4-5 Guilt And Grace 4-5-1The Extent Of Grace
I want to talk about grace and the absolute nature of our salvation
by grace. But I sense within us all there is a fear that somehow,
we can cheapen our salvation, make it too simple. There is no such
thing as cheap grace- the sheer cost of the blood of Jesus means
that this phrase is a contradiction in terms. But we can cheapen
our understanding of grace by failing to see that it has another
side, another aspect which must be appreciated in order to throw
it into such stark relief. Until we perceive that our sins do indeed
stand ‘against us’, we can’t appreciate the wonder of how powerful
is our advocate and how extraordinary our judge.The extent of grace
is reflected in the Lord’s teaching about being born again
in Jn. 3:3-5. A person neither begets nor bears himself; but the
Lord says that this must happen. The born again person has to receive
a new origin- evidently something we can’t give ourselves.
The new birth is therefore only possible through an acceptance of
grace. Thus in Jn. 1:12,13 a parallel is drawn between “all
who receive him” and those “who were born… of
God”. Going even further, 1 Jn. 5:1 and 1 Jn. 4:8 [noting
the tenses and context] suggest that faith and love are the evidence
of this new birth rather than the cause of it. It is in the end
the Father who draws men and women to Him (Jn. 6:44)- He draws them,
not passively beckons or advises them. The extent of grace explains
countless apparent contradictions and paradoxes throughout God's
relationships with men- e.g. God repeatedly said that He would leave
David with “one tribe” (1 Kings 11:13). But actually by grace He
gave David and Judah two and a half tribes.
There are times when I've woken in the morning and been moved to
pray about something- e.g. a specific person. Later in the day,
that person has horrendous problems, and I have found it so odd
that I prayed for them that very morning. What made me pray for
them? Surely God's direction. In this we see grace- that God even
moves us to pray, so that He can answer the prayers. We're wrong
to think that God passionlessly waits for us to repent or pray to
Him, and then He will forgive or act for us. He loves us, simply
so; and with all love's manipulation of circumstances, seeks to
pour out His love upon us. Thus repentance itself is a gift which
God gives and is not totally upon human initiative (Dt. 4:29-31;
30:1-10; 1 Kings 8:58). The book of Judges reflects this grace of
God- showing, incidentally, that grace isn't only a New Testament
theme. We are so wrong if we imagine that Judges is all about a
cycle of sin, judgment, repentance, raising up a judge-saviour,
salvation and restoration to God. For one thing, the cycles are
never the same- for God is in passionate relationship with His people,
and passionate love doesn't work to the 'same ole same ole' plan
every time. Time and again we find that Israel sin, do not repent
(Jud. 2:19)- and yet all the same God sends them a Saviour. They
are saved without repentance, simply because God pities them (Jud.
2:15,16). They do the very things which God predicted in Deuteronomy
would result in Him breaking the covenant with them- and yet He
does not break His side of the covenant (Jud. 3:1). In
all this we see an altogether profound grace, arising out of God's
passionate love for His people. We simply don't 'get' how passionate
is God's love for us! At times the realization may begin to break
through to us... but the clouds soon return. Yet prolonged, sensitive
reflection upon God's history with Israel brings us back to the
same wonderful reality. Biblical history isn't history in that sense-
it's the story of God's almost obsessive love for His people, which
can make Him appear to others as therefore relatively ignorant
of them. The miserable critics ponder why the Biblical
narratives are so selective, ignoring, e.g., any mention of the
huge battle of Qarqar in 853 BC between Israel and Assyria, even
though this is well attested in other history (1). The answer is
surely that God's love for His people is in a sense obsessive, so
great, that He appears to ignore anything not directly
relevant to that love affair.
The Response To Grace
Such grace can't be passively read about, heard about, reflected
upon. It demands not only action but an abiding sense of responsibility.
"Grace reigns...", Paul said. It is as a King, a master,
that requires our response. When David sinned with Bathsheba, God
didn't read him the act about adultery, lust, murder. He reminded
David instead how He had delivered David by grace from his enemies,
and how He had by grace given him many wives- when this was hardly
God's ideal standard. God made concessions to David's weakness-
and even gave him the wives of Saul. Seeing David was married to
Saul's daughter, this was actually contrary to the spirit of God's
own law. But God had showed David great grace in this. And it was
exactly this which God reminded David of- it was this amazing
grace against which David had sinned (2 Sam. 12:7,8). And perhaps
David appreciated this when he commented: "I have sinned against
the Lord", rather than saying 'Yes, I've broken commandments'.
