Amazing love

Hosea, the Old Testament book named after the prophet, is a tale of astonishing love.

The book begins with God telling Hosea to take an adulterous wife - i.e. a woman who would commit adultery. This he does, and sure enough she commits adultery leaving Hosea with one child of his own and others who are not his. Eventually she leaves him for another man (perhaps a pimp for whom she works).

But then in chapter 3, God tells Hosea, 'Go, show your love to your wife again, though she is loved by another and is an adulteress. Love her as the LORD loves the Israelites, though they turn to other gods and live the sacred raisin cakes.'

The point of all this is that it's a shocking illustration to Israel of the way she has treated her husband, the LORD God and the way he continues to love his people despite the fact that they have set their hearts on something as trivial and pathetic as 'raisin cakes'! They have abandoned the pleasure and joy of living with the Almighty Lord God of all things for the satisfaction of eating raisin cakes made for stone idols! Just as adultery is the greatest insult and humiliation to a loving spouse, so Israel's idolatry has insulted and humiliated the God of love.

And yet in an heroic act of love, Hosea buys his wife back, presumably paying off her lover-pimp. But she has to demonstrate her willingness to come back by abandoning her adulterous ways. And Hosea tells how this too is an acted parable of God's amazing love for his people.

And we can't help but be reminded that 'God demonstrates his own love for us in this: while we were still sinners, Christ died for us' (Romans 5:8). While we were still in an adulterous relationship with the idols of this world, God demonstrated his love for us, making us his own people, 'which he bought with his own blood' (Acts 20:28).

If Hosea's love for his adulterous wife was heroic, how much more the love of God in Christ for us?