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.

Raisin Cakes

"Go again, love a woman who is loved by another man and is an adulteress, even as the LORD loves the children of Israel, though they turn to other gods and love cakes of raisins." Hosea 3:1

Raisin cakes.

It seems like a strange detail to put in a verse about spiritual adultery, and the first time it catches you it almost sounds funny. Is God suddenly against baked goods?

No. In that culture raisin cakes were a status symbol. They were the imported thing, the expensive thing, the thing you set out on the table when you wanted the neighbors to know you were doing well. They were the Mercedes in the driveway. They were the newest phone on the table at lunch, screen up, so it can be seen.

And God says, they turn to other gods, and they love the cakes of raisins.

He puts those two things in the same sentence on purpose.

We want the idol to be dramatic. We want it to be a carved thing on a shelf, something obviously wicked, something we would never do. And God says no. Sometimes the thing that pulls a heart away from me is not evil at all. It is nice. It is a small luxury. It is a signal. It is the raisin cake.

That is what makes it dangerous. Nobody repents of dessert.

The idol is almost never the thing itself. It is what the thing tells you about yourself. It is the story the raisin cake tells about the person who can afford it, and that story is very quiet, and it does not feel like worship, and it is worship.

And here is the terrible mercy in the verse. God does not stop loving her over it. He says go again. Love a woman who is loved by another man.

He knows exactly what she left him for.

He knows it was raisin cakes.

He sends the prophet anyway.