The High Cost of Cheap Grace Text: Hosea 3:1-5
Introduction: A Scandalous God
We live in an age that has domesticated God. We have made Him respectable, manageable, and, if we are honest, quite boring. Our modern god is a celestial therapist who affirms our choices, soothes our anxieties, and would never, ever do anything to cause a scandal. He is a god made in our own bland and sentimental image. The God of the prophet Hosea is nothing like that. The God of the Bible is scandalous. His love is a shocking, offensive, and glorious affront to our tidy sensibilities.
The entire book of Hosea is a living parable, a piece of divine street theater. God commands his prophet, a respectable man of God, to marry a prostitute. He is to take a woman of the streets, Gomer, and make her his wife. This is not a metaphor. This is history. And as we would expect, she is unfaithful. She breaks her vows, she chases other lovers, and she ultimately ends up disgraced, likely on an auction block, sold as a slave. And it is at this point, in her deepest degradation, that God comes to Hosea with a command that is even more scandalous than the first. He tells him to go get her back.
This is not a story about a man's troubled marriage. This is a story about God's covenant love for His people. Gomer is Israel. Hosea is God. And we, if we are in Christ, are Gomer. We are the adulterous bride, chasing after worthless idols, selling ourselves into slavery to sin, only to be pursued, purchased, and brought home by a Husband whose love is as fierce as it is incomprehensible. This chapter is a condensed gospel, a portrait of a love that will not let us go, and a discipline that will not let us stay as we are.
The Text
Then Yahweh said to me, “Go again, love a woman who is loved by her companion and is an adulteress, even as Yahweh loves the sons of Israel, though they turn to other gods and love raisin cakes.” So I bargained for her for myself for fifteen shekels of silver and a homer and a half of barley. Then I said to her, “You shall stay with me for many days. You shall not play the harlot, nor shall you have a man; so I will also be toward you.” For the sons of Israel will remain for many days without king or prince, without sacrifice or sacred pillar, and without ephod or household idols. Afterward the sons of Israel will return and seek Yahweh their God and David their king; and they will come in dread to Yahweh and to His goodness in the last days.
(Hosea 3:1-5 LSB)
The Offensive Command (v. 1)
We begin with the Lord's outrageous directive to His prophet.
"Then Yahweh said to me, 'Go again, love a woman who is loved by her companion and is an adulteress, even as Yahweh loves the sons of Israel, though they turn to other gods and love raisin cakes.'" (Hosea 3:1)
The command is "Go again." Gomer has already proven herself to be a faithless wife. She has left Hosea's provision and protection to chase after her "companions" or lovers. She is an adulteress, not by a one-time slip, but by character. And God says, "Go love her." This is not a suggestion to feel a certain way. The love commanded here is a covenantal, active, pursuing love. It is a love that acts for the good of the beloved, regardless of their merit or response.
And God immediately provides the theological key. Hosea is to do this "even as Yahweh loves the sons of Israel." God's love for His people is the pattern. And what is their character? They "turn to other gods and love raisin cakes." This seems almost comically trivial. They have abandoned the fountain of living waters for what? For cheap, sugary treats used in pagan fertility rites. The raisin cakes were likely offered at the shrines of Baal, the god of agriculture and fertility. The Israelites were thanking Baal for the harvest that Yahweh had given them. They were committing spiritual adultery, chasing after the tawdry thrills of idolatry, and trading the glory of the infinite God for a snack cake.
This is a profound diagnosis of all sin. We trade the supreme value of God for trinkets. We exchange His steadfast love for the fleeting pleasures of this world, which are as substantial as a raisin cake. And yet, God loves His people. Not because they are lovely, but because He is love. His love is not a response to our goodness; it is the source of any goodness we might ever have. This is a love that initiates, that pursues, that is utterly unmerited. It is scandalous grace.
The Redemptive Purchase (v. 2)
Hosea obeys, and his obedience has a price tag.
"So I bargained for her for myself for fifteen shekels of silver and a homer and a half of barley." (Hosea 3:2)
Hosea has to buy his own wife back. Her sin has led her into bondage, and now she is on the slave market. The price he pays is significant. Fifteen shekels of silver is half the price of a female slave according to the law (Exodus 21:32). The barley was a coarse grain, the food of the poor or of animals. The total price is a mixed payment, part cash, part commodity, suggesting a bargain, a scraping together of the price for something that has been devalued. She is not worth much in the world's eyes, but he pays the price to have her back.
