Context No. 2480 of 4322 · Deuteronomy

Deuteronomy 7:1-16: in context

1When the LORD your God brings you into the land where you go to possess it, and casts out many nations before you—the Hittite, the Girgashite, the Amorite, the Canaanite, the Perizzite, the Hivite, and the Jebusite—seven nations greater and mightier than you; 2and when the LORD your God delivers them up before you, and you strike them, then you shall utterly destroy them. You shall make no covenant with them, nor show mercy to them. 3You shall not make marriages with them. You shall not give your daughter to his son, nor shall you take his daughter for your son. 4For that would turn away your sons from following me, that they may serve other gods. So the LORD’s anger would be kindled against you, and he would destroy you quickly. 5But you shall deal with them like this: you shall break down their altars, dash their pillars in pieces, cut down their Asherah poles, and burn their engraved images with fire. 6For you are a holy people to the LORD your God. The LORD your God has chosen you to be a people for his own possession, above all peoples who are on the face of the earth. 7The LORD didn’t set his love on you nor choose you, because you were more in number than any people; for you were the fewest of all peoples; 8but because the LORD loves you, and because he desires to keep the oath which he swore to your fathers, the LORD has brought you out with a mighty hand and redeemed you out of the house of bondage, from the hand of Pharaoh king of Egypt. 9Know therefore that the LORD your God himself is God, the faithful God, who keeps covenant and loving kindness to a thousand generations with those who love him and keep his commandments, 10and repays those who hate him to their face, to destroy them. He will not be slack to him who hates him. He will repay him to his face. 11You shall therefore keep the commandments, the statutes, and the ordinances which I command you today, to do them. 12It shall happen, because you listen to these ordinances and keep and do them, that the LORD your God will keep with you the covenant and the loving kindness which he swore to your fathers. 13He will love you, bless you, and multiply you. He will also bless the fruit of your body and the fruit of your ground, your grain and your new wine and your oil, the increase of your livestock and the young of your flock, in the land which he swore to your fathers to give you. 14You will be blessed above all peoples. There won’t be male or female barren among you, or among your livestock. 15The LORD will take away from you all sickness; and he will put none of the evil diseases of Egypt, which you know, on you, but will lay them on all those who hate you. 16You shall consume all the peoples whom the LORD your God shall deliver to you. Your eye shall not pity them. You shall not serve their gods; for that would be a snare to you.

Moses tells Israel that God has chosen them as his own treasured people, and he is careful to rule out the flattering explanation. The LORD did not set his love on you and choose you because you were more numerous than other peoples, he says, for you were few, not many. It was not their size, their strength, or their merit. It was simply that the LORD loved them and meant to keep the promise he had sworn to their fathers.

The passage sits in a hard context of conquest, and its commands belong to that ancient setting. But the heart of it is a truth that runs straight through to the gospel: God's choosing love is grounded in himself, not in anything impressive about the chosen. Israel was small and often faithless, and still God set his love on them, because he loved them, a reason that circles back to his own heart rather than their worth. That is either maddening or the most freeing thing imaginable, depending on how badly we want to have earned it.

Do I secretly think God loves me for something impressive in me, or can I rest in the truth that he loves me simply because he loves me?

Sources

Deuteronomy 7:7: The LORD didn't set his love on you nor choose you, because you were more in number than any people; for you were the fewest of all peoples.
Deuteronomy 7:8: but because the LORD loves you, and because he desires to keep the oath which he swore to your fathers.
1 John 4:10: In this is love, not that we loved God, but that he loved us, and sent his Son as the atoning sacrifice for our sins.