The Qualities of the Remnant

UV 1114/10,000 The Qualities that Set Us Apart

The remnant of Israel shall not do iniquity, nor speak lies; neither shall a deceitful tongue be found in their mouth: for they shall feed and lie down, and none shall make them afraid.


Zephaniah 3 v 13

Believers in every nation will only be a remnant, a portion of people who are set apart for God, who have peculiar characteristics or qualities. They will not form the brute majority but be a silent but influential minority. They will be distinguished by the presence of God in their lives and certain qualities of character, head and heart. They will not sin or speak lies or deceit. They will feed on the Word of God and will be secure in their knowledge of God such that nothing or no one can make them fear anything. The promises of God are their safety net. These are the qualities that distinguish those who qualify to receive salvation by grace and faith in Christ. In the world, we normally have to demonstrate we have the qualities required before we receive a qualification. But in the Kingdom of God, we are first qualified by grace and then we develop the qualities.

It might appear that the charter of qualities of a citizen of the spiritual Israel or Zion or the Kingdom of God are all described in negative terms. But in actual point of fact, the characteristic of believers that they feed on the Word of God implies that we develop very positive qualities described in various characters and chiefly, the qualities we see in the person of Jesus. We are called to be agents of change, the salt and the light of the world. As salt, we preserve the peace, increase the taste and value of our life experiences. As salt is crystalline, it does not mix with the dust and sand or the sinful ways of the world. Similarly, our spiritual DNA structure changes. As light, we disperse the darkness in the world. We become agencies to bring people from out of the darkness of ignorance into the light, by bringing people who do not know God into a personal relationship with Him. We enable people to see what normally and naturally cannot be perceived by them.
The person who has faith in Jesus has an absolute sense of security. The word “ none” implies that nothing, absolutely nothing can make him or her afraid: neither death nor depth, neither threats or weapons, neither disease nor loss, neither spiritual enemies or human foes. The opposite of fear is not courage but it is faith. We will be able to end each day with peaceful rest or sleep and eventually sleep or rest in the Lord after our days are over. To modify the lines of the poet Longfellow, “ Something attempted, something done (for God, for Jesus, for man) has earned a night’s repose.”

Prateep V Philip