This is the awfulness of sin- any sin. That we who have known such
grace could so ignore it and act like we never knew. The response
to grace is seen throughout the Old Testament. Israel stood at Sinai
and were told that if they were obedient, then they would be God's
people. But then they were told that actually, God accepted them
anyway as His people. And only then was the Law given to
Moses- with the message that it was to be kept out of gratitude
for what God had already done by grace in saving them just
"simply so", because he loved them and had chosen their
ancestors by grace (Dt. 4:34-40). Likewise it was because
God sanctified Israel that they were to keep the Sabbath (Ex. 31:13,14;
Dt. 5:15). It wasn't that any human obedience made them holy- the
laws were simply an opportunity to respond to the grace shown them.
For God's salvation of them from Egypt, like ours from this world,
was nothing but grace. Pharaoh was condemned and Egypt overthrown
because of his hard heart- but the very word is used to describe
the hardness of Israel's heart at the time (Ex. 32:9; 33:3-5; 34:9).
Israel were really no better than Egypt- just as Egypt was plagued
"so that they could not drink the water" (Ex. 7:24), so
we find Israel in the same situation right after leaving Egypt (Ex.
15:23). As the Egyptians were stripped of their jewellery, so Israel
stripped themselves of it before the golden calf (Ex. 12:36; 33:6).
Indeed, a case can be made that the majority of Israel didn't bother
keeping the Passover even; it was by Moses' faith rather than their
obedience that they were saved, according to Hebrews 11 (see http://www.aletheiacollege.net/mm/4-10-2Did_Israel_Eat_The_Passover.htm
). Because God saved them from Egypt by grace [cp. baptism- 1 Cor.
10:1,2], with they themselves so spiritually weak at the time, still
taking idols of Egypt through the Red Sea with them- therefore
they were to keep the law (Dt. 11:7,8). Because God gave them the
land of Canaan, a land for which they did not labour, didn't do
any 'work' to receive, but were given because "You did a favour
unto them" (Ps. 44:3)- therefore they were to keep
the law (Dt. 26:15,16; 29:8,9; Josh. 23:5,6). David said that he
loved keeping the law because God's testimony to him was
so miraculous (Ps. 119:129 Heb.). There is an awesomeness to God's
grace in all this. Hence the paradox of Ex. 20:20: "Fear not...
that the fear of God may be before your faces". We are not
to fear Him, for such perfect love casts out fear... yet it is exactly
because of the wonder of all this that we live life in some fear
/ awe of misusing and abusing that grace.
Romans 7 and 8
Romans 7 and 8 are so opposed to each on surface level reading.
At the end of Romans 7, Paul is lamenting ‘Oh wretched man that
I am!’. At the end of Romans 8, he is rejoicing in the utter certainty
of salvation, apparently lost for words [even under inspiration]
to gasp out the wonder of it all. So huge is the difference of spirit
that expositor after expositor has concluded that this must all
be read biographically- as if in Romans 7 Paul is speaking of his
life before conversion, and goes on in Romans 8 to describe his
life afterwards. But Greek tenses [unlike Hebrew ones] are precise.
The tenses in Romans 7 make that a very strained reading. Paul is
saying that he right now feels utterly frustrated by his
constant doing that which he doesn’t want to do, his apparent inability
to do good, and his wretchedness.
I submit that the two chapters dovetail together. It was only though
the appreciation of personal sin which we meet in Romans 7 that Paul could
reason through to the paen of praise and confidence which he reaches by
the end of Romans 8.
There are so many breathtaking insights into the extent of grace in Romans
8.
Nothing shall separate us from the love of God in Christ, as revealed
in the cross (Rom. 8:39). The idea of the love of Christ nearly
always refers to the cross(2).
And yet the same word occurs in Heb. 7:26, to remind us that the Son
of God is “separate from sinners”. Here again is the paradox. We are sinners.
And yet we cannot be separated from He who is personally separate from
sinners. Again, the conviction of guilt is required so that we can know
His saving grace. But it’s possible to understand this contradiction as
just that- a contradiction. The Lord Jesus is separate from sinners; but
nothing shall separate us from Him, although we are sinners.
This can be seen as yet another of the many irreconcilable paradoxes which
express the purity of God’s grace. We have elsewhere commented upon the
way that God angrily speaks of permanently rejecting His people, and yet
says in the same breath almost that He has not and will never reject them,
because of His tender love for them.
