Go, Again

"Go again, love a woman who is loved by another man and is an adulteress." Hosea 3:1

It is one thing to love someone who comes crawling back and asks for forgiveness.

It is another thing entirely to go and find them.

To make the first move when they are the one who hurt you. To settle a debt you did not create. To walk out the door and go looking for a person who left you, and who is not sorry, and who is currently in another man's house.

That is hard. Everything in me wants to say, it is not my fault. I did not leave. I stayed with the kids.

And God says, go again.

I learned something early in ministry that has cost me more than almost anything else I know, and it is this. You can tell who is more spiritual in an argument. Not by who is right. By who, in humility, makes the first move toward reconciliation. It is the person who sees more value in the relationship than in the verdict.

That is Jesus. He was never wrong in a single argument in his life, and he was always the first one seeking reconciliation. Always. He does not wait at the far end of repentance with his arms crossed. He comes down the road.

And this is where the story turns from being about our unfaithfulness to being about his character, because at this point in the book Gomer has done nothing to earn a second look. There is no scene where she comes to her senses. God says go, and he says love her, and he says love her the way I love Israel, though they turn to other gods.

Though. Not after. Though.

I call it radical love. God pursues us to redeem the relationship even when we are the ones who walked away, chasing loves that never loved us back.

You do not have to fix it first.

He is already coming.