This question begs many other questions, but let me provide a context and that will focus our thoughts for a bit.
Hosea.
Now the question narrows, but still raises many others.
Our Fellowship Bible Study at Cornerstone EFC has us going through the Minor Prophetic books of the Old Testament. We're taking one each Sunday, getting a quick look at each prophet and his message and trying to take home some points of application as well. Since it's only an hour or so long, it's mostly observations made by all involved and plenty of notes from me. When we came to Hosea last Sunday, this question was raised (I anticipated it would be asked, for I've asked it, along with just about everyone who has written on the prophet):
How could God ask Hosea to do this?
Hos. 1:2–When the LORD first spoke through Hosea, the LORD said to Hosea, “Go, take to yourself a wife of whoredom and have children of whoredom, for the land commits great whoredom by forsaking the LORD.”
How could God ask Hosea to marry:
1) a wife who would turn adulteress very quickly? or
2) a woman who was already a prostitute?
It's my contention that Gomer was already a prostitute. That seems to be the simplest solution to the words presented us in Hosea 1.2. Yet this also seems to have God commanding Hosea to commit a sin of involving himself with a prostitute. However, the parallel that is being set up throughout the entire book is this: Hosea and Gomer represent God and His people. Hosea takes a sinful wife and redeems her.
God has chosen a sinful people and He redeems them. Abram was not pure, spotless and without sin when God called him. He most likely came from a long line of moon worshipers, quite possibly with many other gods. Yet God chose him from among all other nations and all other peoples. Why? Because He's God and that was His sovereign, loving, electing will to do so. There can be no other explanation.
Now, while it is quite possible that God told Hosea to take a young woman to be his wife who had not committed an act of fornication or adultery prior to their marriage, I'm just not sure this fits the text in the best way, nor the parallel that is being laid out for the reader. While Gomer was clearly a sinful woman, so was Hosea, called and redeemed though he may have been as a prophet of God.
Rom. 5:8 – "…but God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us."
While we were still sinners. That's the line that clicks in my head when I read Hosea. And that's the truth that thrills my soul when I think of my own redemption: while I was still a sinner.