Freely

“I will heal their backsliding, I will love them freely: for mine anger is turned away from him.” (Ho 14:4 AV)

 

It is a great comfort to know that no matter how much we mess up, as long as we are willing to repent from our sin and return to Christ, He will gather us back to Him without any reservations!  The Hebrew word for ‘…freely…’ means spontaneously and abundantly.  The book of Hosea is written primarily to Ephraim, or the northern ten tribes of Israel.  This promise above is to those ten northern tribes.  The LORD was gracious to them in allowing them to split from Judah and Benjamin.  However, their response to God’s grace was to embrace Baal worship and worship of the gods of their neighbors.  Consequently, the LORD brought Assyria against them and allowed them to be brought into captivity.  From there, they were scattered throughout the world.  Yet we know, according to the book of Revelation, the LORD will gather them back to Palestine.  We know the LORD will restore Israel as a nation so He can honor His covenants with Abraham, Isaac, and David.  What we want to consider this morning is the love of God in comparison to our failures to honor Him.

The understanding of the meaning of the word above is hard to explain.  The reason is, we have very few examples of it.  In human relationships, there is a natural quid pro quo involved in our love.  Perhaps we don’t notice it, but it is there.  For example, we welcomed our newest grandchild into the world about eight weeks ago.  When you have a newborn, it is hard not to love them abundantly and spontaneously.  It is what we do as parents and grandparents.  However, when Mom and Dad have been sleep-deprived for more than a month, it is hard to love them abundantly and spontaneously at three in the morning.  Our spouses are a blessing from the LORD.  We love them abundantly and spontaneously.  That is until they fail to follow our desire in a matter for the ten-thousandth time.  Loving them abundantly and spontaneously while we are out on a date is easy.  Loving them abundantly and spontaneously while we pick up clothes thrown on the floor – not so much.  I have a puppy.  He is the best dog I have ever had.  His breed was created for the express purpose of companionship.  He loves people.  Our morning routine is to get him out of his house, take him outside, feed him, then we say our good mornings.  He will jump on my lap and lick my ears.  Nine hours apart was way too long for him.  I look forward to those greetings.  It makes it easy to love him spontaneously and abundantly.  However, as he barks for the fifth time in the same hour to go outside – not so much.

When we speak of God loving us freely, we can come close.  We can understand what it means to love abundantly and spontaneously.  But not from His respectiveve.  He is our God.  He is our creator.  We are the work of His hands and we owe Him everything.  In His grace He has created us and saved us to love Him and obey Him by faith.  We constantly fail.  We rebel.  We mistrust.  We insult Him more than we please Him.  The moment He sees our hearts turning back to Him, His response is to love us freely.  What a wonderful and merciful God we worship.  When we have done nothing to warrant any patience, mercy, or grace from Him, He bestows it without reservation or limit.  He heals our backslidings and rejoices that we have returned.  This promise is not to the obedient.  They need it not.  It is to the rest of us who find ourselves out of the perfect will of God and wonder if He will ever forgive us for all those times we have turned our back on Him.  He will!  He will love us freely!