God’s Grace and Our Free Will

The word of God has finely described this care and providence of his toward us through the prophet Hosea. It pictures Jerusalem as a prostitute, turning with shameful eagerness to the worship of idols. When she says, “I will go after my lovers, who give me my bread and my water, my wool and my flax, my oil and my drink,” God’s watchful care answers her, looking to her salvation and not to her wishes: “Look, I will hedge up your way with thorns, and I will block it with a wall, and she will not find her paths. She will follow after her lovers and will not overtake them; she will seek them and will not find them. Then she will say, ‘I will go back to my first husband, because it was better for me then than now.’” Again, our stubbornness and scorn, the rebellious spirit in which we despise him when he urges us to come back to salvation, is described in this comparison. He says, “And I said, you will call me Father, and will not stop walking after me. But as a woman despises her lover, so the house of Israel has despised me, says the Lord.” [a]

It is fitting, then, that having compared Jerusalem to an adulteress who abandons her husband, he compares his own love and persevering goodness to a man who is dying of love for a woman. For the goodness and love of God, which he always shows to the human race, are overcome by no injuries. They do not stop caring for our salvation, and they are not driven from their first intention as though defeated by our sins. No comparison could describe them more fittingly than a man on fire with the most ardent love for a woman, who burns with a hotter passion for her the more he sees himself slighted and despised by her.

God’s protection, then, is with us and never leaves us. So great is the Creator’s kindness toward his creatures that his providence does not only go along with what he has made, but actually goes before it at every moment. The prophet found this and plainly confessed it, saying, “My God will go before me with his mercy.” When he sees in us some beginnings of a good will, he at once enlightens it, strengthens it and urges it on toward salvation, giving growth to what he himself planted, or to what he sees has sprung up from our own efforts. For he says, “Before they cry out, I will hear them; while they are still speaking, I will hear them.” And again: “As soon as he hears the voice of your crying, he will answer you.” In his goodness he not only breathes holy desires into us, but actually creates occasions for life and opportunities for good results, and shows those who have gone astray the direction of the way of salvation.