19 So now you’ll ask me: Then how can God blame us, because how could anyone resist whatever he wants to do? 20 [ref]Oh human, it is you who’s talking back to God? Can the creature that was made talk back to the maker and ask: ‘Why did you make me like this?’ 21 Doesn’t the potter have the right to split the lump of clay and make a beautiful bowl out of half and a chamber pot out of the other half?

22 What if God wanted to display his severe anger and to demonstrate his power, but then showed great patience to the objects of his severe anger that he’d prepared for destruction? 23 What if he did that in order to make the riches of his greatness known to the objects of his mercy that he’d prepared for honour? 24 Yes, he even called us, not only from among the Jews but also from non-Jews. 25 The prophet Hosea even wrote:[ref]

“I’ll be calling those ‘my people’

who’re not my people,

and I’ll be calling as ‘my love’

the woman who was never loved.

26 [ref]In the place where they said,

‘You’re not my people’

that’s where they’ll be called ‘children of the living God’.”

27 [ref]The prophet Isayah called out about Israel: ‘Even though the Israelis are as numerous as grains of sand, only the minority of them will be saved 28 because Yahweh will be abbreviating and terminating his message on the earth.’ 29 [ref]As Isayah had previously written: ‘If army commander Yahweh hadn’t left us some descendants, we would have become like the peoples of Sodom and Gomorrah.’