A look at the deceitfulness of faithlessness. Hosea. Part 3

The last two verses of Hosea Ch 1 saw several prophecies:
Israel will experience a great increase in population;

In the nation there will be a great turning to God (1:10b);

The Northern and Southern Kingdoms will be reunified into a single nation (1:11a);

They will appoint themselves one head, who will be the Messiah (1:11b);

National restoration.

If you fail to function in your priesthood toward God, and your ambassadorship toward man, that divine discipline is inevitable. But not divine discipline at first, the suffering you have at first comes from making wrong decisions. with sincerity of heart, fearing the Lord.

You bring about your own suffering and, Divine discipline is added later on to warn you and to teach you the importance of recovery. So when people talk about being disciplined they’re not really being disciplined at all. They are merely suffering the consequences of their own wrong decisions.

This is a principle for believers only. But please notice the phrase those whom. It is stated this way to state a principle without naming names. If you’re ever going to profit from this type of teaching you have to be objective. This means that you have the privacy of your priesthood. When it says those whom I love, you have to realize that this is not directed to you as an individual, but to you as a part of a category of believers. Therefore if you fall into the category of divine discipline you are the only who knows it. Therefore it is up to you and your relationship with God to correct the situation.

The local assembly was never designed to be a lonely hearts club. It was never designed as a place for you to be loved. The Church was never designed as a place to go to meet nice people. The local church was designed as a classroom to come and to learn Bible doctrine, and to cope with life and glorify the Lord Jesus Christ. Therefore under the principle of the priesthood you enter a church under privacy. A Church is to communicate Bible doctrine.

So we begin with the phrase in REV 3:19, “Those whom I love,” not someone by name, but a category, the category of believers. There is a category of believers who spend their time in the cosmic system and therefore become objects of divine discipline.

Now the first encouraging thing to note is the phrase “I love.” Those who have failed are loved by the Lord just as those who have succeeded. The Lord loves the winner, the one who advances to maturity. However the Lord also loves the loser or the lukewarm believer in the cosmic system. And that takes us right back to impersonal love.

Impersonal love means I love you because of virtue honor and integrity in my soul. I do not love you because you’re attractive or unattractive. I do not love you because you hate me or love me. I love you because of who and what I am, and that’s what God is saying in this passage. Just as we are told to love when we have honor and integrity, with impersonal love as an entire virtue we love the entire human race and this includes the brethren.

God loves us with impersonal love. He loves us when we fail, He loves us when we succeed. Be very careful here, He doesn’t love us because we fail, He loves us even when we fail.

The word love is the pres-act-ind of the verb phileo, you might expect the Greek word agapao which is generally used for impersonal love. But the point is that if you have impersonal love directed toward all, you are now qualified to have personal love directed toward the few. Here we are talking about the few in the sense of losers. Believers who live in the cosmic system, these are losers not living the Christian way of life.

So why do we have the verb for personal love? Well first of all we must remember that all believers whether winners or losers, hot or lukewarm possess perfect righteousness. Secondly, God has divine personal love for His people. Obviously God cannot love losers unless God has virtue, honor and integrity. The reason that God can love a loser personally is because of His magnificent essence and integrity. While this is a personal love directed toward them it is based upon impersonal love. Remember impersonal love always emphasizes the subject. It emphasizes the integrity of the subject. It emphasizes the fact that the subject has so much integrity that he loves all the human race. In other words he has capacity for the human race.

Personal love always emphasizes the object. It always emphasizes the attractiveness of the object. It is an option in life rather than an imperative. It is directed toward a few rather than all. It is motivated by rapport therefore it is discriminating. It is a conditional love based upon the attractiveness of the object. And so it is quite different. However when it is based upon the integrity of the subject, and you are the object, then you are the beneficiary. Therefore if the one who loves you with personal love has fantastic integrity and virtue that personal love will be fantastic.

