Hosea’s redemption of Gomer illustrates God’s redeeming love for His people. God’s love acts, initiates, forgives and pays the price. The Gospel declares that it is out of God’s love that He sends His Son to redeem His people from their slavery to sin. Thus, the love of God produces love for God.

In repentance, we take God's words and repeat them back to Him. We ask God to take away our iniquity, to accept our repentance as genuine, to receive our sacrifice of praise for forgiveness, to save us because there is no other Saviour and to show us mercy. We turn from our sin and to Christ. It's through His wounds, His stripes that God has healed us from our apostasy; our sinful rebellion. It’s through Christ paying the price of our redemption that God loves us freely. As God has turned His anger on His own Son at the cross, His wrath has been turned away from us.

Hosea 11:12 - 13:16 describes Israel's fall from grace. They trusted in and looked to their own cunning, intelligence and wisdom to sustain them. Instead of recognising that everything they had received was God's undeserved goodness - His grace - they forgot God. We too are guilty of crediting ourselves with everything we have. Ultimately, this snubbing of God's grace merits God's wrath for our sinful self-reliance. Yet, God in His grace, saves His people from themselves. Instead of relentlessly pursuing His people as enemies, He relentlessly pursues the great enemy of His people - death. At the cross and in His resurrection, Jesus Christ defeated death. We are called to throw away our self-dependence and look to Christ and His saving grace.

God describes Himself as Father who loves, provides for and is affectionate towards His children. He helps them to walk, heals them and picks them up to His cheek. Yet, His children are rebellious sinners. They are wayward sons. God cannot compromise His holiness and must punish sin. Yet, the Father's heart recoils in compassion as He sends His Son to be overthrown in judgement at the cross so that we would be restored to the Father.

Israel was prosperous, but this fruitfulness didn't tell the whole story. Instead, God says that His people will reap the consequences of sowing to idolatry, lies and rebellion: God's judgement. Along with Israel, we stand to reap God's wrath for what we have sown. We deserve to be harvested into eternal judgement for our sin. Yet, God rained His Righteous One on us. It's through Jesus reaping the judgement we deserved and crediting us with His righteousness the we are harvested into God's kingdom. As a result of this wonderful good news, we now sow and bear fruit in keeping with belonging to God's field.

God promises to remove His people from the land because of their disobedience. As they looked to idols for pleasure, protection and purpose, God's punishment was coming. They would find themselves far away from God's provision, God's protection and a place they belonged. Yet, in God's rich grace and mercy, He is also the God who brings His people home. God doesn't abandon us in our sin, but sends His own Son to bring those far away near through the blood of His cross. It's in Christ that we who were lost are found; we who had wandered far away have been brought home. 

Hosea exposes the unfaithfulness of Israel through unmasking their false confidences. They had lulled themselves into a false sense of security by looking to their government, alliances, idols, crops, religious activity and cities as their ultimate defence. God would rip the security blankets from His people when He brought His judgement through the Assyrians. We too place our security in idols that bring God's righteous anger. Our only hope is in Jesus. Jesus  reaps the whirlwind of God's wrath that we deserved for sowing to the wind of idolatry. Instead, we are presented righteous through His perfect obedience. True security is found in our justification before the just Judge of all the earth. We rest in the powerful and personal hands of the Father.

Israel is exposed as being deceitful in their repentance and half-hearted in their love for God. Half a heart for God, is really no heart for God. We cannot be half in and half out of relationship with God any more than we can be half married! What does God do for a half-hearted people? He gives His whole heart through the giving of His Son. It is through the gospel that we turn from misty, morning-cloud love to steadfast love through Christ's perfect obedience.

Hosea 6:7 makes mention of a covenant made with Adam. This covenant, the covenant of works, puts all humanity under the curse of sin, death and separation from God. God, however, graciously pursues the sinner through the covenant of grace. Jesus Christ, our Redeemer, takes the curses of our covenant disobedience and credits us with His covenant righteousness.

In Hosea 5:1 - 6:3, God disciplines His rebellious people. The process of God's discipline starts with His withdrawal so that we would return to Him. If we refuse, He brings punishment. God's discipline, however, always has restoration as its goal. We can be assured of this through looking again at what Christ accomplished at the cross. There, God's wrath came like a flood on Jesus so we would receive the spring rain of His mercy.

In Hosea 4, God lays a charge at His people: they do not know Him. They are lawless, ignorant and violent. The reason the people don't know God is because the leadership failed to teach and lead the people. We are called in this passage to examine ourselves as to whether we know God in relationship, or just know about God. We are reminded again of our perfect priest-king, Jesus Christ, through whom we are known by God and know God.

God’s extraordinary love for His people is displayed in the fact that even though they have betrayed Him through idolatry and they deserve God breaking His commitment to them, God betroths His wayward people to Himself. Ultimately, this is accomplished in Christ who was uprooted at the cross so that we would be planted in God's kingdom.

The opening chapter of Hosea displays the broken relationship between God and His people. Though the fruit of spiritual adultery is God's judgement without mercy and separation from Him, God promises forgiveness. The tension between a promise of judgement without mercy and a promise of restoration in mercy is only resolved in the work of Christ.