Study Desk

"Once they were told, ‘You are not my people.' But in that very place they will be called children of the living God."

What does all of this mean? It means that the Gentiles were not trying to be acceptable to God, but they found that he would accept them if they had faith.

It also means that the people of Israel were not acceptable to God. And why not? It was because they were trying to be acceptable by obeying the Law instead of by having faith in God. The people of Israel fell over the stone that makes people stumble,

just as God says in the Scriptures, "Look! I am placing in Zion a stone to make people stumble and fall. But those who have faith in that one will never be disappointed."

Dear friends, my greatest wish and my prayer to God is for the people of Israel to be saved.

I know they love God, but they don't understand

what makes people acceptable to him. So they refuse to trust God, and they try to be acceptable by obeying the Law.

But Christ makes the Law no longer necessary for those who become acceptable to God by faith.

Moses said that a person could become acceptable to God by obeying the Law. He did this when he wrote, "If you want to live, you must do all that the Law commands."

But people whose faith makes them acceptable to God will never ask, "Who will go up to heaven to bring Christ down?"

So you will be saved, if you honestly say, "Jesus is Lord," and if you believe with all your heart that God raised him from death.

God will accept you and save you, if you truly believe this and tell it to others.

Am I saying that God has turned his back on his people? Certainly not! I am one of the people of Israel, and I myself am a descendant of Abraham from the tribe of Benjamin.

God did not turn his back on his chosen people. Don't you remember reading in the Scriptures how Elijah complained to God about the people of Israel?

It is the same way now. God was kind to the people of Israel, and so a few of them are still his followers.

just as the Scriptures say, "God made them so stupid that their eyes are blind, and their ears are still deaf."

When Israel rejected God, the rest of the people in the world were able to turn to him. So when God makes friends with Israel, it will be like bringing the dead back to life.

If part of a batch of dough is made holy by being offered to God, then all of the dough is holy. If the roots of a tree are holy, the rest of the tree is holy too.

If God cut away those natural branches, couldn't he do the same to you?

Now you see both how kind and how hard God can be. He was hard on those who fell, but he was kind to you. And he will keep on being kind to you, if you keep on trusting in his kindness. Otherwise, you will be cut away too.