Leviticus 25:55
For it is to me that the people of Israel are servants. They are my servants whom I brought out of the land of Egypt: I am the Lord your God.
Tag: Owned by God
The entire book of Leviticus (and the entire Law, for that matter) is based upon the premise that God "owns" the people of Israel. God "redeemed" them when He rescued them from Egypt. God "choose" them when they were but seed in Abraham. In Acts 7 when Stephen preached his one and only sermon, he spoke of the fact that God chose the nation of Israel:
Acts 7:2-3
And Stephen said:
“Brothers and fathers, hear me. The God of glory appeared to our father Abraham when he was in Mesopotamia, before he lived in Haran, and said to him, ‘Go out from your land and from your kindred and go into the land that I will show you.’
You can't read the OT without understanding that God "owns" the nation of Israel. Therefore, He, and He alone, can place claims on them. In the NT believers in Christ are called, by Paul and other writers, Servants of Christ. We are redeemed and therefore "owned" by Him. We may operate under grace and not law, but the premise is still true: We are not our own, but we are "bought" with a price - the blood of Jesus (1 Corinthians 6:20). It is only after we confess, believe and live in light of our redemption can we fully understand and follow God's demands for living. We are His. Therefore our serving Him is out of gratitude for what He did for us in the redemption process.
No comments:
Post a Comment