💍 Parables of the Bible — Unit 6: The Unfaithful Wife — Unforgivable Forgiveness

Orientation

Some things seem unforgivable. Jeffrey Dahmer murdered at least seventeen young men and boys in the United States between 1978 and 1991. After he was convicted and sentenced to sixteen life terms, he claimed to have repented and was baptized in prison. Many people still find it almost impossible to imagine that such a man could be forgiven. His name remains one of the most unforgivable in American history.

The book of Hosea is about another seemingly unforgivable act: a woman who left her husband and children to go back to prostitution. Hosea's marriage is an enacted parable, like Jeremiah's visit to the potter's house in Unit 3, except that Hosea did not watch this sermon; he lived it for years. And it is the Bible's great example of what we may call unforgivable forgiveness: the forgiveness of what seems impossible to forgive. Hosea forgave Gomer. God forgave Israel. And God still forgives the unforgivable in us.

I. The Setting

Hosea was an eighth-century prophet in the northern kingdom of Israel, a younger contemporary of Amos (Unit 4). He began to preach during the prosperous last years of Jeroboam II and continued through the chaos that followed, when kings were murdered one after another and the nation raced toward its destruction by Assyria in 722 BC (Hosea 1:1).

Israel's great sin was not that it abandoned the LORD completely, but that it wanted the LORD and Baal too. That sounds very open-minded; they wanted to be open to all religions. Baal was the Canaanite storm god, believed to send the rain that made crops grow. So Israel worshiped the LORD at the festivals and Baal in the fields, giving Baal credit for the harvest. God's complaint is heartbreaking: "She did not know that I gave her grain, new wine, and oil, and multiplied her silver and gold, which they prepared for Baal" (Hosea 2:8). Israel treated God the way an unfaithful wife treats a faithful husband.

II. A Marriage That Became a Message (Hosea 1:2–9)

God gave Hosea an astonishing command: "Go, take yourself a wife of harlotry and children of harlotry, for the land has committed great harlotry by departing from the LORD" (Hosea 1:2). Hosea married a woman named Gomer.

Faithful interpreters understand this command in different ways, and students should know the options. Some believe Gomer was already a prostitute when Hosea married her; perhaps he loved her and hoped she would change, and her superficial faith soon gave way to her old habits. Others believe she was faithful at first and the phrase "wife of harlotry" describes what she became, since Hosea wrote the book looking back. A few have read the story as a vision or an allegory, though most evangelical interpreters take it as real events in a real marriage. On every reading, the heart of the parable is the same: Hosea's love for an unfaithful wife pictures God's love for unfaithful Israel.

The couple had three children, and their names tell the tragedy. The first son was Jezreel, "God sows" or "God scatters," named for the valley where King Jehu had shed blood, and announcing that God would scatter the nation (1:4–5). The second, a daughter, was Lo-Ruhamah, "no mercy" or "not pitied" (1:6). The third, a son, was Lo-Ammi, "not My people" (1:9). Many readers notice that the text says Gomer "bore him a son" the first time, but does not say "him" for the second and third children. Hosea may have realized that he was not their father. By this time he knew he was sharing his home with a wife who was sleeping with other men.

III. The Pain of a One-Way Love

Finally Gomer left. Hosea came home one day to three unsupervised children. She had gone back to her life as a prostitute, apparently enjoying the money and the attention. In chapter 2 the children are called to plead with their mother to come home, but even that was not enough. She was unfaithful to her husband, to God, and to her children. She did not have one lover but many.

It is hard being in a one-way relationship. Most of us go through that at some point as teenagers. When I was in high school there was a girl named Sharon in our church youth group. She was cute and smart, and we did a lot of things together. I developed a crush on her, but it was evidently one-way. One day she came to me excitedly to tell me about a boy she had fallen for. I had to sit there and pretend it was great news. She wanted to be my friend, when the last thing I needed was another friend. That was a small taste of unrequited love. Hosea drank the whole cup, and so does God. Every time we give our hearts to something else, we treat the God who loves us the way Gomer treated Hosea.

