Holy Love

…I am God and not a man, the Holy One in your midst, and I will not come in wrath.   Hosea 11:9

           This is one of those Bible verses you have to read a few times and let it sink in. Consider the fact that the prophet Hosea writes to a nation facing impending disaster. Israel has given itself to Baal worship, with all its sexual perversions and ghastly violence. The Lord calls her an adulterous wife (2:5) and a stubborn heifer (4:16) who soon will face destruction by the Assyrians.[1] He declares, “I am God and not a man, the Holy One in your midst.” We expect him to complete the sentence by pronouncing his holy judgment against the unfaithful—that he will come in wrath. It’s what every sinner deserves. Yet astonishingly, the Lord declares the very opposite!  “I will not come in wrath.” 

           How can this be? How can the Holy One dwell in the midst of wicked people without bringing holy judgment? To answer that question, we need to grasp the nature of “holiness” itself. Many people wrongly imagine that God’s holiness and his love are opposites:  on the one hand he’s holy and gets angry at us, but on the other hand he’s loving and therefore tolerates us. His holiness and his love sort of cancel each other out, resulting in a bland non-relationship—but at least we can squeeze under his low bar and not go to hell. And God will mind his own business and stay out of our way. That fantasy meshes nicely with Moralistic Therapeutic Deism,[2] a worldview that imagines a god who exists primarily to help us to be good—or at least better than those bad people—and especially to feel good.

           As an antidote to this popular folk religion, apply your mind to Berkof’s description[3] of the holiness of God:  Holiness “denotes that He is absolutely distinct from all His creatures, and is exalted above them in infinite majesty. So understood, the holiness of God is one of His transcendental attributes…. Holiness in this sense of the word is not really a moral attribute, which can be coordinated with the others, such as love, grace and mercy, but is rather something that is co-extensive with, and applicable to, everything that can be predicated of God. He is holy and everything that reveals Him, in His goodness and grace as well as in His justice and wrath.”  In other words, God’s love is holy love!

Salisbury Cathedral Window (England)

It must be so, because the Lord loves his people as a husband loves his bride! In word and deed, he demonstrates holy zeal for her eternal good. I will betroth you to me forever. I will betroth you to me in righteousness and in justice, in steadfast love and in mercy. I will betroth you to me in faithfulness. And you shall know the Lord (Hos. 2:19). Because he’s holy, therefore his love is holy, and human sin can never overturn it. In fact, his love shines the brightest against the dark backdrop of sin. At the cross, when the skies turned black, God indeed “came in wrath.” There his holy Son absorbed the punishment due to us, in our place. The Bridegroom will not be dissuaded or defeated.  He gave his life to rescue his bride and purify her for life in his holy presence. In this is love, not that we have loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins (1 John 4:10). And as a bridegroom rejoices over his bride, so your God will rejoice over you (Isa. 62:5).

           May the Holy Spirit give you faith to know and delight in a restored relationship with the Living God, through Christ, which will last through eternity.

[1] It led to the end of the northern kingdom of Israel, 732-722 B.C.

[2] The MTD term was coined by sociologist Christian Smith in Soul Searching: The Religious and Spiritual Lives of American Teenagers (University of Notre Dame), 2005.

[3] Louis Berkof, Systematic Theology (public domain)