Hosea 3:1 “The LORD said to me again, ‘Go, show your love to a woman loved by someone else, who has been unfaithful to you.’”
We often confuse forgiveness as a feeling instead of a choice. Forgiveness is a deliberate action, an independent act between you and God. To forgive means to “cancel the debt and send it away.”
Forgiveness is a choice.
In the Orient, when someone pays a debt, the loan paper is marked “Paid in full.” It is then nailed above the door of their home for everyone to see. Forgiveness makes the choice to cancel the debt–before they ask for forgiveness or even if they never ask for forgiveness.
Gomer did not ask for or even seem to want forgiveness. Scripture tells us that she “loved adultery” and worshipped the false God Baal. In other words, Gomer was happy in her sin, but Hosea forgave her and brought her home–again!
Why? To Hosea the answer was really quite simple. Because God told him to! God told Hosea not only to bring Gomer back but to love and forgive her.
Now that is asking an awful lot. Right? But God can ask a lot because He gave a lot. Forgiveness is the deepest need of our lives and the greatest gift of God.
Colossians 2:13-14 (NLT) “Then God made you alive with Christ. He forgave all our sins. He canceled the record that contained the charges against us. He took it and destroyed it by nailing it to Christ’s cross.”
Forgiveness must be given in the same proportion that it is received. There should be no limits to our forgiveness because there are no limits to His. In other words, we can stop forgiving when we run out of forgiveness. True love never fails but chooses instead to forgive.
