In the second chapter of Hosea we read:
And I will sow her for myself in the land. And I will have mercy on No Mercy, and I will say to Not My People, "You are my people" and he shall say, "You are my God." [Hosea 2:23]E. B. Pusey writes:
So God's mercies again overflow His threatenings. He had threatened to Israel, that he (Israel) would be unpitied, and no more His people. In reversing His sentence, He embraces in the arms of His mercy all who were not His people, and says of them all, that they should be my people and beloved. At one and the same time, was Israel to be thus multiplied, and pity was to be shown to those not pitied, and those who were not God's people were to become His people.
At one and the same time were those promises fulfilled in Christ; the one through the other; Israel was not multiplied by itself, but through the bringing-in of the Gentiles. Nor was Israel alone, or chiefly, brought into a new relation with God. The same words promised the same mercy to both Jew and Gentile, that all should be one in Christ, all one Jezreel, one Spouse to Himself, one Israel of God, one Beloved; and that all, with one voice of jubilee should cry to Him, "my Lord and my God."
. . . . when God thus anew called them His people, they by His grace would obey His call, and surrender themselves wholly to Him. For to say "my God" is to own an exclusive relation to God alone. It is to say, my Beginning and my End, my Hope and My Salvation, my Whole and only God in Whom Alone I will hope, Whom Alone I will fear, love, worship, trust in, obey and serve, with all my heart, mind, soul and strength; by God and my All." [The Minor Prophets: A Commentary. Volume 1: p.41.]
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