“Then the LORD said to me, ‘Go again, love a woman who is loved by her husband, yet an adulteress, even as the LORD loves the sons of Israel, though they turn to other gods and love raisin cakes” (Hos 3:1).
Although God won’t tell us to marry a prostitute like he did Hosea, most assuredly our options are still limited to people who are incredibly flawed and terribly imperfect. The choice to marry requires us to partner with someone whom we know will hurt us, disappoint us, and tempt us to start looking high and low for a better sinner. But the choice to marry is, or ought to be, the choice to show the world that the gospel really is the power of God, not just for salvation, but also for relationships with fallen people in a fallen world. Hosea is called to love a woman “even as the LORD loves the sons of Israel, though they turn to other gods…” In New Testament language, “to love because He first loved us” (1 John 4:19). In those moments we are tempted to emotionally punish our spouses for not being better sinners like us, let us remember the parable of the ungrateful servant in Matthew, which incidentally, comes right before Yeshua’s words about marriage!
“Should you not also have had mercy on your fellow slave, in the same way that I had mercy on you?” (Matt 18:33).
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