Whether Jews or Gentiles, we are those chosen ones, just as the Lord says in the book of Hosea, "Although they are not my people, I will make them my people. I will treat with love those nations that have never been loved. "Once they were told, You are not my people.' But in that very place they will be called children of the living God."
And this is what the prophet Isaiah said about the people of Israel, "The people of Israel are as many as the grains of sand along the beach. But only a few who are left will be saved.
The Lord will be quick and sure to do on earth what he has warned he will do." Isaiah also said, "If the Lord All-Powerful had not spared some of our descendants, we would have been destroyed like the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah."
Israel and the Good News
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.