3. Of God’s Sovereignty
Which Is out of Faith
- You will say to me then, Why does He still find fault? For who withstands His will?
- But rather, O man, who are you who answer back to God? Shall the thing molded say to him who molded it, Why did you make me thus?
- Or does not the potter have authority over the clay to make out of the same lump one vessel unto honor and another unto dishonor?
- And what if God, wishing to demonstrate His wrath and make His power known, endured with much long-suffering vessels of wrath fitted for destruction,
- In order that He might make known the riches of His glory upon vessels of mercy, which He had before prepared unto glory,
- Even us, whom He has also called, not only from among the Jews but also from among the Gentiles?
- As He also says in Hosea, I will call those who were not My people My people, and her who was not beloved beloved;
- And it shall be that in the place where it was said to them, You are not My people, there shall they be called sons of the living God.
- And Isaiah cries concerning Israel, Though the number of the sons of Israel be like the sand of the sea, it is the remnant that shall be saved;
- For the Lord will execute His word upon the earth, accomplishing it and cutting it short.
- And as Isaiah has previously said, Unless the Lord of hosts had left us a seed, we would have become like Sodom and been made like Gomorrah.
Which Is out of Faith
- What then shall we say? That the Gentiles who did not pursue righteousness have laid hold of righteousness, but a righteousness which is out of faith;
- But Israel, pursuing a law of righteousness, did not attain to that law.
- Why? Because they pursued it not out of faith, but as it were out of works. They stumbled at the stone of stumbling,
- As it is written, Behold, I lay in Zion a stone of stumbling, a rock of offense, and he who believes on Him shall not be put to shame.
