Ian Laird tell us about yourself and what brought you to emmanuel?As a bloke how did you feel about God’s people being pictured as an adulterous wife?
Admittedly it’s not particularly easy for me to relate to this image, and not just because it’s a feminine one. As someone who’s grown up in the church I can find it difficult to see myself as morally bankrupt as Hosea’s wife (if she can even be called that). I personally know men and women whose husbands and wives committed affairs and the immense hurt that it caused them. For the bible to suggest that I am like that is not easy to stomach, and so sometimes I dismiss it or down play it. But it is the truth. If it wasn’t then there is no way God would have given his Son to die for us. The cross is a sobering reminder that we are all disgusting adulterous wives.
God dealt out some horrific (to say the least), punishments to his people because of their spiritual adultery, did this cause you to question God’s goodness?
In all honesty, it didn’t really cause me to question God’s goodness because I tend to think, “Well … I guess Israel kinda deserved it.” And it’s true, they did. Reading through not just Hosea but the entire Old Testament we can see that Israel’s punishment is entirely justified. However, if God was to aim these punishments at me I would quickly change my tune and say, “Hang on, this doesn’t seem fair. God, you don’t have to be that extreme.” But like my self-righteousness blinds me to seeing myself as an adulterous wife that I am, so too does it blind me to seeing how much my spiritual adultery warrants horrific punishment. My selfish desires for money, sex and power, no matter how innocent or socially unacceptable its outward form may appear, are in reality acts of adultery against God himself. The cross is a sobering reminder that a holy and righteous God, a good God, cannot let our awful sin go unpunished. It somehow has to be dealt with … one way or another.
We are told that a true apology and acknowledgement of their sins is what God desired. Once they have returned to him, in his love for them he will bless them once again. Do you think it seems ‘too good to be true’?
Sometimes I wish I thought that way more frequently because so often I just take God’s forgiveness for granted. Because if we acknowledge that we are indeed adulterous wives and that God should unleash horrific punishments on us because of our sin, then this offer of reconciliation is most certainly “too good to be true”. But on the other hand, I do think it is too good to be true, and I know I think this because sometimes I find myself doing “good things” because I think that God’s forgiveness isn’t quite enough. I think, in all my self-righteousness, that I can somehow add that little bit extra to my salvation. But that’s just plain wrong. If I could somehow earn my forgiveness, if even just a little, do I really think that God would have had to resort to sending his Son to die? The cross is a sobering reminder that the forgiveness that God offers is so very good precisely because it is so very true.
Ian Laird
