The term “remnant” is associated with both judgment and salvation in the Bible’s historical narratives. Many Bible stories feature the theme of a faithful minority standing apart from the larger culture. This remnant is often in opposition to a faithless majority. God punishes the many who disobey him and go their way and works His purposes through His chosen and blessed remnant. The remnant carries out God’s plans for His future children as well. Let's look more into this fascinating and significant biblical concept.
What Is the Biblical Definition of Remnant?
The word “remnant” means leftovers or remainders, and in the Bible, a remnant describes the people who remain faithful to God after a large-scale catastrophe, intended as punishment for the majority of people. Biblical remnants are eventually victorious after trials and tribulation.
The story of Ruth is a good example of what a remnant means in the Bible. Though Ruth lost her husband, sons, home, and close ties with her parents, she was redeemed by her relationship with her mother-in-law and second husband. As the narrative in the book of Ruth reads, a wealthy relative of her mother-in-law notices her gleaning in his field and says, “I’ve been told all about what you have done for your mother-in-law since the death of your husband—how you left your father and mother and your homeland and came to live with a people you did not know before. May the Lord repay you for what you have done” (Ruth 2:11-12). The Lord uses this man, Boaz, to bless Ruth for her faithfulness. Ruth follows her heart and God’s plan for her life when she says to Naomi, her mother-in-law, “Where you go, I will go” (Ruth 1:16). We see disaster and salvation in Ruth’s life story, traits of a remnant’s experience.
Though Ruth may have felt like a leftover after her husband’s and sons’ deaths, she followed Naomi from their adopted country of Moab to Bethlehem, their birthplace. At dinner at Boaz’s home, she enjoys eating “all she wanted and had some left over” for Naomi’s dinner (Ruth 2:14, 2:18) . Back in the field the next day, she gathers an ephah, about 30 pounds of threshed grain—a sizable amount (Ruth 2:14, 2:18). Ruth finds good fortune after great losses. She is saved because of her loyalty to Naomi and the attention of Boaz. Ruth’s faithfulness is an example of the Bible’s larger remnant’s faithfulness to God.
How Is the Remnant Described in the Old Testament?
Other Old Testament remnants include Noah and his family escaping the flood and Lot’s family fleeing from Sodom and Gomorrah when God firebombed it. God erases these parts of His creation because of their wickedness. The remnants spared by God are family remnants, good people in worlds of sinful people.
Large-scale Old Testament remnants include the thousands of exiles led by Moses out of oppressive Egypt into their God’s Promised Land and the Israelites captured and removed from Jerusalem by powerful Assyrian and Babylon armies, acting as God’s judgment on wayward Hebrew people.
Hebrews headed for the Promised Land and, later in Bible history, the captives in Babylon have wavering faith in God. The prophet Isaiah had warned the Hebrew people to remain faithful to God or He would exercise his anger with them in severe punishment:
If you are willing and obedient,
you will eat the good things of the land;
but if you resist and rebel,
you will be devoured by the sword.
For the mouth of the Lord has spoken ((Isaiah 1:19-20).
Isaiah’s prophecy came true in 722 B.C. and 721 B.C.: the Assyrian army attacked Israel’s Northern Kingdom, capturing elite Hebrew people and resettling them in the Assyrian empire (Isaiah 10:5-6). The Hebrews taken from Israel were replaced with native Assyrians in a plan meant to dilute the Hebrew culture This devastation for Israel was part of God’s plan:
“Woe to the Assyrian, the rod of my anger,
in whose hand is the club of my wrath!
I send him against a godless nation,
I dispatch him against a people who anger me” (Isaiah 10:5-6).
The next brutal action against Israel was the takeover of the Southern Kingdom of Judah by Babylon in 597 and 598 B.C. Babylonians executed the king and his sons and razed the Temple. Hebrew elite were taken out of their land and became captives in Babylon. Only the poorest people remained in Jerusalem. It was a huge loss for God’s chosen people, where “By the rivers of Babylon—there we sat down and there we wept when we remembered Zion” (Psalm 137:1).