God ‘spared not’ His own son (Rom. 8:32). The Greek phrase is elsewhere
used about God not sparing people when He assigns them to condemnation
(Rom. 11:21; 2 Cor. 13:2; 2 Pet. 2:4,5). The Lord Jesus knows how not
only sinners feel but how the rejected will feel- for He ‘bore condemnation’
in this sense. We should be condemned. But He as our representative was
condemned, although not personally guilty. He so empathized with us through
the experience of the cross that He came to feel like a sinner,
although He was not one. And thus He has freed us from condemnation. When
Paul asks in Rom. 8:33,34 ‘Who can accuse us? Where are those people?
Who can condemn us, if God justifies us?’, he is alluding to the woman
taken in adultery. For the Lord asked the very same rhetorical questions
on that occasion. Paul’s point is that we each one are that woman. We
are under accusations which we can’t refute. The Lord never denied her
guilt; but He took it away. The Lord comforted her that no man
has nor can condemned her, and He who alone could do so, instead pronounces
her free from condemnation.
We are right now more than conquerors through Christ (Rom. 8:37); and
yet to he who overcomes [s.w. conquers] the Kingdom shall be given (Rev.
3:21). This doesn’t mean we can sit back and do nothing. And so Paul goes
on to exhort us not to be overcome [s.w. conquered] of evil, but to overcome
evil with good (Rom. 13:21).
The wonderful certainty of salvation and freedom from condemnation
is brought out by the wonderful figure of the courtroom. God is the prosecutor- yet He is the one who shall search for Israel's sin, and admit that it cannot be found (Jer. 50:20). God is both judge, advocate for the defence, and prosecutor- and this is God is for us, the guilty! Rom. 8:33,34 develops the figure at length. The person
bringing the complaint of sin against us is God alone- for there
is no personal devil to do so. And the judge who can alone condemn
us is the Lord Jesus alone. And yet we find the one ‘brings the
charge’ instead being the very one who justifies us, or as the Greek
means, renders us guiltless. The one who brings the charge becomes
this strange judge who is so eager to declare us guiltless. And
the judge who can alone condemn, or render guilty, is the very one
who makes intercession to the judge for us- and moreover, the One
who died for us, so passionate is His love. The logic is breathtaking,
literally so. The figures are taken from an earthly courtroom, but
the roles are mixed. Truly “if God be for us [another courtroom
analogy], who can be against us” (Rom. 8:31). This advocate / intercessor
is matchless. With Him on our side, ‘for us’, we cannot possibly
be condemned. Whatever is ‘against us’- our sins- cannot now be
against us, in the face of this mighty advocate. Let’s face it,
the thing we fear more than death is our sin which is ‘against us’.
But the assurance is clear, for those who will believe it. With
an attorney for the defence such as we have, who is also our passionate
judge so desperate to justify us- even they cannot stand ‘against
us’. Rom. 8:38,39 says that neither death nor life can separate
us from the love of God. In what sense could life separate
us from God's love? Surely only in the sense of sins committed in
human life. Yet even these cannot separate us from the love of God
which is so ready and eager to forgive us. This is the extent of
grace; that not even sin, which on one hand separate from God, can
actually separate us from the love of God in Christ. We are often
plagued by a desire to separate out the things for which we are
justly suffering, and things in which we are innocent victims. We
struggle over whether our cancer or her depression is our fault,
or whether we only got into unhealthy behaviours as a result of
others' stressing us... etc. This struggle to understand the balance
between personal guilt and being a victim of circumstance or other
people makes it hard for some people to free themselves from guilt.
Seeking to understand is especially acute when we face death, suffering,
tragedy, or experience broken relationships. How much was I to blame?
In how much was I merely a victim? My determined conclusion is that
it is impossible, at least by any intellectual process, to separate
out that suffering for which we are personally guilty, and that
suffering which we are merely victims of. The cross of Jesus was
not only to remove personal guilt through forgiveness; all our human
sufferings and sicknesses were laid upon Him there. Our burdens,
both of our own guilt and those which are laid upon us by life or
other people, are and were carried by Him who is our total saviour.
Notes
(1) Terrence Fretheim, Deuteronomic History (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1989)
p. 28.
(2) “When Jesus knew that his hour was come that he should
depart out of this world unto the Father, having loved his own
which were in the world, he loved them unto the end” (Jn. 13:1)
“For the love of Christ constraineth us; because we thus
judge, that if one died for all, then were all dead: And that
he died for all, that they which live should not henceforth live
unto themselves, but unto him which died for them, and rose again.”