Sin also has consequences. "They sow the wind, and reap the whirlwind" (Hosea 8:7). Gomer got what she was looking for, but her beauty faded, and her life of adultery led her at last into slavery.

IV. God's Plan to Win Her Back (Hosea 2)

Chapter 2 begins like a divorce court: "She is not My wife, nor am I her husband!" (2:2). God threatens to strip away the gifts Israel credited to Baal. But in the middle of the judgment the tone changes. "Therefore, behold, I will allure her, will bring her into the wilderness, and speak comfort to her" (2:14). The Valley of Achor, the "valley of trouble" where Achan had brought disaster on Israel (Joshua 7), would become "a door of hope" (2:15).

Then comes a new wedding: "I will betroth you to Me forever; yes, I will betroth you to Me in righteousness and justice, in lovingkindness and mercy; I will betroth you to Me in faithfulness, and you shall know the LORD" (2:19–20). And the children's names are reversed. "I will have mercy on her who had not obtained mercy; then I will say to those who were not My people, 'You are My people!' And they shall say, 'You are my God!'" (2:23). Paul and Peter both quote this promise to describe how God brought the Gentiles into His people through Christ (Romans 9:25–26; 1 Peter 2:10). "Not My people" becomes "My people." That is unforgivable forgiveness.

V. "Go Again, Love This Woman" (Hosea 3)

You might expect God to say, "Hosea, you have done all you can. Let her go. She made her bed; now let her lie in it." Instead God says, "Go again, love a woman who is loved by a lover and is committing adultery, just like the love of the LORD for the children of Israel, who look to other gods" (3:1).

Try to imagine the shock that command sent through Hosea's heart. On a personal level, should he set himself up to be hurt and humiliated again? On a religious level, as God's spokesman, how could he reverse his just condemnation of a woman who stood for Israel's sin? It went against everything he might have expected God to require. Yet he obeyed.

Historical sources tell us that slave markets in the ancient world were brutal places where human beings were treated like livestock. By the time Gomer was sold, she was no longer the beautiful woman Hosea had married. Hosea entered the bidding: "So I bought her for myself for fifteen shekels of silver, and one and one-half homers of barley" (3:2). Exodus 21:32 sets thirty shekels as the value of a slave. Hosea paid half of it in silver and made up the rest in barley, a humble price that shows how far sin had brought her down. And then he said, "You shall stay with me many days; you shall not play the harlot... so, too, will I be toward you" (3:3). She had been reclaimed by her own husband.

Hosea's story is like the parable of the prodigal son, but with one striking difference. The prodigal "came to himself" and started home before his father ran to meet him. In Hosea 3 there is no mention of Gomer repenting first. The text simply says Hosea loved her again and went and bought her. Grace went looking for her. "God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us" (Romans 5:8).

VI. Three Kinds of Unforgivable Forgiveness

1. The unforgivable forgiveness of Israel. Hosea's book is the story of God's undying love for a people whose hearts had wandered far from Him. God cries, "How can I give you up, Ephraim? How can I hand you over, Israel?... My heart churns within Me" (11:8). And the last chapter promises, "I will heal their backsliding, I will love them freely, for My anger has turned away from him" (14:4). Israel had been blessed with rich harvests, but instead of drawing the people back to their covenant, prosperity made them forget the Giver. Yet God would not let them go.

