Hosea 1:8

"Now when she had weaned Lo-ruhamah, she conceived and bare a son. And Jehovah said, Call his name Lo-ammi: for ye are not my people, and I will not be your God."

"Conceived and bare a son ..." Again, it is not stated that she bare a son to Hosea, the inference certainly being allowable that the child belonged not to Hosea, but to another. The name which God pronounced upon that second son was "Not my People," indicating "the completeness and finality of the breach"[25] between God and the covenant nation. There is a specific reference in this to the covenant itself. Jeremiah had stated the essential heart of the covenant thus: "I will be your God, and you shall be my people" (Jeremiah 7:23); and in the name of the third child, God specifically cancelled it. The names of all three children tend to this inevitable conclusion. The people had wandered far away from the teaching of God. Myers interpreted the meaning of Jezreel as "defection, a falling away from God."[26] Lo-ruhamah, "unloved," documented the rejection of God's love by the people; and "Not my People" is the symbolical announcement of the covenant's abrogation by God as a consequence of the prior action on Israel's part. The progressive deterioration of the people's relationship with God was thus most circumstantially and effectively symbolized by the successive names given to Gomer's children. Given likewise described the meaning of these three names: "They are national ruin, the loss of divine favor, and the forfeiture of their proud position as the chosen people of Jehovah."[27] The great significance of this narrative clearly lies in the deliberate choice by Hosea of the intimate terminology of the divine covenant with Israel; "And in doing so, he clearly announced the fracture of the covenant between Yahweh and his bride Israel."[28] The close connection of all this with the Pentateuch was pointed out thus by Mays:

"Hosea here uses a verbal form for the divine name which is found only in Exodus 3:14, where the name Yahweh is revealed to Moses, literally saying, "I am not your I-AM. This use, instead of the expected "your God" heightens the radical character of the declaration ... an outright declaration by Yahweh that the covenant is no longer in force!"[29]

With unusually clear discernment, Ironside noted that:

"This Lo-ammi sentence remains unrepealed to the present day. At the Babylonian captivity, Judah also came under it, and all Israel have been in its shadow ever since."[30]

The only chosen people God has ever had at any time throughout the present dispensation of his grace is to be fond in the "New Israel," or church of the living God "in Christ." Even a casual reading of the New Testament reveals that all of the terminology once employed to describe God's relationship with fleshly Israel has been preempted and applied without equivocation to the church of Jesus Christ. Thus it is called the royal priesthood, the holy nation, the heirs of the promise to Abraham, etc., even the term "chosen people" being thus applied in 1 Peter 2:9. Only the souls "baptized into Christ" are Abraham's seed and heirs according to the promise (Galatians 3:26-28).