( 2 Cor. 5:14,15)
“He that spared not his own Son, but delivered him up for
us all, how shall he not with him also freely give us all things?..... Who is he that condemneth? It is Christ that died, yea rather,
that is risen again, who is even at the right hand of God, who
also maketh intercession for us. Who shall separate us from the
love of Christ? shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution,
or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword?” (Rom. 8:32,34,35)
“And walk in love, as Christ also hath loved us, and hath
given himself for us an offering and a sacrifice to God for a
sweetsmelling savour” (Eph. 5:2)
“Husbands, love your wives, even as Christ also loved the
church, and gave himself for it” (Eph 5:25)
“the life which I now live in the flesh I live by the faith
of the Son of God, who loved me, and gave himself for me” (Gal.
2:20)
“Unto him that loved us, and washed us from our sins in his
own blood” (Rev. 1:5)
“Herein is love, not that we loved God, but that he loved
us, and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins” ( 1
Jn. 4:10)
Appendix: The Tragedy Of Hosea: The Extent of grace
The extent of God’s grace
is powerfully reflected through the life of Hosea. Hosea was asked
to manifest the love of God towards Israel, with all the emotional
pain that this involved. The unfaithfulness of Gomer to Hosea represented Israel's idolatry and unfaithfulness to God. The ten commandments taught that adultery was to be paralleled with idolatry. The two tablets each contained five commandments, and each of them were related to the other- thus the second commandment "You shall have no other gods" corresponds to the seventh, "You shall not commit adultery".
The first time the word of the Lord came
to Hosea, he was told to marry “a wife of whoredoms”. Note that this
was “the beginning of the word of the Lord” to him (Hos. 1:2). He’d
have been tempted to just ignore it, to think he’d been dreaming
something, to run away from it. But to his credit, he obeyed. According
to the Mosaic Law, a whore should be burnt. She shouldn’t be married.
Hosea was told to break the letter of the Law, and marry a prostitute.
And he was told to be a father to her “children of whoredoms”. And
so he began what was to be quite a theme in both his life and his
prophecy- that in the face of sin, God shows His grace. We’ve likely
all seen this in our own lives- at our very weakest moments, the
kindness and care of God for us is revealed. Humanly, when someone
does something wrong to us, we respond in anger and dissociation
from them. The grace of God is quite the other way. In the very
depths of Israel’s unfaithfulness, God reminds them through the
prophets of His love for them, and His plan to ultimately save them.
But God’s grace can’t be abused endlessly. Hosea has to name the
subsequent children Jezreel, speaking of God’s plan to avenge Himself
and “to cause to cease the kingdom of the house of Israel”, Lo-ruhamah
(“for I will no more have mercy upon the house of Israel”) and Lo-ammi
(“for ye are not my people”) (Hos. 1:4,6,9). Hosea isn’t the only
example of a person being taught by personal experience how God
Himself feels. The whole parenting experience is another example.
Or take Amos’ message to Amaziah: “Your wife shall be a harlot in
the city [Bethel- the house of God], and your sons and your daughters
shall fall by the sword, and your land [i.e. Amaziah’s personal
family plot] shall be parcelled out by line” (Am. 7:17 RSV). It
was God’s wife who acted as a harlot in the house of God, it was
God’s children who fell by the sword, it was God’s land which was
divided to others. But He wanted Amaziah to know how it feels, to
some extent, to be God. And in our lives there are multiple examples
[if we perceive them] of Him doing likewise, in seeking to explain
to us how He, our Father, really feels.
Children Of Adultery
The usual Biblical
rubric for describing conception and birth is to say that a man
goes in to a woman, she conceives, and bears a child. Hos. 1:3 says
that Gomer conceives and bears a son to Hosea; there is no mention
that he ‘went in’ to her, and in Hos. 1:6,8 we are told simply that
Gomer conceived. The way the final child is called Lo-ammi was because
“ye are not my people” (Hos. 1:9). This suggests that although Hosea
did presumably have sexual relations with Gomer, these children
were not actually conceived from him- i.e. she was continuing her
relations with other men. This suggestion is confirmed by the way
that Hosea asks the children when they are older to plead with their
mother to stop her adultery (Hos. 2:2). Hosea explains further:
“Their mother hath played the harlot: she that conceived them hath
done shamefully: for she said, I will go after my lovers…” (Hos.
2:5). Notice how her conception of the children is said to have
been “shameful”. And in addressing the children, Hosea never calls
them ‘his’ children. In Hos. 2:4, Hosea appears to have been speaking
about the children on his own account, whilst also thereby manifesting
the spirit, feelings and words of Yahweh about His people Israel:
“I will not have mercy upon her children; for they be the children
of whoredoms”. Hosea had initially been told to marry Gomer and
also take on her “children of whoredoms” into his family (1:2),
so it would seem unlikely that his rejection of Gomer’s children
because “they be the children of whoredoms” refers to them. Surely
he refers to what appeared to be ‘his’ children, whom she had borne
after her marriage to him. Note how he calls them “her children”.
