February 12

I led them with cords of kindness, with ropes of love; I lifted the yoke from their necks and bent down to feed them. — Hos 11:4 BSB

When God draws His people close to Himself, it is not in a mechanical way. He draws them with cords of love, not iron chains. The image is one of something tender, human, and full of feeling. God doesn’t drag His people to Himself by force, as if they had no choice in the matter. That wouldn’t be grace, nor the work of the Spirit in the heart. Instead, as it says in Psalm 110:3, “Your people shall be willing in the day of your power.” God touches their hearts with His gracious hand, as He did with the men who followed Saul (1 Samuel 10:26). He gives them both faith and feeling, softening and humbling their hearts through a sense of His goodness and mercy. For it is His goodness, deeply felt and experienced, that leads to repentance.

If you’ve ever felt a secret, sacred drawing of your soul toward heaven, it wasn’t by force or compulsion. It was a gracious arm of pity and compassion reaching into your very heart, drawing you up into the bosom of God. It was a touch of His grace, like in the Song of Solomon: “My beloved put his hand through the opening, and my heart was moved for him.” It was a glimpse of His goodness, mercy, and love through the face of the Mediator, a taste of His compassion, which softened and melted your heart. You weren’t driven by fear or pressure, but gently drawn by the cords of love that reached the deepest parts of your soul.

This is because it is as the man Christ Jesus that our Lord acts as Mediator. It is through His humanity—His groaning in the garden, His suffering on the cross, His burial in the tomb, and His exaltation at the right hand of the Father—that we draw near to God. His blood, His sufferings, His sacrifice, His death—all these were experienced in His humanity, and they form the means by which we approach God without fear, for in Christ, God is revealed to us as pure love.