The Prodigal Prophet: Jonah and the Mystery of God's Mercy

by Timothy J. Keller

“Nineveh, with its wholly war-like orientation accuses itself of violence (3:8). . . . Nineveh, proud of its power and invincibility, ceases to be itself when it thus humbles itself.”2

Of course not, since these conditions occur constantly in the world and they do not have results such as these.

Nevertheless, the biblical text does not tell us that God sent Jonah with the purpose of converting the populace into a saving, covenant relationship with him. He was warning them about their evil, violent behavior and the inevitable consequences if they did not relent and change.

Usually those who are most concerned about working for social justice do not also stand up and speak clearly about the God of the Bible’s judgment on those who do not do his will. On the other hand, those who publicly preach repentance most forcefully are not usually known for demanding justice for the oppressed.

[Jonah] . . . did not become free to select for himself what he would say to men. He did not go to them to tell them about his experiences. . . . He did not decide the content of his preaching. . . . Thus . . . our witness is fast bound to the word of God. The greatest saint or mystic can say nothing of value unless it is based solely on God’s word.11

We seldom see ministries that are equally committed to preaching the Word fearlessly and to justice and care for the poor, yet these are theologically inseparable.

Ravenhill...whitefield

Rather, the misery and social breakdown, the economic and political “devouring” of one another (yet the inner emptiness and discontent it brings) is all actually the outworking of God’s wrath.

Imagine if a house were on fire but you couldn’t see the flames. As the house crumbled and collapsed, you would wonder what was happening. Only if someone enabled you to see the fire would the dissolution of the building make sense. Without understanding the wrath of God, it is impossible to fully understand why so many societies, empires, institutions, and lives break down.

in a world created by a good God, evil and injustice are “inherently self-destructive.”

It revolts against God's design

He presides over the cause and effect processes he has built into creation so they are expressions of his holy rule of the world.”13 That is, God has created the world so that cruelty, greed, and exploitation have natural, disintegrative consequences that are a manifestation of his anger toward evil.

This is a law that cannot be overturned any more than gravity can be overturned!

To work against social injustice and to call people to repentance before God interlock theologically.

One has not only a legal but a moral responsibility to obey just laws. Conversely, one has a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws. I would agree with St. Augustine that “an unjust law is no law at all.”

A just law is a man made code that squares with the moral law or the law of God. An unjust law is a code that is out of harmony with the moral law.

He enjoyed preaching wrath. He did it with glee, not tears, because he couldn’t wait for God’s hammer to fall on them.

We are quick to believe accounts of mass violence, but it’s harder to believe that the various classes and people of a great city would unite and agree to turn away from injustice. However, that is what happened. It shows that the Word of God is more powerful than we can imagine.

How can God keep his promises to uphold his people and at the same time show mercy to his people’s enemies?

Perhaps we could say that all theological problems play themselves out not merely in our intellects but in our commitments, desires, and identities.

“Without that—I have no desire to go on,” he means he has lost something that had replaced God as the main joy, reason, and love of his life.

When you say, “I won’t serve you, God, if you don’t give me X,” then X is your true bottom line, your highest love, your real god, the thing you most trust and rest in.

If he had to choose between the security of Israel and loyalty to God, well, he was ready to push God away. That is not just concern and love for one’s country; that is a kind of deification of it.

I answered him that while love of country and your people is a good thing, like any other love, it can become inordinate. If love for your country’s interests leads you to exploit people or, in this case, to root for an entire class of people to be spiritually lost, then you love your nation more than God. That is idolatry, by any definition.

When Christian believers care more for their own interests and security than for the good and salvation of other races and ethnicities, they are sinning like Jonah.

Rightful racial pride can become racism. Rightful national pride and patriotism can become imperialism.

One example is the scholar who “dissects Scripture to set it against Scripture” in a way that undermines the Bible’s authority so we don’t have to obey it.

In other words, if we feel more righteous as we read the Bible, we are misreading it; we are missing its central message. We are reading and using the Bible rightly only when it humbles us, critiques us, and encourages us with God’s love and grace despite our flaws.

