Marriage is an illustration.

When the Lord began to speak through Hosea, the Lord said to him, “Go, marry a promiscuous woman and have children with her, for like an adulterous wife this land is guilty of unfaithfulness to the Lord.”  Hosea 1:2

There is no tougher book in the Bible from which to view the real essence of marriage than Hosea. Hosea is given the impossible task to communicate God’s heart to Israel. God wanted to reach His child- Israel. In Hosea 1:2, God commands Hosea to marry a prostitute. You would most likely cringe at this suggestion and probably disobey God. How can this be a command from God? This directive had nothing to do with Hosea’s comfort, feelings, or desires. How you feel about your marriage or spouse does not alter God’s agenda. God has and will use marriage to communicate His message to you and to your spouse. Therefore, your views, suggestions or feelings do not matter in the greater scheme of things. Marriage is God’s agenda. Like Hosea’s marriage, your marriage is an illustration, an avenue for God to communicate to you and your spouse. 

On the one hand, God will use your marriage to display His image to your spouse and on the other hand He will use it to reveal to you your unfaithfulness to Him. You may ask “How have I been unfaithful to God?” Well, every time you refuse as a wife to be submissive to or respect your husband or as a husband your refuse to love your spouse or you refuse to do what God has commanded you to do because of your spouse’s sin, your pride, choice, or any other reason, you are being unfaithful to God. Something or someone else is now lord in your life. 

What does this mean for you? Instead of focusing on your spouse’s sin, you should spend more time introducing them to Christ by the way you behave and/or respond to their sin. It is Christ not you or your spouse or your sin nor their sin that is the focus of your marriage. Hosea never focused on the past, present, or likely future sin of his spouse. He focused on being the vessel of God through which He could illustrate who He is. No matter how difficult your spouse or marriage is, God can use it to deliver His message. Marriage is about God and His message to you, your spouse and the community around you not about you, your spouse, your sin or your spouse’s sin. The greater question is what message is God communicating to you and through you through your marriage?  

Marriage is about you and Christ: Your obedience to Christ. 

A reflection on God’s command to Hosea reveals that marriage is solely between you and God, not you and your spouse. Why is marriage between you and God yet you are married to your spouse? Like salvation, marriage is the only other institution where one must remain focused on his or her obedience to Christ. This is best illustrated in Ephesians 5:22-31. In that portion of scripture, we note that our obedience to Christ is the most critical element in our marriages. Wives are commanded to submit to and respect their husbands as unto Christ while husbands are called to love their wives as Christ loved the church. Nowhere are wives told to submit as much as their husbands love them or husbands to love their wives in proportion to how submissive their wives are. Each spouse is to focus on their obedience to Christ. As unreasonable as God’s command to Hosea was, it wasn’t the unreasonableness of the command that was on trial but his obedience. God never placed a condition or a promise to the command He gave Hosea. There is no promise or condition to the command Christ has given you in your marriage. All that is required is your obedience. It’s your obedience to Christ that is on trial. As Christ calls you to work out your salvation with fear and trembling (Phil 2:12), you ought to work on the command that God has given you in your marriage with fear and trembling. That is when you will be able to bear God’s image in marriage. Marriage isn’t about what your spouse is or isn’t doing. It is about you and your obedience to God. 

Hosea did not obey God because he was promised anything or because his wife was equally obedient to God or faithful to her vows. He was obedient because he feared and loved God. Your obedience to God is solely dependent on how much you love and reverence God not on how loving or obedient your spouse is. Stop using your spouse as an excuse for your disobedience. 

You are both sinners You are no different from your spouse. 

No spouse is an angel. No matter how sweet your spouse is, there is a sin they struggle with. That sin will often get on your nerves. We cannot, therefore, be married to only the good side of our spouses. In a sense, each one of us is the Gomer in our marriage. Sadly, we often consider ourselves as the Hosea and our spouses as the Gomer. If you are the Hosea, then why do you conditionally love your spouse? Why is your love for them dependent on their good behaviour and not your reverence and obedience to God? Both of you are Gomers working your way to display Christ in the way you love, forgive, care, and serve one another. You are no different from your spouse. The fact that your spouse sins differently from you doesn’t make you any better or different. Romans 3:23 reminds us that we all have sinned. 

