Our Not so Little Sin
Hosea 6:4-7:3, Deuteronomy 28:15-19, Hebrews 2:1-4
When I first got tasked with writing a DT about Hosea, I was excited; After all, Hosea was all about God’s love for his people! He pursues them even when they are unfaithful! In my head, the whole book was just a shortened biblical version of “Redeeming Love” with God and his people as the main characters. I guess I had forgotten that the role of the prophets was not just to point out God’s covenant love for his people, but also to point out how Israel was unrepentant and unfaithful to that covenant. So, I wasn’t wrong, this book is about God’s love and even marriage to his people--but it is also about the damage to the relationship that is done when his partner (Israel, and also us) is unfaithful.
As Christians I think we so often miss out on this part of the story. After all, Christ has paid the price for our sin; our covenant with God is written in his blood. So, why should I focus on the part of the book about God’s hurting heart and justified wrath towards those who break his covenant? Christ’s covenant with me isn’t broken and no transgression will ever break it, so why should I care? And, while that is true, I think it leads us to forget the significance of our own sin, how it has offended the God of the universe who was to be our husband, and how desperate our need was for one to come and secure a new covenant on our behalf.
When you keep in mind the elaborate sign and significance that marriage is playing in the book of Hosea, the words the Lord says in chapter 6 burn all the more. “What shall I do with you oh Judah? Your love is like a morning cloud, like the dew that goes early away… like Adam they transgressed the covenant; there they have dealt faithlessly with me”. Israel’s covenant husband, the God of the Universe, has been scorned and abandoned by them. While he remained true, their love was fleeting. Hosea is trying to get his audience to wrap their heads around how serious that is--so much so that he had to live through the hurt of having an unfaithful wife just to show Israel how serious their transgressions were. We need to hear that too. I get married tomorrow (I know, crazy right) and I have been trying to wrap my head around what it would feel like to experience a broken covenant, to look at Chelsy, my wife, and say “you have dealt faithlessly with me”. The thought of the hurt, the anger, the justified desire to dissolve the covenant I made are overwhelming. That is what all of us have done to God, and there is no repairing the relationship for us on our own. The damage has been done; we threw the covenant ring back to God and said “catch you later, I am going to find myself a new man”. If you think the significance of that is small, just read Deuteronomy 28 (it effectively says you are gonna be cursed all over the place in every way imaginable).
So, while we are Christians, redeemed and bought and reconciled to God--part of the new covenant community Christ himself has purchased--we cannot neglect or forget the greatness of the salvation set before us. We need to remember the weight of our sin, and the cost it took for God to pursue and purchase us back from our slavery to sin. We can’t afford to drift away from that and live a life of cheap grace.
Where have you been thinking little of your own sin?
How does knowing the weight of sin produce a deeper gratitude for the Grace of God displayed in Christ.
