God’s Seeking Love

Hosea and Gomer. Photo credit: OCSA.net

Hosea is a story of God’s amazing grace, a story of a love that will not let go. It goes against conventional wisdom and challenges the very concept of traditional love: where boy meets girl and both fall in love with each other, got married, had children, and lived happily ever after.

Hosea is the metaphor of the long-suffering husband of the unfaithful wife; an analogy of God’s unfailing love to an apostate Israel.

The Book of Hosea was likely written between 755 and 725 B.C. by the prophet Hosea, son of Beeri[i]. The prophet’s name (Hosea) means “Yahweh is salvation”[ii].

In Hosea 3:1, the Bible says: The Lord said to me, “Go, show your love to your wife again, though she is loved by another man and is an adulteress. Love her as the Lord loves the Israelites, though they turn to other gods and love the sacred raisin cakes.”

The beginning of chapter three (3) reflects the heart of Hosea’s entire message: God’s love toward those who are not worthy of it. God was showing Hosea and commanding him to demonstrate a revolutionary concept of love – though it broke His very heart. God was challenging Hosea to live out the message that he is preaching. For us, the most difficult part of being a Christian is how to apply God’s word in our lives. Because to live as a Christian is to live the message of Christ.

Throughout the Old Testament era, God’s people had placed a confining limitation on God’s love. They believed that God’s mercy and love were limited to those who feared Him and followed His commandments; in other words, God’s mercy was for those who merited it. But they were wrong.

GOD’S LOVE IS RADICAL

When Jesus Christ came, he redefined love. Paul expressed it like this: “Very rarely will anyone die for a righteous person, though for a good person someone might possibly dare to die.   But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us”. (Romans 5:7-8 NIV).

That is unconditional love, a love that does not make sense! Thus, through Hosea’s experience with his unfaithful wife, Gomer, God was revealing the love of his ‘new covenant,’ a love that seeks all people, regardless of their moral, social, or spiritual condition. It foreshadows a time when God in His kindness and mercy will bless not only the Israelites but even the Gentiles as well.

MAN’S INABILITY TO FORGIVE

How many special people we’ve lost because of our inability to forgive? How many relationships we have thrown to waste because we can’t forgive?

If we look at the response of the Lord Jesus Christ when Peter asked him in Matt. 18:21-22 “Then Peter came to Jesus and asked, “Lord, how many times shall I forgive my brother or sister (or husband or wife or friend or Boss or colleague) who sins against me? Up to seven times?” Jesus answered, “I tell you, not seven times, but seventy-seven times”. (emphasis added)

That is a lot of forgiveness. And that is a lot to take. In fact, Jesus was simply telling Peter that God’s standard of forgiveness is much more than what we can possibly imagine as humans.

There is no way Hosea could have obeyed God’s command to ‘go again, love the same woman, Gomer, (now) an adulteress’ with human love. By every human standard, Gomer had forfeited her right to any degree of acceptance by her fellow humans.

Yet in this command, God was giving Hosea the first and basic lesson of New Testament evangelism: God’s love goes out to humanity not because humanity is lovely but because God is love.

The Bible talks about a love that bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, and endures all things. A love that does not count the wrongs nor keeps record of the wrongs.

This is the kind of love that Hosea had to learn as he went out to seek Gomer. And it is the kind of love with which God seeks sinful people. Christ came to seek and to save the lost.  We were once lost, but now are found.

 

[i] https://www.gotquestions.org/Book-of-Hosea.html

[ii] https://www.biblestudytools.com/dictionary/hosea/