Why pursuing sin can destroy us
Hos 5:1-7
Sometimes one hears people say in their younger years that they want to live first and there will be time enough for God later. Behind such thinking are some appalling assumptions about God. First, it implicitly compares the fun of the freedom years unfavourably with later life and having to seek God as a sort of necessary second-best. Second, it uses God for spiritual insurance so that the future of eternal life or heaven may be secured. In other words, God is not desired because of Himself but so that a person may gain something by currying favour with Him. However, the longer we live for ourselves, the harder it can become to change that pattern. That self-willed life that sees itself (not God) as the reference point for what is right and good will wreak changes in us that will be hard to overcome, so that choosing God from those entrenched positions will become more difficult than we might think.
Sin entraps and makes repentance difficult
The prophet’s address in our reading illustrates this point. Whatever was going on in the particular places mentioned, Israel’s and its leaders’ sinful attitudes will become a trap for everyone (Hos 5:1). The image is of a snare set to catch an animal or a net where birds get entangled. Because sin is so prevalent and all are involved in them, be it idolatry, sexual promiscuity or social injustices, it becomes the new normal. After a while no one even questions that those sins may be wrong. Such ways of living also entrap people in the sense that individuals are caught in habits and ways of thinking that they cannot easily change. Sin has a way of altering people so that their deeds will not allow them to return to God (the essential sense of repentance; Hos 5:4). Why? Because there is ‘a spirit of harlotry’ in them (v.4), a spirit that finds unfaithfulness to God’s ways more attractive than God.
Sin causes spiritual blindness
Ironically, God knows the people inside out and understands them, but they do not know Him (Hos 5:3-4). Since knowing in the Hebrew is a relational term that speaks of intimate knowledge and closeness, it also incorporates the idea of care and love. Thus, God knows (and cares for) Israel, but Israel neither understands nor cares for God. Their ignorance involves spiritual blindness. They are proud of their heritage (Hos 5:5) that they are God’s people (cf. Hos 8:2) and may look back on the greatness of a previous era like Jeroboam II’s prosperous reign (2 Kings 14:23-27). However, those very things testify against them in their chaotic present (Hos 5:5 cf. 2 Kings 15:8-31). They seek out God with their sacrificial animals (flocks and herds, Hos 5:6) but no amount of religious fervour can counteract their betrayal of God through idolatry.[1] Thus paradoxically, their new moon festivals (a religious celebration with sacrifices offered to the Lord; Num 29:6; 1 Chron 23:30-31) will not benefit them but consume them instead (Hos 5:7). They may make great material sacrifices to encounter God, but such ceremonies will only leave them empty.
How sin affects us
The destructive nature of sin strikes a chord in our modern contexts as well. Specifically, our sense of what constitutes grave sin is skewed by what the culture around us considers a serious offence. Thus, we feel the weight of such sins as sexual abuse or ethnic cleansing and hatred and, rightly so, because they are wrong. However, these horrify us particularly because Western culture has ingrained in us the gravity of these through social media, films and books. It is much harder to feel the same level of revulsion about our attitudes of self-will and self-realisation, of wanting to do things our way. We are desensitised to so much that God considers abhorrent simply because we see it all around us. It is also true that the more we feed our senses with the attractive things that the world offers in pleasure, entertainment and material goods, the harder it becomes to be drawn to God and feel a desire for Him. Sin may also blind us to how far we may have drifted from the Lord. It is easy to convince ourselves that we know Him or be convinced that our religious activity at church or reading our Bible will placate Him. Much as this picture is bleak, the point is that God knows us and His desire is for our renewal. That is why He warns us not to treat sin lightly but to seek Him earnestly (Hos 5:15).
[1] The reference to illegitimate children (Hos 5:7) probably points to the idolatry of individuals within Israel. Using the imagery of marriage and adultery, Israel as a nation is God’s unfaithful wife whose ‘lovers’ are other gods. Thus ‘the children’ (i.e. individuals within the nation) do not have God as their father but other gods, hence they are illegitimate. The phrase may also refer to literal children born out of wedlock as a result of Israelite individuals’ sexual promiscuity.
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