For Hosea to succeed in his marriage, he had to continually focus on God’s word to him, not his spouse’s sin. What kept him going wasn’t the faithfulness of Gomer or her ability to turn away from her prostitution but his reliance and dependence on God’s word. Hosea never trusted in his own ability or his wife’s purity but in God’s reliability.

Secondly, he never judged his wife for her sinfulness. His role was to rely on God and His faithfulness. Like Hosea, we must learn to focus and rely on God’s word and His faithfulness and not our spouses’ sin and imperfections. You cannot focus on your spouse’s sin and bear the image of Christ. You become what you focus on. You find what you are looking for. 

How to respond to your spouse’s sin.

We often sit in the judge’s chair and judge our spouse’s sin harshly. We even have the audacity to view ourselves as “righteous” because of our view of our spouses’ sinfulness. Worse still, our spouses’ sins have become a hindrance to our obedience to God. We feign shock when our spouses sin. We even exclaim- How could he or she do such a thing? Marriage is not about your spouse’s sin but how you will respond to their sin. 

Like Hosea, God expects us not to allow our spouses’ weakness to justify our disobedience to Him or our own wickedness. Your response to your spouse’s sin is your obedience to God. Your spouse’s sin should not be a hindrance to your obedience to God. God expects you to respond to your spouse’s sin with obedience to Him. You, therefore, respond with love, grace, forgiveness, and kindness as an act of obedience to Him.

Like you, your spouse is not entitled to any of these things. They receive them because like you they are God’s gifts. You are just a channel for your spouse to experience God’s forgiveness, love, mercy, and grace. 

It’s therefore not your forgiveness, kindness or love your spouse is taking for granted. They are God’s. When Gomer pursued her wickedness, God told Hosea in Chapter 3:1 to “Go, show your love to your wife again, though she is loved by another man and is an adulteress. Love her as the LORD loves the Israelites, though they turn o other gods and love the sacred raisin cakes.” God expects you to love as He has loved you, forgive as He has forgiven you; be kind as He has been kind to you. The standard remains Him. 

We are therefore called to respond to our spouse’s sins as God responds to our sins. Luke 6:36-37 reminds us to “Be merciful, even as your Father is merciful. “Judge not, and you will not be judged; condemn not, and you will not be condemned; forgive, and you will be forgiven; give, and it will be given to you.”. 

Be the light and the salt in your marriage. As you deal with your spouse’s sin remember the wise words in Galatians 6:1 “If someone falls into sin, forgivingly restore him, saving your critical comments for yourself. You might be needing forgiveness before the day’s out.” 

Forgiveness is the bedrock of Marriage. We only forgive to the extent we love.

In Hosea 3:1, God commands Hosea to reconcile with his wife. It is imperative to note that it wasn’t Hosea who had walked out of the marriage. It was Gomer. Yet when God seeks to restore the marriage, He looks for the obedient one. One who fears Him. Often, we refuse to forgive our spouses and reconcile because we are not the ones who did wrong. 

In Hosea 1:6, God tells Israel that He will no longer show love to Israel, that I should at all forgive them. In other words, love is the precondition for forgiveness.   

From Hosea, we learn that God expects you and not your spouse to seek reconciliation with your spouse because it illustrates His love for you. The problem is you want to do marriage on your own terms and agenda. Marriage is God’s idea. Therefore, God sets the terms; not us. There can be no marriage without forgiveness. Marriage is God’s way of reminding us how He endlessly and unconditionally pursues and forgive us. Hosea’s marriage would have never been restored without him pursuing his wife with forgiveness. We forgive not because our spouses deserve forgiveness. We forgive because we are recipients of forgiveness. We forgive as an act of worship to, obedience, reverence and love for God. The more we love God, the easier we forgive our spouses. There can never be forgiveness where there is no love. You cannot say you love someone yet cannot forgive them. 

Forgiveness has never been easy yet it is something our marriages cannot do without. You may be asking yourself “But why must I be the one to make the first move, yet it is my spouse who sinned?” There are many reasons why:

1. It is a command. See Matthew 5:23-24 and Luke 17:3-5
2. God expects you to imitate Him. See Ephesians 4:32-5:1
3. If you don’t forgive, you will not be forgiven of your sins. See Matthew 6:15 and Mark 11:26

Hosea forgave his wife of the sin which most of us have vowed to never forgive- the sin of adultery. As if God knew that we would struggle with this one, He tells the people so eager to stone a woman caught in adultery – “The one among you who is without sin be the first to throw a stone”. God hasn’t given you a spouse to judge but one to forgive. Not because you are not hurt but because that is who He is. 

