Tuesday | 12 May 2026
The first word of the cross is, ‘You are not My people’. Hos 1:10. This message is proclaimed with anger from the mouth of our King and Lord, as He reveals the need for us to suffer the rejection and pain that belongs to the awareness of being co‑cursed with Christ. He implores us saying, ‘Let this word sink down into your ears. You are a faithless and perverse generation or person. How long shall I continue to be with you and put up with you?’ This is a rebuke that we must all hear.
Inherent in this message is an invitation with a condition. He says, ‘If you desire to come after Me, you must deny yourself, take up your cross daily and follow Me. By offering, you must cease to save your life by demanding of Me that I save your life, which was the petition of the unrepentant thief who died with Me. Then you must lay your life down in offering and lose it for My sake. Then you will save it.’ This is the second word of the cross, and it declares the conditions of peace that belong to citizenship of the kingdom of God. Responding in faith obedience to this command is how we obtain salvation.
As we are co‑crucified with Christ, His word spoken in the place of His crucifixion – ‘You are not My people’ – is now, ‘You are now My people. You belong to Me and to the Father. You are a citizen of My kingdom and I know you by name for I have remembered you who were lost to Me and forgotten by Me.’ He asks us to remember the heights from where we have fallen, to repent and to do the first works of faith. Rev 2:5. This is the work of joining the fellowship of Christ’s dying and living on the cross.
Further Study:
Romans 2
References:
Hos 1:10
Yet the number of the children of Israel shall be as the sand of the sea, which cannot be measured or numbered. And it shall come to pass in the place where it was said to them, ‘You are not My people,’ there it shall be said to them, ‘You are sons of the living God.’
Rev 2:5
Remember, therefore, from where you have fallen; repent and do the first works, or else I will come to you quickly and remove your lampstand from its place — unless you repent.