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

by Timothy J. Keller

Exclusion provides us with “the illusion of sinlessness and strength.”20 Exclusion seems to be unavoidable.

Any effort to practice absolute inclusion, however, always leads to new forms of exclusion. You may say, for example, “There are no good people and bad people,” but now those who think there are good and bad people are the bad people. Supposedly rejecting all “binaries” immediately creates new ones. Also, those who insist on the illusion of total inclusion often demonstrate the inability to name and condemn behavior that is evil or unjust.

Which set of beliefs and moral absolutes leads us to embrace most fully those from whom we deeply differ?

Here Jesus said that his disciples’ way of life must contrast sharply with the ordinary way human beings relate to “the Other.” Jesus tells us to “greet” all people, and in his time one did this with the word shalom. To wish someone shalom—the word for full flourishing, health, and happiness—was to want their good.

He does not say that everyone is equally right and good, but he does insist that their needs as human beings are equally important, regardless of their beliefs.

As we have seen, many will claim that this is simply impossible, that our identities are irreducibly based on feeling superior to groups and persons whom we see as inferior. But this should not be true in the case of those who claim a Christian identity.

Christian identity, however, is received, not achieved.

What makes a person a Christian is not our love for God, which is always imperfect, but God’s love for us. To ground your identity in your own efforts and accomplishments—even in the amount of love you have for Jesus—is to have an unstable, fragile identity. We are usually in doubt as to whether we have been good enough, and even if we have had a good week, we fear that next week may be worse.

and we are loved by God with the unconditional love of a parent, not the conditional regard of an employer or a mere sovereign.

Being a Christian gives you some distance and objectivity so you can see both the good and the bad parts of your culture more clearly than many who are still relying on it for their fundamental self-worth.

Christians can never be first of all Asians or Americans, Russians or Tutsis, and then Christians. . . . When they respond to the call of the gospel they put one foot outside their culture while the other remains firmly planted in it. [Christianity] is not flight from one’s original culture, but a new way of living within it because of the new vision of peace and joy in Christ.23

The early Christians startled the Roman world with this unique facet of their identity. Until that time, one’s religion and faith were nothing but an extension of one’s national identity. Your race determined who your gods were—race came first and religion was just a way of expressing it. Christians said that their God was the God of the whole world, and that people of all races could be Christians, and that therefore faith was more important than race.24 The early Christian churches were multiethnic in an unprecedented way. They brought together people who would never have gotten along before they believed in Christ.

He neither included us as if we had a right to be welcomed nor excluded and rejected us as our sins deserved.

When the one you thought to be “the Other” has not treated you as Other but given himself in love for you, how can you ever treat anyone else as an enemy?

Christ tells us we must be gracious to others because we have received grace ourselves.

Mission is not only for a spiritual elite, or for the well rested, or for people with the gift of gab, or for outgoing personalities, or for those with theological training. It is for every person who belongs to him. It is because God is by nature a sending God. He never calls us in to bless us without also sending us out to be a blessing to others.

everything he has relied on for meaning and security. Here’s an outline of his life: “Go.” Where? “I’ll tell you later. Just go.” (GENESIS 12) “You will have a son.” How? “I’ll tell you later. Just trust.” (GENESIS 15) “Offer up your son on the mount.” Why? “I’ll tell you later. Just climb.” (GENESIS 22)

This simple logic is powerful. Many people simply do not like cities, but if we care about people, and if we believe that the deepest human need is to be reconciled to God, then all Christians must be concerned for and supportive of urban Christian ministry in one way or another.

Surely God calls Christians and churches to go and live everywhere that there are people, but the people of the world are moving into the city much faster than the church is going.

Yet God had the audacity to tell them to become deeply involved with the city, seeking its peace and prosperity, all the while not compromising on their beliefs and faithfulness to him at all.

It is unjust to fail to share with the poor.

All this is to say that compassion for the poor is an inevitable sign of a living relationship with God and an experience of God’s grace. While it does not initiate God’s favor and acceptance, it is a sure symptom of having experienced his love. Those who truly know they have eternal life only because of the free, charitable grace of God will be charitable.

When it sees us sacrificially serving the needs of our neighbors whether they believe as we do or not, then it may begin to see that believers are motivated more by love than by the desire to accrue power. In Christian theology our belief in the God of judgment and grace is the basis for doing justice in our society. In the eyes of those outside the church, it is Christians’ doing justice that makes belief in the gospel plausible.

This is one of the great contradictions of our society today. It insists that all morality is relative and then it demands moral behavior.

The main purpose of God is to get Jonah to understand grace. The main purpose of the book of Jonah is to get us to understand grace.

Ignorance of the depth of God’s grace causes our most severe problems. Until we understand it, we are, like Jonah, just a shadow of what we could be and should be.

For love awakens love in return; and love, once awakened, desires to give pleasure.4

All other religions put on people the burden of securing their own salvation, while God provides unearned salvation through his son (cf. Isaiah 46:1–4). While the gospel must lead to a changed life, it is not those changes that save you.

Whatever your problem, God solves it with his grace. God’s grace abolishes guilt forever.

If you were a hundred times worse than you are, your sins would be no match for his mercy. There is a hymn that goes: “Well might the Accuser roar / Of sins that I have done / I see them all and thousands more.” Yet if you are in Christ, “Jehovah knoweth none.”10

So many of our deepest longings to succeed are really just ways to be for ourselves what Christ should be for us.

But when we stop trying to steal self-acceptance from other sources, we lose our fear. We become fearless without becoming defiant.

If you say, “I want him in my life but I don’t see him working,” you still don’t understand how fundamental his grace is. If you want it at all, that is God working in your life. You are not capable of wanting him on your own. Salvation is of the Lord.

Appreciation of the things that make your place unique helps you to imagine others loving their distinct places in the same way.

As long as serving God fit into his goals for Israel, he was fine with God. As soon as he had to choose between the true God and the god he actually worshipped, he turned on the true God in anger. Jonah’s particular national identity was more foundational to his self-worth than his role as a servant of the God of all nations. The real God had been just a means to an end. He was using God to serve his real god.17

He argued that if you don’t call the meaning of your life a god, it still functions like one and therefore everyone’s life is based on faith.

Whatever you live for actually owns you. You do not really control yourself. Whatever you live for and love the most controls you.

How can we identify these “default settings” that can so distort our lives, as they did Jonah’s? Look at your unanswered prayers and dreams. When God doesn’t fulfill them, do you struggle with disappointment but then go on? Or do you examine yourself and learn lessons and make changes and then go on? Or do you feel that “to me death is better than life” (Jonah 4:3)? The difference can tell you if you are dealing with a normal love in your life or an idol.