Who’s In and Who’s Out: From “Not My People” to “My People”
From the very beginning, Elohim’s speech-acts created distinctions between heaven and earth, light and dark, water and land, etc. (Genesis 1). Later, in Eden, Adam distinguishes between the different kinds of animals by naming them, using speech – as Elohim did in Genesis 1. It is part of our God-image-bearing nature to distinguish between one thing and another. Our rebellion, however, has distorted this quality in us. Instead of using this power to make the world an intelligible place for humans to exist, we have, for millennia, used it against one another.
In our world today, some are in, and those who are out are defined by who they are and who they are not. Bearing an image, a likeness, becomes a fragile project built on opposition: us versus them; beloved versus hated; insider versus outsider. Hosea’s prophecy interrupts this pattern with a scandalous reversal: “You are not my people” becomes “You are children of the living God” (Hosea 1:10).
The logic of God’s love dismantles the human compulsion to exclude; the initially good idea of distinguishing turned into a means of casting out. He reveals his mercy (Hosea 1:6-7, 9; 1 Peter 2:10), and it is not constrained by our social boundaries (Acts 10:13-16; Ephesians 2:15). The very ones cast off are the ones welcomed in – and not just welcomed in, but compelled (Luke 14:23), urged (2 Corinthians 5:20), and admonished to not delay in responding to his offer of severe mercy (Matthew 11:12; Romans 11:22) to come in. This new people is not a product of some sentimental, general acceptance, but an allegiance to a covenant —the covenant that defines Elohim’s people (Hosea 6:1-2, 2:18-20, 6:7, 8:1, 14:1-2).
This new identity isn’t granted through bloodline or ritual performance. It comes through God’s deliberate act of naming, of calling. What God names becomes real. “Not beloved” becomes “beloved.” This naming is not just a change in status—it’s the creation of a new people altogether, a people formed not by shared ancestry or national covenant but by grace. Hosea’s prophetic imagination saw beyond the ruin of Israel’s unfaithfulness to a reconstitution of God’s people on a deeper foundation: not on striving but on receiving grace.
Peter picks up Hosea’s language and applies it to a scattered group of Gentile believers, declaring that they, too, are now God’s people. The boundary of belonging is redrawn—not by human competition or tribal exclusion, but by divine mercy. In this new community, no one gains identity by standing over against another. Instead, everyone stands on level ground under the new covenant made in Christ’s body and blood, known by God, named by God, and gathered into a people whose unity rests not in sameness but in shared reception of mercy. The old rivalries dissolve in the light of a calling that no one could earn.
There is probably no more beautiful expression of this truth than what was spoken by the poor Moabite widow, who, by birth and nationality, was left outside God’s merciful covenant. But who, through her allegiance to the God of Israel, became one of the mightiest saints of old:
But Ruth said,
“Do not urge me to leave you or to return from following you.
For where you go, I will go, and where you lodge, I will lodge.
Your people shall be my people, and your God my God.
Where you die, I will die, and there will I be buried.
May the Lord do so to me and more also if anything but death parts me from you.”
Christ Tribe 