Therefore when the Lord Jesus Christ is the subject and He loves you with personal love, and you are a loser and He loves you personally, that should be motive enough to recover from cosmic involvement. Therefore phileo is used instead of the usualagapao.

There are 3 classifications of divine love:

1) God’s love for God.

2) God’s love for man.

3) God’s love for angels.

God’s love for man is our subject and it is divided into two parts:

a. God’s impersonal love for all mankind which is manifested by the Cross.

b. God’s personal love for those who possess His righteousness or those who are believers in Christ.

One of the 40 things that all believers receive at the moment of salvation is perfect righteousness. God personally loves His own righteousness, and that is the basis for His personal love. God the Father loves all believers personally because all believers possess perfect righteousness. At the Cross the Lord Jesus Christ died for all. Therefore the love of God for the human race is impersonal, emphasizing the integrity of the subject. But those who believe in Christ possess that which makes God’s love personal, they have the righteousness of God.

So we have 2 classifications of divine love directed toward the human race:

First - there is divine impersonal love directed toward the entire human race. There is divine personal love directed toward those who have the righteousness of God. And there are 2 categories of believers who have this righteousness:

1. Believers who are living in the predesigned plan of God and are winners.

2. And believers who are living in the cosmic system and are losers.

So whenever God expresses His love to believers He can express it in one of two ways to illustrate the type of love that is in view. He can use agapao or phileo.

Divine impersonal love is directed toward all believers as illustrated with logistical grace. The air that you breathe, the clothes you wear, the food you eat...etc., so logistical grace is directed toward all believers. It depends on the integrity of God as the subject. It is the justice of God that provides logistical grace. You see anytime that a believer could ever earn anything from God, well, that would compromise the integrity of God. God blesses you because of who and what He is. All of us are blessed by God because of who and what God is...losers and winners. Divine personal love is directed toward believers as well.

Most of the time divine personal love is directed toward the few who are on the road to maturity. Divine impersonal love is directed toward all believers. At the rapture of the Church every believer receives a resurrection body. But divine personal love is directed toward the few who are winners. They are the ones who receive the crowns, the order of the morning star, and the uniform of glory.

Even though they are in the cosmic system, phileo love is used to tell us that these believers still have God’s righteousness. They haven’t lost their salvation. While they are in the cosmic system and lukewarm, the Lord Jesus Christ still loves them personally. Losers and believers who have fallen away still have perfect righteousness. This falls under the following rationales:

a. The virtue of God rationale.

b. The exegetical rationale.

c. The positional sanctification rationale.

d. The "new creature" rationale.

e. The a-fortiori rationale.

f. The family of God rationale.

g. The body metaphor rationale.

h. The essence of God rationale.

The present tense of phileo is a static present. It represents a condition that perpetually exists. There will never ever be a time when the Lord does not love a Christian personally. It doesn’t matter what that believer does, the Lord’s personal love for them remains the same because they can never lose their perfect righteousness. As HEB 13:5 says, “I will never desert you, nor will I ever forsake you.”

Because of the imputation of perfect righteousness at the moment of salvation God personally and permanently loves every believer. The active voice in this particular passage means that the Lord Jesus Christ produces the action of the verb, The indicative mood says that this is a dogmatic statement of truth or Bible doctrine. This is why you and I are still alive after we fail and totally blow it. It makes no difference, He still loves with the same amount of infinite eternal love.

The manifestation of His love for us now comes out in the pres-act-ind of the verb elegcho which means to convince, to convict, to bring to light or to reality. So the word reprove is a good translation.

When a believer becomes involved in the cosmic system and is a loser, they receive warning discipline the purpose of which is to motivate one to recover, not to pay for mistakes. You must learn to distinguish between the function of your volition making bad decisions and divine discipline. In either cosmic system, the more bad decisions that you make the more you reap the negative results. By involvement in the cosmic system you make a lot of bad decisions as a cosmic believer. These decisions are contrary to the will of God, and to the plan of God for your life.