The Severe Mercy of a Covenant God Text: Hosea 6:1-3
Introduction: The Logic of Repentance
We live in a sentimental age, an age that has tried to domesticate the Lion of Judah and turn Him into a declawed housecat. Our therapeutic culture wants a god who is all comfort and no confrontation, all affirmation and no affliction. When trouble comes, as it always does, the modern mind has only two categories for it: either it is a meaningless accident from a chaotic universe, or it is an unjust assault from a cosmic bully. The one thing it cannot be, in their estimation, is the loving, severe, and purposeful discipline of a good Father.
But the Bible knows nothing of such a tame deity. The God of Scripture is a consuming fire, and His love is a holy love. This means His love is not content to leave us in our sins. He loves us too much for that. His love is a restorative, purifying, and sometimes painful love. He is a surgeon, and when the cancer of sin is threatening our life, He will not hesitate to use the scalpel. This is a truth our soft generation has forgotten, and in forgetting it, we have forgotten the very logic of repentance. We have forgotten why we should return to God, and how we can return to Him with confidence.
The prophet Hosea ministered to a nation that was rotting from the inside out. The northern kingdom of Israel was spiritually adulterous, politically treacherous, and morally bankrupt. They had broken covenant with Yahweh in every way imaginable, chasing after idols and foreign alliances. And so, God, in His faithfulness to that covenant, brought the promised curses. He came to them as a lion, as a leopard, ready to tear and to destroy (Hosea 5:14). This was not random cruelty. This was covenantal justice. This was the promised discipline for a wayward son.
Our text in Hosea 6 is the proper, logical, and faithful response to such divine discipline. It is a model of corporate repentance. It is a call for the people to reason their way back to God from the very wounds God Himself inflicted. They are to look at their torn flesh and shattered national life, not as a reason to despair, but as the very evidence that God is still their God, that He is still dealing with them, and that the same hands that tore are the only hands that can heal. This passage teaches us the grammar of returning to God. It is a grammar that is grounded in the character of God, climaxing in the resurrection of His Son, and issuing in a confident hope for total restoration.
The Text
"Come, let us return to Yahweh. For He has torn us, but He will heal us; He has struck us, but He will bandage us. He will make us alive after two days; He will raise us up on the third day, That we may live before Him. So let us know, let us pursue to know Yahweh. His going forth is established as the dawn; And He will come to us like the rain, Like the late rain watering the earth."
(Hosea 6:1-3 LSB)
The Logic of the Wound (v. 1)
We begin with the corporate summons to return, based on a profound theological insight.
"Come, let us return to Yahweh. For He has torn us, but He will heal us; He has struck us, but He will bandage us." (Hosea 6:1)
The call is corporate: "Come, let us return." Sin is never a purely private affair. Israel had sinned as a nation, as a covenant body, and so they must repent as a nation. This is a principle our individualistic age despises. We want our sins to be our own business, but we want our blessings to be shared. The Bible will not allow this. We are bound together. The sins of fathers are visited on sons, and the sins of a nation bring judgment upon that nation. Therefore, repentance must also be corporate. We must learn to say "we" have sinned, not just "they" have sinned.
But notice the reason given for returning. It is not, "Let us return to Yahweh, so that He will stop tearing us." No, the logic is far deeper. It is, "Let us return to Yahweh, because He has torn us." The very fact that God is the one who has struck them is the foundation of their hope. Why? Because if their calamity came from the hand of Baal, or the Assyrians, or blind chance, they would have no one to appeal to. But because their wounds come from their covenant Father, they know exactly where to go for healing. The one who wounds is the only one who can make whole.
This is the logic of a child who, having been disciplined by his father, runs back to that same father for comfort. He knows that the spanking was not a sign of hatred, but of love. It was a sign that he is, in fact, a son and not an illegitimate. As the author to the Hebrews tells us, "the Lord disciplines the one he loves, and chastises every son whom he receives" (Heb. 12:6). To be disciplined by God is a terrifying thing, but to be ignored by God would be infinitely worse. The tearing is a sign that the covenant, though strained, is still in effect. God is still their God, and they are still His people. He has not abandoned them to their sin; He has intervened. The wound itself is a severe mercy, a violent grace intended to drive them back to Him.
And because it is He who has struck, they can be certain that "He will heal us." The God who is faithful to His covenant curses is the same God who is faithful to His covenant promises of restoration. His goal in discipline is never destruction, but redemption. He tears in order to heal. He strikes in order to bandage. His justice and His mercy flow from the same holy, loving heart. Our confidence in His healing is therefore directly proportional to our confidence that He is the one who struck us in the first place.
The Resurrection Hope (v. 2)
The prayer then moves from the logic of the wound to the ultimate hope of restoration, expressed in astonishingly prophetic terms.