The children are described by Hosea as “her children” rather than
“my children” (Hos. 2:6,7)- as if they were not his, although she
bore them whilst newly married to him. Indeed, Gomer appears to
reason in Hos. 2:14 that the children were her lovers’ payment to
her for her sexual services. And in the parallel relationship between
God and Israel, Israel were unfaithful to Yahweh and “engendered
foreign children” (Hos. 5:7). We can learn much about the nature
of Gomer’s behaviour with Hosea by seeing how Israel are described
subsequently in Hosea’s prophecy. So often they are spoken of in
terms of an unfaithful woman, and we are surely intended to understand
that they were epitomized by the woman Gomer. So we can ‘read back’
from what is said about Israel in the prophecy to Gomer personally.
God made the accusation that “[Israel] have dealt treacherously
against the Lord: for they have begotten strange children”, whilst
at the same time claiming to keep the sacrifices and Sabbaths of
the Law (Hos. 5:6,7; 2:11). This would confirm that Gomer acted
as Hosea’s wife, assuring him of her faithfulness, in the same way
as the sacrifices and Sabbaths were intended to reflect Israel’s
exclusive faithfulness to Yahweh.
But when Lo-ammi was born
and named “ye are not my people”, immediately the prophet
is inspired to make a tender prophecy of Israel’s final glory: “Ye
are not my people, and I will not be your God. Yet the number
of the children of Israel shall be as the sand of the sea…it shall
be said unto them, Ye are the sons of the living God” (Hos. 1:9,10;
another example is in 12:8,9; 13:8,9). The word to circle in our
Bibles is “yet”. In the face of all Israel’s sin, in the
face of the inevitable judgment which this attracted, in the very
moment when it is declared, God goes on to speak of His loving salvation.
This is so hard for humans to take on board, called as we are to
manifest this same grace of God. In the heat of the moment of others’
sin against us, we rarely find it in us to think let alone speak
of their ultimate hope of salvation by grace. But this is the challenge
of Hosea.
In an attempt to bring about
Gomer’s repentance, Hosea once addresses his children as “Ammi”
and “Ruhamah” (2:1), i.e. ‘my people’ and ‘I will have mercy’- purposefully
changing the names God had given them. On this basis he appealed
for Gomer’s repentance: “Let her therefore put away her whoredoms”
(Hos. 2:2). As Paul was to later say in so many words, the mercy
and grace of God is intended to lead us to repentance. Rather than
that grace leading to a laissez-faire indifference and continuance
in sin, the very reality of His grace to us in our weak moments
should of itself inspire our repentance. But there is of course
a limit, if we continually refuse: “Lest I strip her naked…and slay
her” (2:3). This was the punishment for a prostitute, a punishment
which she should’ve had right back at the start. But instead of
this punishment, Hosea had married her. We are perhaps nervous to
equate our sinfulness, our rebellion, our unfaithfulness, with Gomer’s
prostitution. But this, surely, is what we are intended to do, and
to thereby perceive the extent of God’s patient love toward us,
to the end that that grace and goodness might lead us to repentance.
Because Hosea had loved this woman, he had feelings of anger- he
desired to strip her naked and slay her, to “discover her lewdness
in the sight of all her lovers, and none shall deliver her out of
my hand” (2:10). These feelings were quite natural. Hosea was the
wounded lover, the betrayed man. And these are exactly the feelings
of God over the unfaithfulness of His people. "She is not my wife and I am not her husband" (Hos. 2:4) is a verbatim quotation from various Babylonian divorce formulas, and was later incorporated into the Talmud as a divorce formula (1). Likewise the threat to strip her naked (Hos. 2:3) was what was done in the case of divorce for adultery; Hosea's threat to withdraw her clothing, her "wool and flax [linen]" in Hos. 2:9 likely refers to the same thing. Yet Hosea keeps wanting Gomer to return to him; he wishes to divorce her, and yet in his heart keeps coming back to her. This was an exact reflection of God's feelings for His people.
A Wounded Lover
Hosea did everything for
this worthless woman. He gave her “corn, wine, oil, and multiplied
her silver and gold, which they [her lovers] prepared for Baal”
(2:8). He was presumably a wealthy man, and yet gave it all to his
wife, who in turn blew it all with her boyfriends on Baal worship.
