The good news has been preached to us, just as it was to our people of long ago. But the message they heard didn’t do them any good, because they didn’t embrace it by faith when they heard it.
And, “It’s a stone that causes people to trip, a rock that makes them fall.” People who don’t obey the message trip and fall, just the way God planned it.
By faith Abraham obeyed God and went to the place he would later receive as his own. He did that even though he didn’t know where he was going when God told him to start on his way there.
Wives, follow the lead of your own husbands. If any of them don’t believe God’s word, they may be won over to Christ without words by seeing how their wives live.
But now it has been made known to all the Gentiles through the writings of the prophets, as the eternal God has commanded. Through the revelation of this mystery, the Gentiles are starting to obey God by trusting in him.
Some of the natural branches have been broken off. You Gentiles are like a wild olive branch that has been grafted onto the tree with the other branches. Now you’re enjoying the life-giving sap of the olive tree root.
Through him we received grace to become apostles to the Gentiles and through that grace to bring them to obedience to God by trusting in Jesus. We do this to bring glory to him.