same lump a vessel that is for honorable use and one that is for ordinary use?
22. And what if God, wanting to demonstrate his wrath and to make known his power, endured with much patience vessels of wrath prepared for destruction?
23. And he did so in order that he could make known the riches of his glory upon vessels of mercy that he prepared beforehand for glory,
24. us whom he also called, not only from the Jews but also from the Gentiles?
25. As he also says in Hosea, “I will call those who were not my people, ‘My people,’ and those who were not loved, ‘Loved.’
26. And it will be in the place where it was said to them, ‘You are not my people,’ there they will be called ‘sons of the living God.’ ”
27. And Isaiah cries out concerning Israel, “Even if the number of the sons of Israel is like the sand of the sea, the remnant will be saved,
28. for the Lord will execute his sentence thoroughly and decisively upon the earth.”
29. And just as Isaiah foretold, “If the Lord of hosts had not left us descendants, we would have become like Sodom and would have resembled Gomorrah.”
30. What then shall we say? That the Gentiles, who did not pursue righteousness, attained righteousness—even the righteousness that is by faith.
31. But Israel, pursuing the law of righteousness, did not attain to the law.
32. Why that? Because they did not pursue it by faith, but as if by works. They stumbled over the stone that causes people to stumble,
33. just as it is written, “Behold, I am laying in Zion a stone that causes people to stumble, and a rock that causes them to fall, and the one who believes in him will not be put to shame.”