It’s like the millionaire marrying a worthless woman who manipulates
him into giving her his money, which she blows down at the casino
day by day, and sleeps with the guys she hangs out with down there.
But “she did not know that I gave her…” all these things (2:8)-
i.e. she didn’t appreciate it one bit. And so Hosea decides that
he will withdraw this generosity from her, and then, he surmises,
“she shall say, I will go and return to my first husband” (2:7).
This was Hosea’s hope, and in his own mind, he put these words in
her mouth. The hopefulness of Hosea was a reflection of the love
he had for her. And all this speaks eloquently of the hopefulness
of the Almighty Father who thought “surely they will reverence
my Son” when He sends Him. And the purposeful anti-climax of the
parable is that no, they don’t and won’t reverence His Son, and
even worse, they kill Him. In the same way as Hosea had this plan
to get Gomer to “return” to him, so God likewise planned that “afterward
shall the children of Israel return, and seek the Lord their God”
(3:5). Both God and Hosea thought that “I will go and return to
my place, till they acknowledge their offence… in their affliction
they will seek me early” (5:15). But it didn’t work out like this.
Both God with Israel and Hosea with Gomer ended up pleading
with her to return (14:1); “and they do not return to the Lord their
God, nor seek him for all this” (7:10). It was and is a tragedy.
In our preaching to Israel, indeed to mankind generally, we are
pleading with them to accept this most unusual love. The pain of
God, the way He is left as it were standing there as a tragic figure,
like Hosea was, of itself inspires us to plead with people all the
more passionately. Notice in all this that ‘return’ is probably
an idiom; neither Hosea nor Gomer appear to have physically split
up, but both of them had ‘left’ the other one, as in so many marriages
today.
Gomer received vines, fig
trees and forests from her lovers (2:12). She even became “rich”
because of this (12:8). All of this was done whilst married to Hosea.
His patience and love for her must have been amazing. And even that
was and is a poor reflection of the depth of God’s love and grace
for Israel, and for us too. It’s more than sobering, to be in a
relationship where we are loved so much more deeply than we love
back. It’s worrying and challenging, to the point that every fibre
in our being should be crying out to love this wonderful God far,
far more than we do. Gomer must have lied to Hosea so much.
And Israel are criticized throughout his prophecy for just the same.
“Ephraim compasseth me about with lies, and the house of Israel
with deceit… they have spoken lies” (11:12; 7:13). In fact, the
untruthfulness became compulsive and obsessive: “He daily increaseth
lies” (12:1). Gomer would’ve lied about where she was going, about
how she spent Hosea’s money, about whose the children were… And
the key proof of our spiritual sincerity is whether we are in the
core of our beings truthful , both with our God and with
ourselves.
Gomer: An Observant Jewess
Hosea was prophesying in the context of the reforms of Jeroboam II, which had appeared on the surface to root out Baal worship- but in reality, the people remained deeply committed to it. All this was reflected in the surface level commitment of Gomer to him whilst committing adultery with multiple partners. God through Hosea said that
He despised Gomer and Israel’s keeping of the Sabbaths, sacrifices
and solemn feasts (2:11). Gomer and Israel offered sacrifices with
flocks and herds (5:6). Gomer was an observant Jewess- all part
of her deceptive life with Hosea. Gomer called Yahweh ‘Baal’ (2:16)-
in other words, she thought that by worshipping Baal she was in
fact worshipping Yahweh. This was how Israel justified their Baal
worship, reasoning that actually they had never left Yahweh, they
still kept His feasts and sacrifices, but they worshipped Him through
their Baal worship. But in reality, Israel and Gomer had “forgotten
the law of thy God… my people are destroyed for lack of knowledge…
for I desired mercy and not sacrifice; and the knowledge of God
more than burnt offerings” (6:6). Yet they cried out that “My God,
we [do] know thee” (8:2). Israel’s attitude to the Law can so easily
be our attitude to the first principles of the Gospel, the New Covenant,
in which we stand. We can ‘know’ it all, and externally keep it…
but in reality not know it at all, focusing on the external sacrifices
whilst knowing nothing of the God we supposedly worship. All this
was exemplified by Gomer being an observant Jewess, whilst worshipping
Baal and living a shameful life. She broke the marriage covenant
as Israel like Adam “transgressed the covenant” (6:7 RV; 8:1). Israel
/ Gomer knew the Law on one level, but “the great things of my law…
were counted as a strange thing” (8:12). They called upon the Most
High, but refused to exalt Him in their hearts (11:7). The very
experience and fact of ‘knowing’ God’s law on a surface level can
mask the fact that to ‘know’ Him in practice is quite a different
thing. The simple possession of the right knowledge can of itself
deceive us. This ought to provoke constant self-examination.
