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

by Timothy J. Keller

Is it about race and nationalism, since Jonah seems to be more concerned over his nation’s military security than over a city of spiritually lost people?

Is it about God’s call to mission, since Jonah at first flees from the call and later goes but regrets it?

Is it about the struggles believers have to obey ...

Yes to all those—...

If you accept the existence of God and the resurrection of Christ (a far greater miracle), then there is nothing particularly difficult about reading Jonah literally.

let’s not get distracted by the fish.

Jonah, a staunch religious believer, regards and relates to people who are racially and religiously different from him.

Jonah wants a God of his own making, a God who simply smites the bad people, for instance, the wicked Ninevites and blesses the good people, for instance, Jonah and his countrymen. When the real God—not Jonah’s counterfeit—keeps showing up, Jonah is thrown into fury or despair. Jonah finds the real God to be an enigma because he cannot reconcile the mercy of God with his justice. How, Jonah asks, can God be merciful and forgiving to people who have done such violence and evil? How can God be both merciful and just?

Only when we readers fully grasp this gospel will we be neither cruel exploiters like the Ninevites nor Pharisaical believers like Jonah,

Jonah’s mission was unprecedented.

But how could a good God give a nation like that even the merest chance to experience his mercy? Why on earth would God be helping the enemies of his people?

2 Kings 14:25 tells us Jonah ministered during the reign of Israel’s King Jeroboam II (786–746 BC).

readers of the book of Jonah would have remembered him as intensely patriotic, a highly partisan nationalist.5 And they would have been amazed that God would send a man like that to preach to the very people he most feared and hated.

Jonah had a problem with the job he was given. But he had a bigger problem with the One who gave it to him.

we have to decide—does God know what’s best, or do we? And the default mode of the unaided human heart is to always decide that we do. We doubt that God is good, or that he is committed to our happiness, and therefore if we can’t see any good reasons for something God says or does, we assume that there aren’t any.

Adam and Eve, like Jonah many years later, decided that if they couldn’t think of a good reason for a command of God, there couldn’t be one. God could not be trusted to have their best interests in mind.

One group is trying diligently to follow God’s law and the other ignores it, and yet Paul says both have “turned away.” They are both, in different ways, running from God. We all know that we can run from God by becoming immoral and irreligious. But Paul is saying it is also possible to avoid God by becoming very religious and moral.

Flannery O’Connor describes one of her fictional characters, Hazel Motes, as knowing that “the way to avoid Jesus was to avoid sin.”

Unless Jonah can see his own sin, and see himself as living wholly by the mercy of God, he will never understand how God can be merciful to evil people and still be just and faithful.

The dismaying news is that every act of disobedience to God has a storm attached to it.

The Bible does not say that every difficulty is the result of sin—but it does teach that every sin will bring you into difficulty.

There is a mighty storm directed right at Jonah. Its suddenness and fury are something even the pagan sailors can discern as being of supernatural origin.

Sin is a suicidal action of the will upon itself.

Sin always hardens the conscience, locks you in the prison of your own defensiveness and rationalizations, and eats you up slowly from the inside.

The dismaying news is that sin always has a storm attached to it, but there is comforting news too. For Jonah the storm was the consequence of his sin, yet the sailors were caught in it too.

When storms come into our lives, whether as a consequence of our wrongdoing or not, Christians have the promise that God will use them for their good (Romans 8:28).

Storms can wake us up to truths we would otherwise never see.

Jonah could not see that deep within the terror of the storm God’s mercy was at work, drawing him back to change his heart.

God’s salvation came into the world through suffering, so his saving grace and power can work in our lives more and more as we go through difficulty and sorrow.

The book of Jonah is divided into two symmetrical halves—the records of Jonah’s flight from God and then of his mission to Nineveh. Each part has three sections—God’s word to Jonah, then his encounter with the Gentile pagans, and finally Jonah talking to God. Twice, then, Jonah finds himself in a close encounter with people who are racially and religiously different. In both cases his behavior is dismissive and unhelpful, while the pagans uniformly act more admirably than he does.

God wants us to treat people of different races and faiths in a way that is respectful, loving, generous, and just.

we learn that people outside the community of faith have a right to evaluate the church on its commitment to the good of all.

What is the captain rebuking Jonah for? It is because he has no interest in their common good. The captain is saying: “Can’t you see we’re about to die? How can you be so oblivious to our need? I understand you are a man of faith. Why aren’t you using your faith for the public good?” Jacques Ellul writes:

Jonah fled because he did not want to work for the good of the pagans—he wanted to serve exclusively the interests of believers.

We deserve the critique of the world if the church does not exhibit visible love in practical deeds. The captain had every right to rebuke a believer who was oblivious to the problems of the people around him and doing nothing for them.

The doctrine of common grace is the teaching that God bestows gifts of wisdom, moral insight, goodness, and beauty across humanity, regardless of race or religious belief. James 1:17 says, “Every good and perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of the heavenly lights.” That is, God is ultimately enabling every act of goodness, wisdom, justice, and beauty—no matter who does it.

Common grace does not regenerate the heart, save the soul, or create a personal, covenant relationship with God. Yet without it the world would be an intolerable place to live. It is wonderful expression of God’s love to all people (Psalm 145:14–16).

Common grace means that nonbelievers often act more righteously than believers despite their lack of faith; whereas believers, filled with remaining sin, often act far worse than their right belief in God would lead us to expect. All this means Christians should be humble and respectful toward those who do not share their faith. They should be appreciative of the work of all people, knowing that nonbelievers have many things to teach them.

The bad prophet, Jonah, is the very opposite of the Good Samaritan. He has no concern for the “common good,” no respect for the nonbelievers around him.

There can be no image without an original of which the image is a reflection. “To be in the image” means that human beings were not created to stand alone.

Though the question about race comes last in the list, Jonah answers it first. “I am a Hebrew,” he says before anything else.

Jonah’s relationship with God was not as basic to his significance as his race. That is why, when loyalty to his people and loyalty to the Word of God seemed to be in conflict, he chose to support his nation over taking God’s love and message to a new society.

Peter’s most fundamental identity was not rooted as much in Jesus’s gracious love for him as it was in his commitment and love to Jesus.

What Jonah is doing is what some have called othering. To categorize people as the Other is to focus on the ways they are different from oneself, to focus on their strangeness and to reduce them to these characteristics until they are dehumanized.

Is he saying something like “I would rather die than obey God and go to Nineveh—kill me”? Is he submitting to God or rebelling against God?

Often the first step in coming to one’s senses spiritually is when we finally start thinking of somebody—anybody—other than ourselves. So he is saying something like this: “You are dying for me, but I should be dying for you. I’m the one with whom God is angry. Throw me in.”

Jonah’s pity arouses in him one of the most primordial of human intuitions, namely, that the truest pattern of love is substitutionary.

Many today find the idea of an angry God to be distasteful, even though modern people agree widely that to be passionate for justice does entail rightful anger.

With 20/20 hindsight, we can see that the most important lessons we have learned in life are the result of God’s severe mercies.

was only then that Jacob met God face to face (Genesis 32:1–32). Abraham, Joseph, David, Elijah, and Peter all became powerful leaders through failure and suffering.