Your spouse’s sin should never be a hindrance to intimacy. 

Hosea is also a reminder that your spouse’s sin is not an embargo on intimacy. Many of us, if not all, shut down and withhold intimacy – emotionally, physically and spiritually because our spouse has sinned. Instead of reaching out to our spouses, we hide ourselves from them. Through scripture, God always reached out to men when they sinned. This act is seen in the Garden of Eden and on the cross. 

Through Hosea, God teaches us that our spouses’ sins should not hinder us from being who we are. Our spouses’ sins often expose who we truly are. Again, marriage isn’t about our spouses’ sin but our response to their wickedness. Believe it or not, your spouse’s sin is an opportunity to show who you are. Neither your spouse’s righteousness nor wickedness can change the person that you are without your permission. 

Hosea didn’t withhold intimacy even when he was fully aware of his wife’s sinfulness. In Hosea 1, we are told that Hosea married Gomer and she conceived three times. When you withhold intimacy, of whatsoever nature, from your spouse it tells God more about who you are than the graveness of your spouse’s sinfulness. 

Your assignment in marriage is to imitate God. You continue pursuing your spouse and keep doing what is right. God isn’t asking you to deal with your spouse’s sin but to imitate Him. This is why marriage is indeed centred on trust not in yourself or your spouse but in God. 

Without suggesting that what you are experiencing is in accordance with God’s will, there is great encouragement in 1 Peter 4:19 “So if you find life difficult because you’re doing what God said, take it in stride. Trust Him. He knows what He’s doing, and He’ll keep on doing it.”(MSG). 

Ultimately, marriage isn’t about what our spouses are doing to or for us but what God is doing in and through us. Don’t stop or grow weary of doing what is good. Trust God. He knows what He is doing, and He will not forsake the work of His hands. He will perfect that which concerns you (Psalm 138:8). It’s you not your marriage that is the work of His hands. Marriage is His vessel to perfect that which concerns you! 

There is hope.

Finally, Hosea’s marriage to Gomer is a testament that there is nothing no marriage cannot go through. Often people declare that there are some sins that are unforgivable. However, a close study of Hosea shows that no matter the grievances, not only can any marriage overcome any challenge but also, if you are offended, you hold the key to how fast and when you move beyond the situation that is holding you back. 

In Hosea 3, Hosea goes looking for his wife again to love her as God loves the Israelites, though they turn to other gods and love the sacred raisin cakes. Notice that God isn’t dealing with the past offence of Israel but the current situation. In the same vein, God is asking you to love your spouse again as He loves you. 

There is hope for any marriage. There is no marriage that is incapable of being restored. You, who has been hurt hold the key to the healing of the marriage. Hosea had to choose to either hold on to his pain or on to God. He chose to obey God. That was the beginning of the restoration of his marriage. 

Therefore, no matter how you feel about your marriage, your marriage is not beyond God’s reach. God can through you and in partnership with you restore your marriage. This requires your complete obedience. Do marriage God’s way and you will see how much of God will start manifesting in it. Do not lose hope. Like Abraham against all hope, hope (Romans 4:17-18). God who brought the valley of dry bones to life (Ezekiel 37) and raised Lazarus from the dead (John 11), with whom nothing is impossible is able to intervene in your marriage. There is hope for every marriage. 

Jeremiah 18 tells the story of the Potter’s house. You may look at your marriage and it is like either you, your spouse or both of you may be marred in God’s hands. You may see no hope for your marriage. You have or are on the verge of throwing in the towel. Jeremiah 18:4 doesn’t say that the potter threw away the clay because the pot was marred in his hands. Instead like any skilful person, the potter formed it into another pot, shaping it as seemed best to him. 

You, your spouse and your marriage are in the hands of the greatest potter of all time whose speciality is impossible situations. Nothing is impossible with Him and that my friend includes your marriage. Give it to Him. Obey His commands and trust Him to come through for you. Remember that both you and your spouse are a work in progress. 

Remember IT BEGINS WITH YOU!