Jeremiah 11:4

(Ver. 4.) Cursed is the man who does not listen to the words of this covenant that I commanded your fathers on the day that I brought them out of the land of Egypt, out of the iron furnace, saying: Listen to my voice, and do all that I command you, and you shall be my people, and I will be your Lord (or God). Not because of the privileges of lineage, not because of the injury of circumcision, and the rest of the Sabbath, but because of obedience, God becomes the people of Israel, and Israel becomes his people. And here indeed He speaks as if to slaves, so that they may please God. But in the Gospel, the Lord says to His disciples: 'You are my friends,' He says, 'if you do what I command you. I will no longer call you servants, because a servant does not know what his master is doing. But I have called you friends, because I have made known to you everything that I have heard from My Father.' (John 15:14-15). And when they have become My friends, they pass on to being children: For as many as received Him, He gave them the power to become children of God. (John 1:12). Where he instructs his friends and disciples: Be perfect as your Father in heaven is perfect (Matthew 5:48); he is commanding likeness, not equality. And there is obedience to the commandments, here is the likeness of God. And when he says: On the day when I brought them out of the land of Egypt, out of the iron furnace, he gives us understanding that the furnace and the iron furnace, and the kindling of tribulation and punishment signify magnitude, not a specific place of punishment, prepared with iron material.

"In the day," He says, "when I brought them up out of the land of Egypt, out of the iron furnace." Us too God has led out "of the land of Egypt, out of the iron furnace," especially according to him who has understood what is written in the Revelation of John, that the place "where their Lord was crucified is called spiritually Sodom and Egypt." For if it "is called spiritually Egypt," and this Egypt is not that Egypt which is spiritually called Egypt, for this one is perceptible to the senses, it is clear that if you understand the Egypt which is spiritually so called and go out from it, you are the one who has gone out "of the land of Egypt and out of the iron furnace," and it is said to you: "Hear my voice and do according to all" these things. Then there is a promise of God to those who hear, if they do what He has commanded, saying: "And you shall be to me a people, and I will be to you a God." Not everyone who says he is the people of God is the people of God; that people, then, which had promised to be the people of God, heard "you are not my people" in the words "for you are not my people," and it was said to that people "not my people," and again this people was called a people. For "they moved me to jealousy with what is no god"—and He speaks concerning those men—"they provoked me to anger with their idols; and I will move them to jealousy with what is no nation, with a nation without understanding I will provoke them to anger." We, then, have become a people to God, and "the righteousness of God is to the people," to the people from the nations. For this people is born all at once, as it is also said in the prophet: "Has a nation been born at once?" And a nation was born at once, when the Savior had come and in one day five thousand believed, and on another day three thousand were added. And it is possible to see a whole people being born by the word of God, and the barren woman, who formerly did not bear, bearing all at once, to whom it is said: "Rejoice, O barren one who does not bear, break forth and cry out, you who are not in travail, for many are the children of the desolate one, more than of her who has the husband." The church is desolate—desolate of the law, this one was desolate of God. But that synagogue was said to have a husband, the law.