"I will betroth you to Me forever. I will betroth you to Me in righteousness and in justice, in steadfast love and in mercy. I will betroth you to Me in faithfulness. And you shall know the Lord."
- Hosea 2:19-20
This is a sweet promise. If you have read the rest of Hosea, then you know that much of it is about the unfaithfulness of Israel, the covenant community. Yet God takes it upon Himself to describe a time in which He will abolish the unfaithfulness of that community.
First, I want to point to the last word in that passage: Lord. That English word is used as a gloss for the tetragrammaton, Yahweh, or Jehovah, the name used by by the preincarnate Christ whenever He acted in His mediatorial role. It is Jesus, His cross work, and His resurrection that have purchased the Church, faithful Israel in the Old Testament and the united Jews and Gentiles in the New Testament. His purchase, being effectual in all for whom it was intended (John 6:37-39), cannot fail to make every true believer, not just a believer, but a faithful servant.
He uses marital imagery, a common theme in both testaments (such as Isaiah 54:5-6, Jeremiah 3:14, and Revelation 19:6-9). This is why our own marriage ceremony includes the vow to be faithful "until death do us part." Granted, that vow has become a mere anachronism among us, but it is not an anachronism to God. His vows are eternal and unfailing, even though we, who call ourselves by His name, are certainly not. "If we are faithless, He remains faithful - for He cannot deny Himself" (II Timothy 2:13).
This is why I believe so passionately in the perseverance of the saints. I don't use the phrase "once saved always saved," because of its antinomian implications. Rather, God's faithfulness works in His blood-bought people by keeping them faithful, both in the sense of having faith and in the sense of faithful obedience to His word.
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