Ellul concludes that if we use the Bible to puff up our own egos with our correctness and righteousness, and to denounce all others, then studying the Scripture “becomes a source of death and Satan’s work.”

Indeed, Jonah’s use of the Bible is not bringing him joy but rather taking him to the brink of despair. He asks God to take away his life.

Then in chapter 2 he was confronted with the reality that he needed mercy and had no hope if God was completely fair with him and gave him only what he deserved.

The social psychologist Jonathan Haidt concludes from his research that “self-righteousness is the normal human condition.”

Jonah’s self-righteousness had been diminished somewhat but not destroyed.

“But I’m not like those awful pagans!” (Jonah 2:8–9). That is why he was still susceptible to the spiritual crash that happened to him after God showed Nineveh mercy. He still felt, to some degree, that mercy had to be deserved, and they didn’t deserve it. We learn from Jonah that understanding God’s grace—and being changed by it—always requires a long journey with successive stages. It cannot happen in a single cathartic or catastrophic experience (like being swallowed by a fish!).

I.e, "so salvation comes partly from my good works as well..."

What does it mean to get to “bedrock” in one’s heart? If you say, “I’ll obey you, Lord, if you give me that,” then “that” is the nonnegotiable and God is just a means to an end. “That”—whatever it is—is the real bedrock. It is more foundational to your happiness than God is.

It is the basis for your happiness, and if anything threatens it, you will be overwhelmed with anger, anxiety, and despair.

It is to instead finally recognize that we live wholly by God’s grace. Then we begin serving the Lord not in order to get things from him but just for him, for his own sake, just for who he is, for the joy of knowing him, delighting him, and becoming like him.

He is inordinately committed to his race and nation. God will have to deal with this idolatry if Jonah is ever to get the infinite peace of resting in God’s grace alone.

Jonah is like the ungrateful servant who, having been forgiven, refuses to forgive others (Matthew 18:21–35).

Despite all this, God is patient with him. Jonah returns to the same angry opposition to God he had at the outset.

He simply obeyed out of a desire to control God and manipulate his course of action (to pour out his wrath upon Nineveh)

When he sees God begin to have mercy on sinners, he is offended.

In deep discouragement and grief, sometimes rather small comforts can be particularly sustaining. Self-pity may have played a role in his joy over the plant. “Well, finally,” Jonah may have said to himself, “something is going right for me.”

Then God says, in essence, “You weep over plants, but my compassion is for people.”

For God to apply this word to himself is radical. This is the language of attachment.

When you put your love on someone, you can be happy only if they are happy, and their distress becomes your distress. The love of attachment makes you vulnerable to suffering, and yet that is what God says a...

Most of our deepest attachments as human beings are involuntary. Jonah did not look at the Ricinus plant and say, “I’m going to attach my heart to you in affection.” We need many things, and we get emotionally attached to things that meet those needs. God, however, needs nothing. He is utterly and perfectly happy in himself, and he doesn’t need us. So how could he get attached to us? The only answer is that an infinite, omnipotent, self-sufficient divine being loves only voluntarily.

The whole universe is no bigger to God than a piece of lint is to us, and we are smaller pieces of lint on the lint.

We distance ourselves from them partly out of pride and partly because we don’t want their unhappiness to be ours.

It is a defense mechanism for us to not attach ourselves to sinners who may hurt us and let us down

God doesn’t do that. Real compassion, the voluntary attachment of our heart to others, means the sadness of their condition makes us sad; it affects us. That is deeply uncomfortable, but it is the character of compassion.

If you are my prophet, why don’t you have my compassion?” Jonah did not weep over the city, but Jesus, the true prophet, did.

He is the weeping God of Jonah 4 in human form.

The Bible records Jesus Christ weeping twenty times for every one time it notes that he laughs.

and yet he grieved far more than he laughed because his compassion connected him with us. Our sadness makes him sad; our pain brings him pain.