Hosea 1:2-3

“When the Lord first spoke through Hosea, the Lord said to Hosea, “Go, take to yourself a wife of whoredom and have children of whoredom, for the land commits great whoredom by forsaking the Lord.” So he went and took Gomer, the daughter of Diblaim, and she conceived and bore him a son.” Hosea 1:2-3

The theme of Hosea is laid out for us in these two verses, “Take to yourself a wife of whoredom… For the land commits great whoredom by forsaking the Lord.” Here we will look at the two types of whoredom in two parts. First in the post we’ll look at the believer’s whoredom. In the next post we’ll look at the unbeliever’s whoredom. Let’s begin with the believer.
As believers in the Gospel, this is our condition. We are Gomer. We are the whores. The ones pledging our affection solely to Christ, then turning to love anything else. To describe this better I default to Henry Scougal’s small yet powerful book (originally a letter) “The Life of God in the Soul of Man”. Within which he writes we must,
“…Wean our affections from created things, and all the delights and entertainments of the lower life, which sink and depress the souls of men, and retard their motions toward God and heaven; and this we must do by possessing our minds with a deep persuasion of the vanity and emptiness of worldly enjoyments.”
“This is an ordinary theme, and everybody can make declamations upon it; but alas! How few understand and believe what they say? These notions float in our brains, and come sliding off our tongues, but we have no deep impression of them on our spirits; we feel not the truth which we pretend to believe. We can tell that all the glory and splendor, all the pleasures and enjoyments of the world are vanity and nothing; and yet these nothings take up all our thoughts, and engross all our affections, they stifle the better inclinations of our soul, and inveigle us into many a sin.”
We say we love Christ Jesus more than life, and love, and freedom, and family, and friends and money, yet we spend more time worrying about, thinking upon and hoping for these things than we ever have Christ. We, the believers in the Gospel, are the whores, placing our affections anywhere but on Jesus.
Thus the necessity of the Gospel, we knew not how we ought to love, therefore Christ came; we knew not how we ought to live, therefore Christ came; we knew not what it meant to be alive, therefore Christ came. Paying our debt by dying in our place and propitiating the punishment we so justly deserved. So that, positionally speaking, we now stand before God perfect, by Christ work only. Though we are shot through with our sin, and in dire need of progressive sanctification.

Spurgeon on 1 Thess. 5:6

"Now, Christians, this is your case. Your life is a life of warfare; the world, the flesh, and the devil; the hellish trinity, and your poor flesh is a wretched mudwork behind which to be intrenched. Are you asleep? Asleep, when Satan has fire-balls of lust to hurl into the windows of your eyes- when he has arrows of temptation to shoot into your heart- when he has snares into which to trap your feet? Asleep, when he has undermined your very existence, and when he is about to apply the match with which to destroy you, unless sovereign grace prevents? Oh! Sleep not, soldier of the cross! To sleep in wartime is utterly inconsistent. Great Spirit of God forbid that we should ever slumber"

Hosea

“Come, let us return to the Lord; for he has torn us, that he may heal us; he has struck us down, and he will bind us up. After two days he will revive us; on the third day he will raise us up, that we may live before him. Let us know; let us press on to know the Lord; 
 his going out is sure as the dawn; he will come to us as the showers, 
 as the spring rains that water the earth.” Hosea 6:1-3
“For he has torn us.” More often than not when we feel torn down rather than looking to God as the one who has ripped us (directly or indirectly), we either, consciously or subconsciously, think that somehow God lost control. I do this often. Seeing circumstances that I want to go a certain way, but knowing it could very well go the opposite way, and worrying about it. This is unbelief and disobedience (sin). Unbelief that God is sovereign and disobedience to have faith in what He will do. Unbelief that what He will do will be the best for me (even though my past speaks clearly to God being in control and good coming from pain) and disobedience to act in accordance with His sovereignty. I can’t help but think of Hebrews 3:19, “So we see that they were unable to enter because of unbelief.” ‘They’ are the Israelites who were freed from Egypt. Their unbelief led to their disobedience, and because of their unbelief and disobedience they could not enter God’s rest. The same is true for us.
“That he may heal us.” Romans 8:28, “And we know that for those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose.” Let’s be honest: we’re jacked up and need healing. We, apart from God, don’t know up from down; we are blind; we are deaf; we are dead. For proof look at the Word Romans 3:10-20,23. And if that’s not enough (which it ought to be, God said it) then look at the world. Man’s (yours and mine) proclivity to do disastrous things/acts. Murder, rape, pedophilia and racial hatred to name a few; these things comprise the world that surrounds us, yet they do not shock us… We either need help and healing or to get our butts kicked for being so downright bad. So how can God heal us from our desperate state? Or better, why should He heal us?
Let’s answer the second question first. Why should God heal us? In an effort to be brief we’ll stay within these verses. “That we may live before the Lord. Let us know; let us press on to know the Lord.” So, why should God heal us? So that we can live before the Lord, and press on to know Him. Does this mean that God is lonely and needs us to keep him company so he saved us? No! If we, as believers, are pressing on to know him, praise will happen. Our natural response to awe-inspiring things is to praise them. But here praise is different because this praise is holy (set apart), all other praise is praise to things, creation (idolatry), but praise that is given to God is right praise, it is God-glorifying. So the fundamental answers to why should God heals us, is not because of our value to him, but because His praise and glory are at stake.
Back to the first question; how can God heal us from our desperate state? “On the third day He will raise us up.” Ephesians 4:8-11, “ Therefore it says, “When He ascended on high He led a host of captives, and he gave gifts to men.” (In saying, “He ascended,” what does it mean but that He had also descended into the lower regions, the earth? He who descended is the one who also ascended far above all the heavens, that He might fill all things.)” Since we’re on the honest bend, I’ll be frank. Jesus is how God heals us. We’re screwed, and getting exactly what we deserve unless we have Jesus. No ifs, ands, or buts; no Jesus, no healing. So how do we get Jesus to heal us??? Answer: Belief. Plain and simple. Belief in the Gospel, that Jesus became a man, lived a perfect life (the life you and I can never live), died the death we ought to be eternally dying, and then rose from the dead defeating sin (our biggest problem), death and Satan. Leading us, the captives from our former slavery.