A Word in Season: Loved Freely (Hosea 14:4)

Hosea’s Call to Return to the Lord

Hosea speaks to people who are full of sin, when he calls upon Israel to return to the Lord your God, because they have stumbled on account of their iniquity. That's in Hosea chapter 14, and he's pleading with them to take words and return to the Lord, to confess their sin, to turn their backs upon all their idolatry and iniquity, and no longer to trust in anyone or anything else but God himself to save them and to be their God.

And Hosea is insisting upon the fact that God is merciful and gracious. And in verse 4, he speaks on behalf of the Lord. I will heal their backsliding, I will love them freely, for my anger has turned away from him.

God’s Free Love and Healing of Backsliding

Is it not astounding that to men and women who have lived in a state of rebellion against God, that the same Lord should hold out his hands to them with an offer of love that is so abundant, so complete, so entire, that he can tell them that he will love them freely.

Here is the language of healing, often used in scripture to describe the restoration to God. Sin is the great disease, the deadly sickness that destroys us absolutely. And Christ Jesus, the great physician who will heal our sins and who will restore us from our backslidings.

If we have never come to Christ, here is an assurance for us. If we have drifted from Christ, if we have indulged sin in any degree and over any length of time, here is a reminder of the character of God as it is made known in the Savior.

He is the healer of the backsliding because he loves freely. He determines to do so. I will, he says, and I will freely love those who come to me. It will not be because they deserve it. Not even their repentings will merit my favor.

The old writers used to talk about repenting of your repenting and weeping over your weeping. There is no virtue in itself in our recognition of sin, but there is virtue in Christ and there is mercy in God.

God’s Mercy to Sinners Who Return

And the Lord says that not only will I love them despite all their sins and transgressions, but I will lavish my love upon them. And they shall never want for anything that my love can supply, for my anger has turned away from him.

God delights to make himself known in his slowness to anger and his quickness to mercy. The Lord is hard to provoke, so full of long-suffering and tenderness, and so quick to respond, so quick to deal in grace and in kindness with those who call upon his name.

And so we may be here today with much sin upon our souls. We all are sinners. Some perhaps have gone for many weeks, months, years even, perhaps a lifetime with little thought of God, or they've known of him but had no regard for him.

The gospel has been preached to them and they have always turned their backs upon it. Maybe they have trusted in Christ, maybe you have named his name, but up to this point perhaps there's been a coldness or there's been an attraction to the world that has carried you away and you've lost your first love.

Where will we go with whatever sin, whatever kind or degree or duration of iniquity? What will we do? We need to do what Hosea called upon Israel to do in his day, to take words with us and return to the Lord and to say to him, take away all iniquity, receive us graciously.

We need to turn our backs upon our sins once and for all and we need to, leaving all idols behind, turn to God in Christ and to look to him and to trust in him. And when you do that, you will always find a God ready to heal your backsliding, who loves most freely, whose anger turns away readily, a God who sets his love upon the unlovely and the unworthy, who draws them to himself and when they come would by no means turn them away but is always ready to receive them.

The Cross of Calvary as the Fountain of Free Love

And that healing, that love, that mercy flow from the fountain of Christ's heart. They are seen pre-eminently on the cross of Calvary where the Lord Jesus Christ shows us that God has loved his people freely.