What does it cost to redeem a prisoner? How much is a human life worth? Recently our government exchanged a nefarious arms dealer for a famous basketball player. Some governments do not negotiate with terrorists. If you pay a high price for one who has been kidnapped, you have empowered future kidnappers to hold you up for ransom. Risky business, really!
Using consecrated imagination, we can envision Gomer (whose name means “beautiful”), the adulterous wife who left her husband Hosea, returning to her hometown on an auction block. She had left everything behind including her husband and kids. Now she returned with nothing. Sin had devastated her life. One woman who left her family described Gomer’s plight: “When one has smashed everything around oneself, one has also smashed oneself.” Hosea’s personal tragedy mirrored Israel’s corporate tragedy. They had left the Lord for false gods and idols. Those who worship worthless idols become worthless. Their own sin left them in spiritual slavery.
Here is redeeming love: the Lord told Hosea to reclaim his wayward wife. She had not apparently repented of her sin, still living as an adulteress with her lover. Just as the Lord loved his people even while they were adulterous, so he was to love her. Thirty shekels was the price of a slave. Perhaps, Hosea did not have that much money. So he took the food in the house, the barley with which they made bread, and he purchased his wife out of her bondage. As she returned home, Hosea pledged fidelity to Gomer and asked her to make the same commitment.
Once God restored his people, they must never revert to their old sins of idolatry. Israel would return and seek the Lord because he was irreplaceable in their lives. They would come trembling in holy fear to the God who redeemed them.
Does this story sound familiar? What price did God pay to redeem his people? “While we were still sinners, Christ died for us” (Romans 5:8). God sent his only Son to become the ransom for his people. It cost God everything to redeem a sinful world. How shall we respond to our Redeemer? Will we love him and return to him? Will we commit to follow him faithfully? Kurt Kaiser captured our story, “He gave his life. What more could he give? Oh, how he loves you. Oh, how he loves me. Oh, how he loves you and me.”