2. The unforgivable forgiveness of us. Sin is spiritual adultery. Like Gomer, like Israel, and like us, anything that takes God's place in our hearts is unfaithfulness to Him. The word "backslide" means to turn back or turn away, and it seldom happens suddenly. Spiritual decay is a gradual process. Some time ago I was driving home from Tylertown along a road I knew well. I always turn at the house with the big windmill. That day I was thinking about something else, and I drove right past my turn. After a while everything looked strange. When I came to a four-way intersection I knew should not be there, I realized I was far down the Johnny Martin Road. But even after that detour, I was able to find my way straight home. We start out in the right direction and somehow get sidetracked. The good news is that we do not have to stay sidetracked. "If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness" (1 John 1:9). A young executive once asked the bank president he was replacing, "To what do you attribute your success?" "Two words," the president said: "good decisions." "But how did you learn to make good decisions?" "Two words: bad decisions." Failure is not final if we return to the Lord. God disciplines, but His ultimate aim is restoration, as the renaming of Hosea's children shows.

3. The unforgivable forgiveness of others. Peter asked Jesus whether he should forgive a brother seven times, and Jesus answered, "up to seventy times seven" (Matthew 18:22). What about the person who betrayed you, lied about you, or stole from you? Isn't that unforgivable? We can forgive only with the same kind of love by which God loves us. Jesus prayed from the cross, "Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they do" (Luke 23:34), and Stephen, as he was stoned, cried, "Lord, do not charge them with this sin" (Acts 7:60).

For twenty-six years Margot Honecker, wife of East Germany's Communist leader Erich Honecker, ran the nation's Ministry of Education. Uwe Holmer was a Lutheran pastor at Lobetal, near Berlin, and time after time his children were refused places at the university, a common penalty for Christian families under that government. When the Berlin Wall fell in 1989, the Honeckers lost their power and their luxurious home. They found themselves friendless, with nowhere to go, and none of their old comrades would take them in. Pastor Holmer, remembering Jesus' words about turning the other cheek, invited them to live with his family in the parsonage. The Honeckers did not profess faith in Christ, but at meals they folded their hands and bowed their heads while the Holmer family prayed. That is unforgivable forgiveness.

VII. Mercy, Not Sacrifice

Hosea also exposes religion that looks faithful on the outside. "For I desire mercy and not sacrifice, and the knowledge of God more than burnt offerings" (Hosea 6:6). Jesus quoted this verse twice to religious leaders who criticized Him for eating with sinners and for showing mercy on the Sabbath (Matthew 9:13; 12:7). The Pharisees would have kept Gomer on the auction block. Jesus went to the market and paid the price. A church that understands Hosea will be known not for how carefully it keeps sinners at a distance, but for how gladly it welcomes them home.

VIII. Preaching Hosea

A pastor can preach Hosea 1–3 under the title "Unforgivable Forgiveness," following three points: the unforgivable forgiveness of Israel, of us, and of others. Tell Gomer's story first, with the children's names and the slave market, so that listeners feel the scandal of God's command to "go again." Then turn the mirror: we are Gomer. Close with the invitation of 1 John 1:9 and the challenge to forgive others as we have been forgiven. Be careful and pastoral with this text. There may be listeners in your congregation who have been betrayed by a spouse, and Hosea is not a command that every betrayed spouse must stay in a dangerous or abusive situation. It is a picture of the relentless love of God.

Closing

The evangelist George Whitefield had a brother who had once been an earnest Christian but had fallen far from God. One afternoon, after hearing his brother preach, he sat at tea with Lady Huntingdon, unable to eat, and groaned, "I am a lost man." "I'm glad of it," she said. Astonished, he protested that it was cruel to say so. "I repeat it, sir," she said, "I am heartily glad of it, because it is written, 'The Son of Man has come to seek and to save that which was lost'" (Luke 19:10). With tears on his face he said, "What a precious Scripture! Then He will save me. I trust my soul in His hands." Charles Spurgeon, who told the story, said that he died shortly afterward, at peace with God.

No one is beyond the reach of God's forgiveness. Hosea went to the slave market and bought back his unfaithful wife. God came to this world in Jesus Christ and paid the price for us, not with silver and barley, but with His own blood. That is unforgivable forgiveness, and it is offered to you today.

— Dr. Wayne Cook
Chapala Theological Seminary

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