14 What then shall we say? Is God unjust? Certainly not!
15 For He says to Moses: “I will have mercy on whom I have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I have compassion.”
16 So then, it does not depend on man’s desire or effort, but on God’s mercy.
17 For the Scripture says to Pharaoh: “I raised you up for this very purpose, that I might display My power in you, and that My name might be proclaimed in all the earth.”
18 Therefore God has mercy on whom He wants to have mercy, and He hardens whom He wants to harden.
19 One of you will say to me, “Then why does God still find fault? For who can resist His will?”
20 But who are you, O man, to talk back to God? Shall what is formed say to Him who formed it, “Why did You make me like this?”
21 Does not the potter have the right to make from the same lump of clay one vessel for special occasions and another for common use?
22 What if God, intending to show His wrath and make His power known, bore with great patience the vessels of His wrath, prepared for destruction?
23 What if He did this to make the riches of His glory known to the vessels of His mercy, whom He prepared in advance for glory—
24 including us, whom He has called not only from the Jews, but also from the Gentiles?
25 As He says in Hosea: “I will call them ‘My People’ who are not My people, and I will call her ‘My Beloved’ who is not My beloved,”
26 and, “It will happen that in the very place where it was said to them, ‘You are not My people,’ they will be called ‘sons of the living God.’”
27 Isaiah cries out concerning Israel: “Though the number of the Israelites is like the sand of the sea, only the remnant will be saved.
28 For the Lord will carry out His sentence on the earth thoroughly and decisively.”
29 It is just as Isaiah foretold: “Unless the Lord of Hosts had left us descendants, we would have become like Sodom, we would have resembled Gomorrah.”