Ruth: A Story of Savlvation
“A chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for God’s own possession, that we may proclaim the excellencies of him who called us out of darkness into his marvelous light. Once we were not a people, but now we are God’s people.”
1 Peter 2:9-10
We read in the book of Ruth that Ruth’s mother-in-law pleads with her to return to home after deciding to go back to Israel from the land of Moab. But despite Naomi’s protests we read in Ruth 1:14 that Ruth clung to her. Ruth clings and the word cling her had the idea of following hard after or abiding closely to.
Why was Ruth clinging? Yes she clung because she loved her mother-in-law, but she also clung because she had a kernel of faith that though she was a Gentile and was not one of God’s people, maybe, just maybe, she could become one of God’s children. Perhaps she thought in the back of her mind, that maybe she could take on a new identity and become a child of God.
Look at how Ruth expresses this in vs. 16-17, “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.”
