¹⁹ One of you will say to me: ‘Then why does God still blame us? For who is able to resist his will?’ ²⁰ But who are you, a human being, to talk back to God? ‘Shall what is formed say to the one who formed it, “Why did you make me like this?”’ ²¹ Does not the potter have the right to make out of the same lump of clay some pottery for special purposes and some for common use?

²² What if God, although choosing to show his wrath and make his power known, bore with great patience the objects of his wrath – prepared for destruction? ²³ What if he did this to make the riches of his glory known to the objects of his mercy, whom he prepared in advance for glory – ²⁴ even us, whom he also 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 loved one” who is not my loved one,’

²⁶ and,

‘In the very place where it was said to them,
    “You are not my people,”
    there they will be called “children of the living God.”’

²⁷ Isaiah cries out concerning Israel:

‘Though the number of the Israelites be like the sand by the sea,
    only the remnant will be saved.
²⁸ For the Lord will carry out
    his sentence on earth with speed and finality.’

²⁹ It is just as Isaiah said previously:

‘Unless the Lord Almighty
    had left us descendants,
we would have become like Sodom,
    we would have been like Gomorrah.’