The people of God removed from the Northern and Southern Kingdoms of Israel and those remaining in Israel during this tumultuous time were Biblical remnants, no longer part of the religious or political majorities in their homeland or in their new countries. Moses had warned the Israelites that they needed to remain faithful to the God of Abraham or they were doomed to be scattered:
”After you have had children and grandchildren and have lived in the land a long time—if you then become corrupt and make any kind of idol, doing evil in the eyes of the Lord your God and arousing his anger, I call the heavens and the earth as witnesses against you this day that you will quickly perish from the land that you are crossing the Jordan to possess. You will not live there long but will certainly be destroyed. The Lord will scatter you among the peoples.” (Deuteronomy 4:25-27)
There was always hope God would reunite and restore Israel, however. Isaiah 6:13 says the tree was cut down, but the stump remained. The Lord said Israel had “a sure foundation” (Isaiah 28:16). The Old Testament prophet Micah was specific in proclaiming that God planned for the nation of Israel to be reunited in its homeland: “I will surely gather all of you, Jacob; I will surely bring together the remnant of Israel . . .
Their King will pass through before them, the Lord at their head” (Micah 2:12-13). Old Testament prophets gave hope to the floundering Hebrew nation.
The Babylonian captivity lasted more than 70 years until King Cyrus of Persia released the Israelites. The Israelite remnants of the Old Testament, returning to Jerusalem, had faith that God would restore Israel and rebuild the temple.
A biblical remnant is always focused on a better future for its people. It is the remnant that keeps God’s plans alive, whether the remnant is Noah and his family or the homeless Hebrew nation.
What Does the New Testament Say about the Remnant?
Across the ages, God’s children have been disobedient. Jesus quoted Isaiah’s criticism of the Hebrew people to describe the unfaithful people of the Gospel’s time:
This is why I speak to them in parables:
Though seeing, they do not see;
though hearing, they do not hear or understand.
In them is fulfilled the prophecy of Isaiah:
You will be ever hearing but never understanding;
you will be ever seeing but never perceiving.
For this people’s heart has become calloused (Matthew 13:13-15 quoting Isaiah 6:10).
Believers in the first century, during and after Jesus’ time on earth, were a remnant, a threatened minority in the Roman Empire. Roman leaders in Jerusalem had put Jesus to death, because they considered Him a threat to their established government and religion. As a result of this distrust by the Romans, the apostles were jailed and many died as martyrs, but the early Church persevered in keeping the good news of Jesus’ resurrection. Paul wrote that the new Christian remnant was a spiritual Israel: “So too, at the present time there is a remnant chosen by grace” (Romans 11:5 ). The remnant of the new Christian church included not only Jews, but also Greeks and other ethnic groups (Galatians 3:28-29). The apostle Paul traveled widely to spread the gospel in other countries, and he wrote fourteen books of the New Testament, collections of letters that encouraged new Christians then and inspire and teach Christians today.
Why Does God Preserve a Remnant?
The doctrine of the remnant includes the idea that a controlling majority will not thwart God's purposes on earth, lived out through His children. God’s chosen people, whether by birth or adoption (Romans 8:14-17), are a challenged but blessed minority. Remnant groups live with uneasiness: their lives are subject to personal danger, change, and mystery. As Jesus prayed, “I have given them thy word; and the world hath hated them, because they are not of the world, even as I am not of the world” (John 17:14). Jesus told his disciples that they would be persecuted for their beliefs, even as He was persecuted. Still, they followed God and His son Jesus. God’s presence on earth is kept alive by His remnant people.
The apostle Paul promised the disciples that their reward for their faithfulness would be a place in God’s kingdom. Paul wrote, “But our citizenship is in heaven. And we eagerly await a Savior from there, the Lord Jesus Christ” (Philippians 3:20). A remnant is not at home in society; it does not share the values of the majority. Instead, a Christian remnant lives to glorify God as Christ taught us.
Jesus’ last words to the disciples is his promise that He will always be with them: “And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age” (Matthew 28:20). In the Bible, in both the Old and New Testaments, there are many occurrences of the phrase “I will never leave you nor forsake you” (Genesis 28:15; Deuteronomy 31:8; Isaiah 41:10-13). God sent leaders, prophets, and apostles to support His spiritual remnants—and in the ultimate sacrifice, He sent Jesus. He is always with us and continues to watch over us.
Living as God’s Faithful Remnant in a Broken World
Christians practicing the way of Jesus today may also be seen as a remnant group. Popular culture doesn’t encourage the fruits of the Spirit—love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. (Galatians 5:22-23). And turning the other cheek is not the prevailing way of the world (Matthew 5:39). As the salt of the earth (Matthew 5:13), however, we are commissioned to live and spread the Gospel of Christ on earth. Though sometimes feeling like refugees, like the biblical remnants, in community, Christians can keep God’s loving promises to His people alive.
Remnant groups in the Bible made it through the wilderness with Moses, out of captivity in Babylon, and survived the oppressive Roman Empire. God is still watching over His people, leading them home.
Photo credit: ©GettyImages/KlausVedfelt