This is a picture of our redemption. We have sold ourselves into slavery to sin. We are on the auction block, and the wages of sin is death. But our Husband, Jesus Christ, comes to the marketplace. He does not bargain with a mix of silver and barley. He purchases His bride, the Church, "not with perishable things like silver or gold, but with the precious blood of Christ" (1 Peter 1:18-19). The price was His own life. He bought us, not because we were valuable, but to make us valuable. He did not redeem us because we were worthy; He redeemed us to make us worthy. He paid the full price for His adulterous bride, to have her for Himself.
The Disciplinary Seclusion (v. 3)
After redeeming her, Hosea does not immediately restore her to the full privileges of marriage. There is a necessary period of discipline.
"Then I said to her, 'You shall stay with me for many days. You shall not play the harlot, nor shall you have a man; so I will also be toward you.'" (Hosea 3:3)
He brings her home, but under strict conditions. She is to "stay with me," literally, "sit for me." This is a period of quiet seclusion and probation. She is cut off from her former life. The command is explicit: "You shall not play the harlot, nor shall you have a man." Her adulterous ways must be put to death. She is to belong to no one else.
But notice the astounding reciprocal promise: "so I will also be toward you." During this time of her seclusion, Hosea himself will abstain from marital relations. He will wait for her. He enters into her discipline with her. This is not just punishment; it is restorative discipline. It is a time for her to detox from her idols, to unlearn her adulterous habits, and to learn to find her identity and security in him alone. It is a stripping away of all false lovers so that she might learn to love her true husband.
This is a picture of our sanctification. When God redeems us, He does not simply leave us to our old ways. He brings us into a period of discipline. He calls us to mortify the flesh, to put sin to death. He strips away our idols, the things we run to for comfort and meaning apart from Him. Sometimes this involves a season of spiritual dryness or trial, a time when we are made to "sit" and be reminded that He is God and we are not. But He is with us in it. He is faithful to us even as He disciplines us, waiting for us to be conformed to the image of His Son.
The National Desolation (v. 4)
The parable of Gomer's seclusion is now explicitly applied to the nation of Israel.
"For the sons of Israel will remain for many days without king or prince, without sacrifice or sacred pillar, and without ephod or household idols." (Hosea 3:4)
Just as Gomer was stripped of her lovers, Israel will be stripped of everything she trusts in, both the legitimate and the illegitimate. The coming exile will be a long period, "many days." They will be without "king or prince," their political leadership. They will be without "sacrifice," the legitimate means of worship ordained by God. But they will also be without "sacred pillar... ephod or household idols," the tools of their syncretistic, idolatrous worship.
God's judgment is a thorough cleansing. He is going to remove every crutch, every false source of security and identity. He will take away their political structures, their religious rituals, and even their favorite idols. He is reducing them to nothing so that they will be forced to look to Him for everything. This is a severe mercy. God loves His people too much to let them find satisfaction in anyone or anything but Himself. This prophecy has been fulfilled in the long exile of Israel, a people scattered among the nations, without a temple, without a sacrifice, and without a king.
The Promised Restoration (v. 5)
But the discipline is not the end of the story. Desolation gives way to restoration in the final verse.
"Afterward the sons of Israel will return and seek Yahweh their God and David their king; and they will come in dread to Yahweh and to His goodness in the last days." (Hosea 3:5)
"Afterward." This is the great gospel promise. After the long discipline, there will be a turning. They "will return and seek Yahweh their God." True repentance is a seeking after God Himself, not just His benefits. But they will also seek "David their king." Hosea is writing centuries after King David was dead and buried. This is a clear, undeniable reference to the Messiah, the great Son of David who was to come. The ultimate restoration of Israel is their conversion to Jesus Christ.
And look at their posture. "They will come in dread to Yahweh and to His goodness." This is not the cowering fear of a slave before a tyrant. The word is better translated as awe or reverence. It is a trembling wonder. They will be astonished by His goodness. Having tasted the bitter fruit of their sin and the emptiness of their idols, they will finally see the overwhelming, terrifying, glorious goodness of the God who pursued them, bought them, disciplined them, and waited for them. Their return is not to a scolding master, but to a feast of goodness.
This is to happen "in the last days." This is the age of the Messiah, the age of the gospel. We are living in these days. The promise of this verse is that there will be a great, future turning of ethnic Israel to their Messiah, Jesus. But it is also the promise for every one of us who is in Christ. We were Gomer. We loved raisin cakes. We were bought with a price. We are being disciplined and sanctified. And one day, we will see our King, the true David, face to face. We will stand in trembling awe, not at our faithfulness, but at His goodness, a goodness that pursued us in our filth and will not let us go until we are presented as a spotless bride on that final day.