The Right and Wrong Way to Read Jeremiah 29:11

Present and Future

I think it could be helpful to take one example of a Christian applying a very familiar verse rightly and even not rightly. Let’s take Jeremiah 29:11. It’s very familiar to many Christians. It’s been claimed, and ever since I was a boy as a believer, I've heard this verse. This is what we read: “For I know the plans I have for you, declares the Lord, plans for welfare and not for evil, to give you a future and a hope.”

I want hope. I want a future. The wrong way to apply that verse would just be to take it right where it is, as if it’s not part of a greater context, to not consider who the “you” is. And that “you” in this passage is actually a promise to a restored Israel. In the preceding verse, Jeremiah declares—or God declares through Jeremiah—that there will be seventy years of exile, seventy years of judgment. But after that judgment, God is going to act. He’s going to work on behalf of a remnant. He’s going to draw them to himself. And it’s in that context, after what we could call a spiritual death, that he’s going to bring a spiritual resurrection. In Jeremiah it’s not just a remnant of Jews who enjoy that resurrection. It’s a remnant from the nations, whom the New Testament translators often call Gentiles.

It's people like me, associated with this new people of God who’ve been transformed and for whom God is working for our good. But he’s doing so only through Jesus. All of our hope, all of our trust is resting in him. And so any well-being we enjoy is because of Christ. I can’t claim an Old Testament promise apart from magnifying and celebrating the person of Christ.

And then I do so remembering that Christ came once, and Christ will come again. He secured every spiritual blessing now but the future inheritance later. Every promise is yes in Jesus, yet we have to consider what he has secured for us already and what will only be finally realized in the future. Perfect well-being, no more tears—that’s future. Soul-satisfying comfort even in the midst of suffering—that’s now. Election, adoption, regeneration, sanctification—all of that is now as we await the full inheritance that is coming.

Jason S. DeRouchie is the author of Delighting in the Old Testament: Through Christ and for Christ.

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