I. These words declare that the motive of every Divine judgment, within the limits of this life, is mercy: the end of every affliction, however crushing, is the restoration of a sinner to the peace and the love of God. Within the limits of this life, I say. Thus far our vision stretches. We see but dimly what may lie beyond. Here at any rate the one constant, patient aim of God, by every means of influence which He wields, is to bring men unto Himself.
II. It is important for us to remember what some schools of Christian thought have strangely forgotten that God's righteousness is not a righteousness which would be satisfied equally by the conversion or by the punishment of a sinner. God's righteousness, God's justice, God's holiness, yearn for the restoration of the sinner to righteousness, quite as much as His holiness and His mercy and His love.
III. There is absolutely nothing on earth irreparable while we can repent and turn unto the Lord, "for He hath torn, and He will heal us; He hath smitten, and He will bind us up." There is absolutely nothing in the experience of the sinner, the sufferer, which God cannot transmute into joy. Turn to Him, and as in a healthy frame when wounded, the repairing power begins its work at once. No cloud can long remain on the life which He wills to vindicate. No calamity can long oppress the spirit which He wills to draw to the shield of His strength, and to rest on the bosom of His love.
J. Baldwin Brown, The Sunday Afternoon,p. 269.
References: Hosea 6:1; Hosea 6:2. Spurgeon, Sermons,vol. vii., No. 400; vol. xxiv., No. 1396. Hosea 6:1-10. F. Hastings, Christian World Pulpit,vol. xxix., p. 261.Hosea 6:2. Preacher's Monthly,vol. v., p. 132.