The prophet Hosea was given a very difficult assignment. God ordered him to marry a wife who had been an adulteress. That was probably the opposite of Hosea's desires. Every man of God would prefer to marry a woman who had never been with a man, but Hosea obeyed and chose to marry a woman named Gomer. Now, that should have raised a yellow flag right there—any woman named "Gomer" should not have made the final cut! But Hosea loved her, forgave her, and married her.
Hosea and Gomer settled down and had three children. But any happiness Hosea knew was short-lived. Eventually Gomer became restless, found a boyfriend, and returned to her former way of life. Hosea wrote, "The LORD said to me, ‘Go, show your love to your wife again, though she is loved by another and is an adulteress'" (Hosea 3:1).
Hosea suffered the humiliation and paid the expenses to buy Gomer back from prostitution. He paid good money to purchase his own wife. She not only cost him the price of a slave, but he obediently brought her back home and told her, "From now on you're living with me. No more whoring, no more sleeping around. You're living with me and I'm living with you" (Hosea 3:3 – The Message).
Why would God ask Hosea to go through such a trying experience? It was because Hosea's story would dramatize God's amazing love for His people. "Love her as the Lord loves the Israelites, though they turn to other gods" (3:1).
When the Israelites, with whom God had a covenant relationship, strayed and turned to Canaanite deities, the Lord kept loving them and reaching out to them. Even though they were faithless, He was faithful and longed to forgive them and restore an intimate relationship with them.
As a young boy, I can remember my mother reading a Bible story about the Israelites once again turning from the one true God and worshipping foreign idols. I just couldn't understand why they were so faithless when God had been so good! Didn't they know the consequences of their sin were going to be awful? Why didn't they learn from the mistakes of the past? Neither could I understand why God would always forgive and give them another chance.
Martin Luther once admitted, "If I were God and the world treated me the way we have treated Him, I would kick the wretched thing to pieces." Any human being would have. But the God of this universe has an amazing capacity for patience, love and forgiveness.
I still don't understand God's amazing grace. How can He forgive me again and again? At age eight I put my trust in Him, and He loved me and forgave me even though I was not worthy. He paid the price to redeem me from the slavery of sin and has developed an intimate relationship with me.
But in spite of all He has done, I still have strayed back into my old way of life at times. The temptations of the world have lured me back, and I have been unfaithful to Him. But God in His great love keeps reaching out to me and inviting me to return and accept His forgiveness, grace and intimacy.
The Apostle Paul, who described himself as "the chief of sinners," could never get over God's love for him. He wrote, "And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power, together with all the saints, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge—that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God" (Eph. 3:17-19).
Corrie Ten Boom wrote, "There is no pit so deep that the love of God does not go deeper still."
Bob Russell is an accomplished preacher at Southeast Christian Church, in Louisville, Ky., and the author of several books. His latest, released in February 2004, is titled, "The Power of One Another: Developing Christian Relationships." His sermons are heard several times weekly on "The Living Word," a nationally syndicated radio program. He also writes a weekly column in The Lookout, a magazine printed by Standard Publishing, where this article first appeared.