Through it all, Hosea was
hopeful. He looked and hoped for a day when he could say to Gomer’s
children: “I will say to them which were not my people [a reference
to Lo-Ammi], Thou art my people” (2:23). If Gomer came back to him
truly, then he longed to call those children of adultery his
very own children. Note that 4:6-14 imply that those children also
grew up to live highly immoral lives. Bearing in mind that the punishment
for such whoredom was death, we see how God’s grace in Hosea’s lovely
character actually contradicts the letter of the law, and certainly
contradicts all natural human desire for judgment and expiation
against those who have wronged us. Here was grace, pure and wonderful.
God then tells Hosea: “Go yet [i.e. still, carry on…], love a woman
beloved of her friend, yet an adulteress, according to the love
of the Lord toward the children of Israel, who look to other gods”
(3:1). I take this to mean that God was telling Hosea to as it were
re-marry Gomer, to try to start the marital relationship over again,
just as some couples desire to have a ‘re-marriage’ after a period
of difficulty between them. Notice how Hosea was commanded to “love”
her. We may think that love is something spontaneous, that can’t
be ‘commanded’. But the essence of love, even the love that binds
a marriage together, is the love that is an act of the will rather
than pure emotion. Hosea’s offer to Gomer to start over and as it
were re-marry was made when she was “yet an adulteress”. He didn’t
say ‘If you stop whoring around, then we can maybe have some sort
of re-marriage’. His very offer of the re-marriage was made whilst
she was still doing it, such was his love and hope for her, according
to the principle that the grace of God leads to repentance. And
God does the very same with us, day by day, if only we will perceive
it. He reveals His amazing love and grace when we are furthest from
Him, in order to bring us back to Him. And this must set the pattern
for the way in which we deal with those who sin against us, in things
great or small, in family life, in church life, in the workplace…
Often in Hosea, God appeals to Israel to let Him be their ‘king’
(13:10). But there is a Hebraism whereby a husband is called the
‘king’ of his wife. God’s appeal was reflected in Hosea’s desire
for Gomer to as it were re-marry him, to let him truly be her king
/ husband. And yet she felt like Israel: “What then should a king
do [for] us?” (10:3). She was so selfish that she didn’t see anything
in it for her… when so much love was being offered to her.
Sexual Addiction
The reality was that
Gomer was sexually addicted. She was a prostitute before her marriage,
after her marriage she was an adulteress. Consider the language
used about her / Israel: “committed whoredom continually” (4:18),
“the spirit of whoredoms is in the midst of them” (5:4), “adulterers
as an oven… hot as an oven” (7:4,7), a woman even paying lovers
to sleep with her, using Hosea’s money (8:9 cp. 2:8), although she
had other lovers who gave her gifts to sleep with them (2:12), “they
sin more and more” (13:2). This is the language of addiction. Gomer
was a sex addict. Like Israel, she didn’t consider in her heart
that Hosea / God remembered / felt all her wickedness (7:2). She
thought, as addicts do, that others are as insensitive as they are.
Like addicts, she came to hate Hosea, the very one who enabled her
as a person, who alone had loved her truly (9:7,8). And yet Hosea
loved her to the end. All this is of course a simple warning against
sexual addiction, which is one of the most untabulated and significant
addictions in our society. But for a man to love a woman
like this is a marvellous picture of God’s love for His Israel,
both then and now. Indeed, 9:10 seems to imply that in the same
way as God fell in love with Israel in the wilderness, even though
they were worshipping idols even then, so Hosea did actually find
Gomer attractive initially. God’s lament through Hosea, “but
me she forgot” (Hos. 2:15) is an insight into His broken heart.
And how many hours of our days slip by with no conscious thought
of Him… does He feel the same?
And it was because
of this love for her, that Hosea came to feel the passionate anger
with her which he did at times: “I hated them… I will love them
no more” (9:15). But this has to be balanced against his later profession
that “I will love them freely” (14:4). In the end, because he loved
her, as God loved Israel, finally giving up this terrible woman
proved impossible: “How shall I give thee up?... mine heart is turned
within me, my repentings are kindled together. I will not execute
the fierceness of mine anger…” (11:8,9). And this God is our God,
this God who was represented by Hosea, the man who kept loving that
woman to the end, who dreamed of re-establishing the relationship
with her. According to 9:12-15, Gomer’s children were killed during
one of the invasions, and she became infertile, with “a miscarrying
woman and dry breasts”. In Jewish terms of those days, to marry
such a woman was pointless and absurd. But still, Hosea dreamt of
the way when she would return to him in her heart and they could
re-establish their relationship. She had nothing at all to offer
him. Just like us with God. But such is His senseless love… “O Israel
thou hast destroyed thyself: but in me is thine help” (13:9). Gomer's
sexual addiction was a reflection of the way she was crying out
for love. The crying tragedy was that the love of Hosea, reflective
as it was of God's love, was just surpassing. And yet she didn't
perceive it, didn't want it... and so her mad search for love led
her to the chronic sexual addiction which destroyed her.
