“What shall I do with you, O Ephraim?
What shall I do with you, O Judah?
Your love is like a morning cloud,
like the dew that goes early away." Hosea 6:4
God the Father agonizes over the fleeting love of the
children of Israel. They love him for a
moment but their love is soon gone with the wind. Their devotion to the Lord appears in the
morning but vanishes in the evening. God
expresses his perplexity with the brevity of their love with an outburst of
emotion: “What shall I do with you?” Fathers who have longed for the return of
their wayward children and husbands who have grieved over the betrayals of
their faithless wives will empathize with the agony of God’s unrequited
love.
Although God seems to be at his wit’s end, he is sure of
his unending love for his people. He
later exclaims, “How can I give you up, O Ephraim? How can I hand you over, O Israel? How can I make you like Admah? How can I treat you like Zeboiim? My heart recoils within me; my compassion grows
warm and tender” (Hosea 11:8). God has
set his electing love on his people and shall never hand them over to utter
ruin. His warm and tender compassion are
the result of his unconditional love for his children.
The contrast between God’s love for Israel and Israel’s
love for God couldn’t be clearer. Israel’s
love is like a mist. God’s love is like
a great mountain that shall never be moved.
Israel’s love is fleeting. God’s
love is eternal. The passions of Israel
rise and fall and change from one moment to the next yet God’s compassions
never fail as they are new every morning. The Husband’s steadfast love is unconditional,
immutable, and faithful in spite of the Bride’s faithless whoredom.
Unregenerate members of the visible church may have a love
for God that is present in the morning but gone in the evening. They may appear to have spiritual graces for
a season. Time proves them wrong. Wait until the evening to see the
authenticity of their fruit. True love
for God is enduring love.
Even true believers must confess that our love for God is often
fleeting. What should we do when we
discover that our love for God is like the morning mist? We must look to God’s unconditional and
enduring love for us. We love because God
first loved us (1 John 4:19). Love for
God grows as it basks in the sunlight of God’s love for us. We must keep ourselves in the love of God
where we hear his agonizing compassion for his rebellious children. “What shall I do with you? How can I give you up?” Throughout Hosea’s prophecy we see the
sparkling diamond of God’s faithfulness against the black velvet of Israel’s
whoredom. Sin abounds; grace abounds all
the more.
Let this also be a lesson for us who have people in our
lives (spouses, children, friends, fellow Christians) who have gone
astray. We must continue to love them and
never give up on them. Our Eternal God
has not given up on us even when we have hurt him most. And like the loving father in the Parable of
the Prodigal Son we must always race to welcome home the wayward son who has
come to his senses by the grace of God.
The
cross of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ reminds us again and again of the full
extent of God’s love. “God shows his
love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us” (Romans 5:8). When we are disappointed with ourselves on account
of our fickle love for God, let us look to Calvary. God did not spare his own Son but gave him up
for us all (Romans 8:32). God could not
and would not give up on his electing love for his chosen people. So he gave his Son to make atonement for our
sins and reconcile us to the Father. No
deeper love can we find but the love of God revealed in his crucified Son. And it is only the ever-blowing wind of the
Spirit of Christ that causes the glowing embers of our hearts to burst into
flames that will never die even though they may flicker.
