Part 9

008:034 Who is there to condemn them? Christ Jesus died, or rather has risen to life again. He is also at the right hand of God, and is interceding for us.

008:035 Who shall separate us from Christ's love? Shall affliction or distress, persecution or hunger, nakedness or danger or the sword?

008:036 As it stands written in the Scripture, "For Thy sake they are, all day long, trying to kill us. We have been looked upon as sheep destined for slaughter."

008:037 Yet amid all these things we are more than conquerors through Him who has loved us.

008:038 For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither the lower ranks of evil angels nor the higher, neither things present nor things future, nor the forces of nature,

008:039 nor height nor depth, nor any other created thing, will be able to separate us from the love of God which rests upon us in Christ Jesus our Lord.

009:001 I am telling you the truth as a Christian man--it is no falsehood, for my conscience enlightened, as it is, by the Holy Spirit adds its testimony to mine--

009:002 when I declare that I have deep grief and unceasing anguish of heart.

009:003 For I could pray to be accursed from Christ on behalf of my brethren, my human kinsfolk--for such the Israelites are.

009:004 To them belongs recognition as God's sons, and they have His glorious Presence and the Covenants, and the giving of the Law, and the Temple service, and the ancient Promises.

009:005 To them the Patriarchs belong, and from them in respect of His human lineage came the Christ, who is exalted above all, God blessed throughout the Ages. Amen.

009:006 Not however that God's word has failed; for all who have sprung from Israel do not count as Israel,

009:007 nor because they are Abraham's true children. But the promise was "Through Isaac shall your posterity be reckoned."

009:008 In other words, it is not the children by natural descent who count as God's children, but the children made such by the promise are regarded as Abraham's posterity.

009:009 For the words are the language of promise and run thus, "About this time next year I will come, and Sarah shall have a son."

009:010 Nor is that all: later on there was Rebecca too. She was soon to bear two children to her husband, our forefather Isaac--

009:011 and even then, though they were not then born and had not done anything either good or evil, yet in order that God's electing purpose might not be frustrated, based, as it was, not on their actions but on the will of Him who called them, she was told,

009:012 "The elder of them will be bondservant to the younger."

009:013 This agrees with the other Scripture which says, "Jacob I have loved, but Esau I have hated."

009:014 What then are we to infer? That there is injustice in God?

009:015 No, indeed; the solution is found in His words to Moses, "Wherever I show mercy it shall be nothing but mercy, and wherever I show compassion it shall be simply compassion."

009:016 And from this we learn that everything is dependent not on man's will or endeavour, but upon God who has mercy. For the Scripture said to Pharaoh,

009:017 "It is for this very purpose that I have lifted you so high-- that I may make manifest in you My power, and that My name may be proclaimed far and wide in all the earth."

009:018 This is a proof that wherever He chooses He shows mercy, and wherever he chooses He hardens the heart.

009:019 "Why then does God still find fault?" you will ask; "for who is resisting His will?"

009:020 Nay, but who are you, a mere man, that you should cavil against GOD? Shall the thing moulded say to him who moulded it, "Why have you made me thus?"

009:021 Or has not the potter rightful power over the clay to make out of the same lump one vessel for more honourable and another for less honourable uses?

009:022 And what if God, while choosing to make manifest the terrors of His anger and to show what is possible with Him, has yet borne with long-forbearing patience with the subjects of His anger who stand ready for destruction,