Hosea 9:15—“… I will love them no more …”

All their wickedness is in Gilgal: for there I hated them: for the wickedness of their doings I will drive them out of mine house, I will love them no more: all their princes are revolters (Hos. 9:15).

COMMON GRACE ARGUMENT:

This passage has been quoted in theological debates with regards to questioning or modifying the Reformed and biblical doctrine of God’s immutability (unchangeableness) ... in order to make room for a common grace/love/mercy of God.

QUESTION BOX:

Q. 1. “One of the arguments that the ‘anti-common grace’ camp set forth to promote the teaching that God cannot love the reprobate is this: God ‘cannot love the reprobate, because that would imply a changeable love of God—He wouldn’t love the reprobate in Hell, but only in this life. And such a notion would be the same as saying that God is changeable—which He is not (Mal. 3:6).’

However, Hosea 9:15 seems to undermine that argument. For it appears to show clearly that God’s love can be changeable:

‘All their wickedness is in Gilgal: for there I hated them: for the wickedness of their doings I will drive them out of mine house, I will love them no more: all their princes are revolters.’

In this text, God clearly shifted from ‘loving’ these people to ‘hating’ them (‘I will love them no more’).

There is, therefore, no special problem unique to the ‘common grace advocate’ who believes that God does have a love for the reprobate, albeit ‘temporary.’ And whatever view of God’s immutability we have must be modified to allow room for this.”

Prof. David J. Engelsma (22/08/2018)

This argument rests on a theory of the mutability of God.  Thus, those that use this argument dissent from the official, creedal confession of the Reformed creeds, all of which confess the immutability of God, Westminster as well as the strictly Reformed confessions.  Article 1 of the Belgic Confession confesses that God is “immutable.”  Indeed, the unchangeableness of God is the Christian confession.  They ought to reexamine their common grace theology in light of the fact that it brings them into open conflict with the Reformed confessions, indeed with Christian theology.  Is common grace so dear that it is allowed to forfeit for them the Christian religion? 

One who is Reformed is not permitted to deny that God is immutable by the Reformed creed.  If one is a professing Christian, the Christian faith is at stake for him/her.

The Bible expressly declares that God is unchangeable in God’s own words, for example, Malachi 3:6:  “I change not.”  The added words warn that the doctrine of God’s changeableness would involve the possibility that the sons of Jacob would be destroyed. 

    

This being said, the explanation of Hosea 9:15 is that God’s hatred is a national, communal reality.  What is meant is that in previous times, God loved the nation in the members who were walking in God’s ways.  Now the nation has fallen away and God hates it in the wicked members of the nation.  It does not describe a change of God’s attitude towards the same individuals.  As Romans 9 makes plain, even with regard to His love of Israel, God never loved all the members of the nation.  They are not all Israel that are of Israel.  But God loved the elect members, the Jacobs in distinction from the Esaus.