“God, Your love is not good enough!” Man.
Buried deep within this story of Hosea, is where Your heart is able to finally and honestly find expression of it’s deepest pain. It comes out amongst all the offense felt. You have said things hard to hear, but true, yet here is revealed the root of Your pain, “Like Adam, they have broken the covenant – they were unfaithful to me there” (Hosea 6:7, NIV). It must be the most somber, heartbreaking verse of Hosea, speaking the heart of all You are trying to say in this book, perhaps of all history. We have said through our words and our actions that Your love is not good enough. Right from the outset, we have rejected Your love, we have betrayed You. It is the heartache of the Garden of Eden.
The Garden. Eden means “delight”. The place of splendor, revealing Your glorious and majestic power, Your beauty and Your love. You delighted in the creation of this Garden. You delighted in all of its inhabitants. You delighted in the anticipation of relationship with the best of creation, mankind. You gave all of Yourself to this place, and to these ones declared, “very good”.
The Garden. The place where immortal God would dwell with mortal humanity in perfect union. Created for pleasure in relationship, these, the most complex of all creation were beings capable of mutual emotional connection. Though they had a beginning, they, created with souls, would have no end. For eternity they would commune with You and with each other. You would find delight in closeness with them. You would dwell with them and walk with them each day. Here in this Garden, You introduced all of who You are – Father, Son, and Spirit. Having been in perfect unity for eternity, You chose this moment to create humanity, for inclusion. Affording them intimacy in Your already perfect relationship, to give freely and abundantly of Your perfect love, firstly to Adam and Eve, then to all who would come from them. What was an intimate Three in One, was thrown wide open to embrace these ones to be part of everything You are. You didn’t have to, You chose to.
The Garden. It is a place of Your provision, where lovingly You met their entire needs – physical, emotional, spiritual, social needs – all fully satisfied in this Garden with You.
The Garden. You gave, and You provided. You cherished their existence. Shared Your creative wonders. Gave them purpose and responsibility, to rule over and care for this precious world You gifted to them.
But…
…they betrayed You.
The Garden. The beginning of humanity’s ruin happened here, and although it was just an apple, at the heart of the eating of this fruit was the betrayal of You and the rejection of Your Love. We regarded all You are and all You gave, as unsatisfactory, lacking and inadequate.
Everything You had created, everything You had given, the inclusion into intimacy that You offered, had been rejected. Your love, a completely satisfying, lacking nothing, perfect inclusive oneness, was declared not enough. God, You were abandoned by us.
Your heart is broken! How can this love be not enough?
All loves I have experienced do not and cannot in any way compare to that perfect, pure, unrestrained, intimate, inclusion and oneness of the love of You, three perfect beings. It is impossible to define this love and oneness of being that You are. Saint Paul tries. He describes it like this as he calls us to be like You, “being of the same mind, maintaining the same love, united in spirit, intent on one purpose” (Philippians 2:2, NASB) –
Same mind – You, Father, Son, and Spirit, think the same
Same love – You love the same
Same spirit – You are the same
Same purpose – You work towards the same things
A perfect, unified, thinking and loving and doing.
You invite Israel into this oneness, talking about it this way, “I will give them singleness of heart and action” (Jeremiah 32:39, NIV). You offer them inclusion into this Perfect Love and togetherness that You experience every moment of eternity, but they, and we, rejected You, and in doing so, became utterly ruined. Our rejection and our ruin broke Your heart.
We are now in continual aggressive pursuit of intimate satisfaction because we were created for Your love and for inclusion in Your love, but having walked away, we have become so ruined that we pursue it in every other place than its Origin and Source. Your heart mourns the loss, “When I found Israel, it was like finding grapes in the desert, when I saw your fathers, it was like seeing the early fruit on the fig tree” (Hosea 9:10, NIV). Sweet and refreshing to a parched and thirsty mouth. The promise of delicious fruit – times of sweet fellowship together – pictures used to describe how You see us, and what You long for, are beautiful and innocent and pure, but they sadly turn dark as they highlight the comparison of what we have become.
“I will put my dwelling-place among you, and I will not abhor you. I will walk among you and be your God, and you will be my people” (Leviticus 26:11-12, NIV). Promises of love, a place of belonging, inclusion, intimacy, faithfulness, and commitment are all treated with contempt, disregarded, in order that they, we, might do as our lust-filled, self-seeking minds and bodies please.
You have been betrayed. Your love is seen as not good enough. How can a Perfect Love be not good enough? You are left shaking Your head in disbelief and in grief, asking of Yourself the question, how could this happen?
Though revealed here is our betrayal of You, Your passion and Your pursuit since the Garden is to have us come back into the intimacy of Your perfectly, satisfying love.
You open your arms (in fact they have never been closed), and invite us back. It is what Perfect Love does. You are not a man, You are God, and You will be faithful and true to who You are. To this truth, is my soul’s truest exclamation, Phew! I find here that sense of utter relief! Though my sin is great, though I return repeatedly to the same things, though I am ruined by sin, though I prostitute myself to other lovers willingly and waywardly, You do not give up on me. You do not treat me as my sin deserves. Your anger toward my sin is turned away, and in its place is a great compassion, a moving of Your heart towards this sin-filled loved one who is lost. You understand that in my humanity, I am absolutely corrupt and couldn’t turn to You. Any hint of impending judgment or doom is removed and I can rest here, knowing I am safe in Your love, because –
If You have not given up on Israel, You will not give up on me.
The human reaction would be to walk away. To give up. It’s too hard, They don’t deserve it, I’ve given it my best shot, That’s it, I’m done. Or in anger, demand justice for the offense and restitution for the pain caused.
Oh, I am so glad You are God, and not man that You would say,
“How can I give you up, Ephraim?
How can I hand you over, Israel?
How can I treat you like Admah?
How can I make you like Zeboiim?
My heart is changed within me; all my compassion is aroused.
I will not carry out my fierce anger,
Nor will I devastate Ephraim again.
For I am God, and not a man – the Holy One among you” (Hosea 11:8-9, NIV).
These are incredibly beautiful words. You will be true to Yourself. Where other loves give up on me, Your love will never fail. Where mankind’s love would walk away, Your love holds on tight. Where people’s love would rage in anger, Your love continues in kindness and tenderness. Where their love would demand justice and would destroy, Your love forgives and gives second chances. Though Your heart grieves my ruin and the way I keep pursuing other lovers, and my rejection of the Perfect Love You offer, that same Perfect Love cannot abandon me or fail or forsake me.
Perfect Love sent a prophet who loved his prostitute bride with a faithful, unfailing love. Perfect Love continued to love though she returned again and again to her other lovers. Perfect Love paid the price of injustice and the anger of God towards sin, so that this Gomer, this Israel, this humanity, could know Love, and be redeemed and reclaimed and brought into it again – the place of completely satisfying love that we were created for, but which was robbed from us, and us from You, in the Garden.
Continued in next week’s blog…
[Hosea was a prophet of God to the nation of Israel. It is where much of this journey of love was awakened. His story is found in the Old Testament part of the Bible. Read more here.]