Jeremiah 3:1-5: a reflection

1“They say, ‘If a man puts away his wife, and she goes from him, and becomes another man’s, should he return to her again?’ Wouldn’t that land be greatly polluted? But you have played the prostitute with many lovers; yet return again to me,” says the LORD. 2“Lift up your eyes to the bare heights, and see! Where have you not been lain with? You have sat waiting for them by the road, as an Arabian in the wilderness. You have polluted the land with your prostitution and with your wickedness. 3Therefore the showers have been withheld and there has been no latter rain; yet you have had a prostitute’s forehead and you refused to be ashamed. 4Will you not from this time cry to me, ‘My Father, you are the guide of my youth!’? 5“‘Will he retain his anger forever? Will he keep it to the end?’ Behold, you have spoken and have done evil things, and have had your way.”

This is a hard, raw passage. God pictures his people's idolatry as a wife who has been brazenly unfaithful, and points out that by the law a husband could not simply take back a wife who had gone to other men; the land itself would be defiled. The unfaithfulness is not minimized here; it is named plainly and it is ugly.

And then, against the very logic he just laid out, God says the astonishing thing: yet return again to me. By every rule of fairness he had grounds to be done. Instead the offended one holds the door open and calls the betrayer home. He even puts words in their mouth for the return: will you not from now on call me My Father, the guide of my youth? He is not only willing to take them back; he is coaching them toward it.

That is the scandal at the heart of grace. Our unfaithfulness to God is real, and this passage will not pretend it is small. But God's willingness to receive us back is larger than what we have done, larger even than what fairness would allow. If you have wandered far, given your heart to other things, and assume the door must be closed by now, hear what God says over exactly that situation: yet return to me. The invitation home is still open, and he is the one holding it.

Lord, my unfaithfulness to you is real, and I cannot excuse it. Thank you that against all fairness you still say, return to me. I come home; be my Father, and the guide of my life.