“You adulterous people, don’t you know that friendship with the world means enmity against God? Therefore, anyone who chooses to be a friend of the world becomes an enemy of God.”
James 4:4 (NIV)
The names Hosea and Joshua are both English renderings of the same basic Hebrew name, and Jesus is the English rendering of the Greek transliteration of that same Hebrew name.
So for those of us who understand that the Old Testament shows us Jesus, Joshua foreshadows Jesus, in the sense that just as Joshua as their leader, gave his people the ability to conquer their land and live their lives before God in their land, so also Jesus as our leader gives us the ability to live our lives to the fullest wherever we live on the face of this earth. We could say then that Hosea foreshadows Jesus, in the sense that just as God told Hosea to marry a promiscuous wife, who would stray into adultery, so also God told Jesus to take a wife (the church - the bride of Christ) who is spiritually promiscuous and who would stray into spiritual adultery.
Wow - we say - that doesn’t seem right!
The Israelites are different than we are in the church - for they didn’t have the Holy Spirit to change their hearts, and surely the gospel message of the Old Testament is that God would write His Law on our hearts- how then can our hearts stray?
Well, James had no problem calling Christians (people who have the Holy Spirit living in them) adulterous people, that is James had no trouble calling the bride of Christ adulterous.
According to James 4 – our actions, our motives and our friendships make us adulterous to Christ, for God jealously longs for us.
The letters in Revelation to the local churches reflect a similar thought;
for Ephesus had “forsaken the love you had at first”,
and Pergamum had some who “held true to his name”
and also some who “were eating food sacrificed to idols”,
and Thyatira has “those who commit adultery with her”,
and in Laodicea, Christ’s bride has no clothes - “cover your shameful nakedness”.
This is who we are - a promiscuous bride for the Righteous Groom.
Robert Robinson in the 18th century penned: “prone to wander, Lord I feel it”.
Yep I feel it!
My Lord knows it, and yet loves me with an unfailing love.
He wants all of us, not just 10%, not just Sunday for an hour.
He wants all of us, and all of our love.
James tells us that He will give us the grace we need to enable us to love Him.
But we must humble ourselves and submit to God.
We must humble ourselves before Him and then He will lift us up.
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