Verse four is a short recapitulation of the first
commandment, it certainly is a wake-up call of remembrance to their entire
history. The anger of the Lord towards
Israel is due to their history, due to the fact that they are His chosen
ones. The love of the husband towards a
wayward wife is passionate, and the anger is different from the anger of other broken
relationships. Hosea's prophecy is more
personal in many ways than that of the other prophets. There is a fierce anger mixed with passionate
love that makes for an almost bi-polar feel to the prophecy. The Lord's anger is particularly powerful but
there is always the memory of the good times in the relationship lurking in the
background that happens only in particularly intimate relationships gone bad.
There at least two very strange things about Herod's
conclusion about Jesus. Why did he think
John the Baptist was raised from the dead and now living as Jesus? Why did the miraculous signs make him believe
it was John? Jesus was close in age to
John but apparently Herod had never heard of Jesus, as He had not become
well-known until the time close to John's beheading, so it was possible that
Herod had not heard the stories of Jesus' birth and baptism. We are not told of any miraculous signs
worked through John but if this were indeed John's spirit raised from the dead,
it would certainly have the power to do things that perhaps were different. Herod seems to have accepted his guilt in the
murder of John and these signs point towards an innocent man coming back from
the dead. All this was intensely
personal for Herod, as John shared his opinions about Herod's marriage to his
brother's wife. Herod was at least
nominally a Jew and therefore was responsible for the law concerning
marriage.
Is Paul saying he is Gnostic, that he has some special knowledge
that is otherwise unattainable? No, he is speaking to those who should have knowledge,
those who have received the Holy Spirit.
We believe that indeed the giving of the Holy Spirit is a requirement to know spiritual things,
that the natural man is unable to perceive the truths of God. Unless we receive God's spirit we cannot
discern God's thoughts, they are too personal.
Have you ever tried to discern the motives of another person and been
completely wrong? Better yet, have you
ever been misunderstood concerning your motives? We are, however, given God's spirit to lead
us into the truth about God, to truly know Him intimately. The Christian life is intensely personal,
God's Spirit lives within us that we might know ourselves better and also that
we might know Him better. He is an
incredibly giving God.
No comments:
Post a Comment