Gomer’s sexual addiction
is testified to by the way Hosea orders that even after their re-marriage,
she would “wait” for him, and “not belong to a man” (Hos. 3:3),
i.e. they would not have intercourse. Hos. 4:18 speaks of how “they
have made love continually… her lustful spirit”. The judgment of
removing the signs of adultery from Gomer’s face and from between
her breasts (Hos. 2:4) also give a window into the level of her
sexual addiction. Song 1:13 speaks of myrrh between the breasts
being used as an aphrodisiac; and prostitutes paint their faces
in Jer. 4:30 and Ez. 23:40. She wore a nose ring and pendant in
order to ‘go after’ her lovers (Hos. 2:15). And yet these things
would’ve been understood as wedding gifts, akin to a woman today
wearing a wedding ring. The awful thing is that she used the very
things Hosea had given her as an expression of his unique commitment
to her- as a means for adultery. Likewise the silver and gold of
her dowry, she used in Baal worship (Hos. 2:10). She wasn’t doing
it for money or because she was in need; the implication is that
she was using the aphrodisiac to excite and sexually stimulate herself
rather than her lovers, and was therefore going in search
of them. We have to ask what wilful stimulations to sin, to unfaithfulness
to our Master, we allow into our lives.
Hosea’s Fantasy
"I shall speak to her heart" (Hos. 2:16) is an idiom elsewhere used about seeking to win the heart of a woman by persuasive words (Gen. 34:3; Ruth 2:13; Jud. 19:3); Hosea dreamt of winning Gomer back to him by his words. This has a direct equivalent in the restoration context- for the same term is used in Is. 40:2, where God through the prophets seeks to speak to the heart of Zion and persuade her to return from Babylon to Him in Jerusalem and enjoy the married life of His Kingdom. And yet like Gomer, they either didn't want to hear, or responded on a merely surface level.
Hosea’s prophecy ends with God protesting His eternal love for
Israel, and a description of them in the Kingdom, when they will
have ‘returned’ to Him: “I will heal their backsliding, I will love
them freely… His beauty shall be as the olive tree… they… shall
return… Ephraim shall say, What have I to do any more with idols?”
(14:4-7). Remember that the God / Israel relationship was a reflection
of the Hosea / Gomer situation. I take this final, majestic section
to be a reflection of Hosea’s fantasy, his day dream, that one day
Gomer would return to him and blossom as a person. For fantasies
are all a part of true love. “From me is thy fruit found [Heb. ‘acquired’]”
(14:8) is perhaps his fantasy that somehow, this worn out
woman with dry breasts and a miscarrying womb (9:14) would somehow one day still bear him children of their own, and that in him “the
fatherless [a reference to Gomer’s illegitimate children] findeth
mercy” (14:3). This fantasy of Hosea’s, rooted in his amazing love
for Gomer, love that was partly in pure and amazing obedience to
God’s command that he love her (3:1), is a reflection of
God’s dream for Israel. Hosea died with his dream unfulfilled. We
are left with the question as to whether this similar loving intention
of God for Israel will in fact be fulfilled, or whether it was what
was potentially possible for Israel; or whether His fantasy for
them will be fulfilled through a new Israel. If the latter, and
we are that new Israel, then we can imagine what passionate joy
the Father finds in our bumbling attempts to respond to Him and
be His loyal and faithful wife. Whatever, the simple fact is that
it all reflects an amazing grace, an ineffable love… and this God
is our God, and Hosea who reflected all this is truly a pattern
for ourselves in daily life. The very existence of such passionate
love for us, love beyond reason, carries with it an inevitable warning
as to our responsibilities: “Who is wise, that he may understand
these things? prudent, that he may know them? for the ways of the
Lord are right, and the just shall walk in them; but transgressors
shall fall therein” (Hos. 14:9). Faced as we are by a love like
this, we simply can’t be passive to it.
Notes
(1) Umberto Cassuto, Biblical And Oriental Studies (Jerusalem: Magnes Press, 1973) Vol. 1 p. 122.
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