Hosea: His Redeeming LoveSýnishorn

Like a father wrestling over the wayward child whom he loves, God agonizes over Israel.

Deeply hurt by their spiritual adultery, God has decreed that his people will go into exile. Yet, in his very next breath, he says, “How can I give you up, Ephraim? How can I hand you over, Israel? How can I treat you like Admah? How can I make you like Zeboiim? My heart is changed within me; all my compassion is aroused.”

Admah and Zeboiim were two of the cities God destroyed when he judged Sodom and Gomorrah, and we hear God not wanting to destroy the nation of Israel the way he destroyed those cities. Yet the people’s unfaithfulness requires retribution.

As we listen in on God, we see the conundrum at the very heart of his character. On the one hand, God cannot deny his justice, for he is just. The Israelite people’s sin must be paid for. On the other hand, he cannot deny his mercy, for God is love. And if he were to seek either justice or mercy and not the other, he would be less than God.

The Roman poet Horace famously told his academy of poets, “Never bring a god upon the stage unless your problem is such it demands a god to resolve it.” Well, this is a problem that demands a god to resolve it. Humanly speaking, there is no way out. If God is to be both just and loving towards his people, it will demand that God himself be the solution.

Fortunately, as we read in verse 9, “I am God, and not man—the Holy One among you.” God will be the solution.

How? By coming upon the human stage himself, and out of love taking the full blow of his own justice instead of us. Hosea anticipates Jesus’s sacrifice. At the cross, we find that God can be merciful and just and neither is compromised. The anger that we deserve for betraying him, he took in Christ on our behalf, and all that remains is his love towards us.

Pray: Heavenly Father, thank you for the lessons of Hosea. Thank you for the cross, where wrath and mercy meet. But most of all, thank you for sending Jesus to be the solution to an unsolvable problem.