God the Great Lover – Part 2

And so the story continues ‘Yahweh had been a husband to Israel but he had known more pain than pleasure in the relationship. His holy love had been violated and betrayed times without number.’ So why not start over, be done with Israel and find another, a nation who would stay true and would love like no other? Because then God would be letting down his side of the covenant and like a person heartbroken, love is not easily forgotten or let go of.

In describing the love of God for Israel this is said ‘It is the character of the divine love that it is neither bland, universal benevolence nor a fickle, short-lived passion, but an altogether gracious and extraordinary love that chooses one out of a thousand and holds on to what it has chosen at all costs. And at Calvary, the divine love incarnate will pay all the costs. As with Amos so with Hosea, God has the last word, and the last word is grace.’

There are three themes repeated through the book of Hosea; ‘the seriousness of sin, the reality of judgment and the certainty of love triumphing in the end.’ Love triumphs because God loves with a ‘transcendent love which does not allow human sin and failure to have the last word.’

I find the concept of ‘God humiliated’ too hard to comprehend. It grieves me to think of it and yet there it is in the example of Hosea and his wife. You see, played out in front of Israel is their relationship with God, through the lives of Hosea and Gomer, he (Hosea) lives the history of Israel and the suffering of God. And yes God is humiliated; ‘the words ‘So I bought her’ (3:2) are filled with humiliation, pain and the priceless nobility of love.’ The prophet had to scrape together all he had to buy back his wife and as is shown many years later God himself gave his most precious possession his only son to buy back his beloved. God suffers pain and sorrow just like we do and here in Hosea we see it for ‘love makes us vulnerable and no body of people can grieve God like the church, the people of God, whenever they are worldly, callous or hurtful to one another.’

I find it interesting that Israel again and again turned from God. After all they had been through and witnessed. They walked with Him, they had such a close connection and yet they still turned. This confirms now our need for faith. If Israel saw God and His great works and could still turn from Him surely our need of faith without seeing should be of greater importance to us and therefore clung to.

‘Nothing less than such reverent awe is appropriate for Israel, who has learned in deprivation both who Yahweh is and who Baal is not, both the importance of covenant loyalty and the terror of its absence.’ And yet they struggled...