"He will make us alive after two days; He will raise us up on the third day, That we may live before Him." (Hosea 6:2)
Here, the language of healing escalates to the language of resurrection. Israel's condition under judgment is not just sickness; it is death. Their national life is over. They are in the grave. And from this place of utter hopelessness, they express a stunning confidence. The restoration will be swift ("after two days") and it will be complete ("on the third day He will raise us up").
Now, we cannot read this as Christians without our hearts leaping. The apostle Paul tells us that Christ died and rose "on the third day in accordance with the Scriptures" (1 Cor. 15:4). When Paul said that, what Scriptures did he have in mind? This passage in Hosea is undoubtedly one of them. The Holy Spirit embedded within Israel's hope for national restoration a typological promise of the resurrection of Israel's Messiah. The corporate body of Israel was to be "raised" on the third day, and this finds its ultimate fulfillment when the true Israel, the head of the covenant people, Jesus Christ, was raised from the grave on the third day.
The pattern is consistent throughout Scripture. Isaac is as good as dead and is received back on the third day (Gen. 22:4). Jonah is in the belly of the great fish, in the heart of Sheol, for three days before being spit out onto dry land (Jonah 1:17). And here, the nation of Israel, dead in its sin and judgment, anticipates being raised on the third day. Because Jesus, our federal head, was raised on the third day, the promise is now secured for all of us who are in Him. We, the corporate body, have been raised with Him.
And what is the purpose of this resurrection? "That we may live before Him." The goal is not just life, but life in fellowship with God. It is restored communion. It is to stand in His presence, under His smile, welcomed and accepted. This is the goal of all redemption. This is what was lost in the Garden, and this is what is restored permanently and gloriously through the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.
The Pursuit of True Knowledge (v. 3)
The final verse outlines the ongoing response of a people who have been restored by such a God. The repentance is not a one-time event, but a new way of life.
"So let us know, let us pursue to know Yahweh. His going forth is established as the dawn; And He will come to us like the rain, Like the late rain watering the earth." (Hosea 6:3)
The root of Israel's apostasy was a failure to know God. As Hosea said earlier, "My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge" (Hosea 4:6). This was not a lack of intellectual information. They had the law and the prophets. They knew about Yahweh. Their problem was a lack of personal, covenantal, relational knowledge. It was the knowledge of a wife for her husband, a son for his father. They had substituted ritual for relationship, sacrifice for steadfast love (Hosea 6:6).
The response, therefore, must be to "pursue to know Yahweh." This is an active, diligent, lifelong pursuit. It is not a passive waiting for enlightenment. It is a chasing after God in His Word, in His world, and in His worship. It is a determination to see all of life in relation to Him, to think His thoughts after Him, to love what He loves and hate what He hates. This is the essence of the sanctified life.
And this pursuit is not a desperate, uncertain scramble in the dark. It is filled with confident assurance. "His going forth is established as the dawn." Just as surely as the sun will rise tomorrow morning, God will show up for His people. His faithfulness is not fickle. It is built into the very fabric of the cosmos. He is reliable. He is predictable in His goodness.
And His coming is not destructive, but refreshing. "He will come to us like the rain, Like the late rain watering the earth." For an agrarian society, rain was life. The early rain softened the ground for planting, and the late rain brought the harvest to fullness. This is what God's presence is for His repentant people. It is life-giving, fruitful, and restorative. The same God who came as a lion to tear now comes as the gentle rain to refresh. The discipline has done its work, and now the blessing can flow.
Conclusion: The Optimism of the Gospel
This passage is a profound summary of the gospel logic. We are torn by the consequences of our sin, a tearing that God Himself oversees in His justice. But that very tearing is the basis of our hope, because the God who is just enough to wound is gracious enough to heal. This pattern of death and resurrection, promised to corporate Israel, was fulfilled in the person of Jesus Christ on the third day. And because He was raised, we who are united to Him by faith are raised with Him to live in God's presence.
This pattern applies not only to us as individuals, but also to us corporately, as the Church, and even to nations. Our nation, like Israel, is currently being torn. We have abandoned God's law, we have celebrated wickedness, and we are reaping the whirlwind of judgment. The temptation is to despair, or to blame our problems on merely political or economic forces. But Hosea teaches us to see the hand of God in our troubles.
And because it is His hand, we have a sure hope. The gospel is not a message of retreat or cultural pessimism. It is a message of victory. The postmillennial hope is not a vain dream; it is the logical extension of the resurrection. The same God who raised Jesus from the dead has promised that the knowledge of Him will cover the earth as the waters cover the sea (Hab. 2:14). He has promised to come like the rain. Our task, then, is to lead our families, our churches, and our nation in this great call: "Come, let us return to Yahweh."
We must pursue the knowledge of God, and we must do so with the confidence of the dawn. The night of our cultural apostasy seems dark, but the sun is going to rise. Christ has been raised, and His kingdom is advancing. Let us therefore repent of our sins, trust in His severe mercy, and get about the business of living before Him, knowing that the rain is coming.