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

by Timothy J. Keller

As is often said, you never realize that Jesus is all you need until Jesus is all you have.

The usual place to learn the greatest secrets of God’s grace is at the bottom.

“The Triumph of the Therapeutic.”6 We are taught that our problem is a lack of self-esteem, that we live with too much shame and self-incrimination. In addition, we are told, all moral standards are socially constructed and relative, so no one has the right to make you feel guilty. You must determine right or wrong for yourself.

We must admit not only our sins but also that we cannot repair or cleanse ourselves from them. Our culture, again, does not help us here, for it is dominated not only by therapy but also by technology. Even if we accept responsibility for wrongdoing, we believe “we can fix this.”

We believe that with hard work and/or fastidious religious observance, we can repair our relationship with God and even put him in a position where he “can’t say ‘no’ to us.”7

This idea, that we can fix ourselves through moral effort, was certainly around in Jonah’s day. It is a foundational a...

We are “barred” from God, and the doctrine of grace resonates deeply only if we admit we cannot save ourselves.

The third truth we must grasp, if we are to understand God’s grace in a way that transforms, is how costly the salvation is that God provides.

we fully believe, grasp, and remind ourselves of all three of these background truths—that we deserve nothing but condemnation, that we are utterly incapable of saving ourselves, and that God has saved us, despite our sin, at infinite cost to himself.

“Salvation comes only from the LORD” (verse 9). Some have called this text the central verse of the Scriptures, or at least, it expresses with great economy of language the main point of the entire Bible.

Jonah has not grasped grace as deeply as we might at first think he has. There is still a sense of superiority and self-righteousness that will cause him to explode in anger when God has mercy on those Jonah sees as his inferiors.

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. In Isaiah’s time Israelite society was marked by greedy exploitation and imperialistic abuses of power, rather than by generous, peaceful service and cooperation.

To work against social injustice and to call people to repentance before God interlock theologically. Martin Luther King Jr. did not make the mistake of separating the call for social justice from belief in a God of judgment.

How can God keep his promises to uphold his people and at the same time show mercy to his people’s enemies? How can he claim to be a God of justice and allow such evil and violence to go unpunished?

There seems to be a contradiction between the justice of God and the love of God.

he had to choose between the security of Israel and loyalty to God, well, he was ready to push God away.

It is possible to use the Bible selectively to justify oneself.3 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.

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.

Nineveh shows that this blindness and ignorance is ultimately no excuse for the evil they have done, but it shows remarkable sympathy and understanding. There are many people who have no idea what they should be living for, or the meaning of their lives, nor have they any guide to tell right from wrong. God looks down at people in that kind of spiritual fog, that spiritual stupidity, and he doesn’t say,

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

Jonah did not weep over the city, but Jesus, the true prophet, did.

a God who does not get angry when evil destroys the creation he loves is ultimately not a loving God at all. If you love someone, you must and will get angry if something threatens to destroy him or her.

How can God be perfectly holy and yet completely loving at the same time?

Only when you look into the gospel of Jesus Christ does all the goodness of God pass before you, and it’s not the back parts anymore.

“If I obey God I’ll miss out! I need to be happy.” That’s the justification. Sin always begins with the character assassination of God.

One of the main reasons that we trust God too little is because we trust our own wisdom too much. We think we know far better than God how our lives should go and what will make us happy.

Whenever we disobey God, we are violating our own design, since God created us to serve, know, and enjoy him.

all sin has a storm attached to it. Yet we see that the storm not only came upon Jonah, who deserved it, but also upon the sailors in the boat with him, who did not.

Self-sufficiency, self-centeredness, self-salvation make us hard toward people we think of as failures and losers, and ironically makes us endlessly self-hating if we don’t live up to our standards.6

Parenting, however, stubbornly resists this modern attitude. It still requires substitutionary sacrifice.

Another area where the modern view is dysfunctional is in that of reconciliation. No society can hold together if there is not an ability and willingness to forgive.

most dramatic that all life-changing love is substitutionary sacrifice.

the essence of sin is man substituting himself for God, while the essence of salvation is God substituting himself for man.

Jesus is telling us in the strongest terms that anyone at all in need, regardless of race, religion, values, and culture, is your neighbor.

Remember not to consider men’s evil intention but to look upon the image of God in them, which cancels and effaces their transgressions, and with its beauty and dignity allures us to love and embrace them.”4 Calvin’s

Christians cannot think that their role in life is strictly to build up the church, as crucial as that is. They must also, as neighbors and citizens, work sacrificially for the common life and common good.6 What is that? In the most basic sense, it refers to things that benefit the entire human community, rather than only the selfish interests of some individuals, groups, or classes.

we must not think it really possible to transcend politics and simply preach the gospel. Those Christians who try to avoid all political discussions and engagement are essentially casting a vote for the social status quo.

Another reason not to align the Christian faith with one party is that most political positions are matters not of biblical prescription but practical wisdom.

Efforts to find in the Bible a clear mandate for completely laissez-faire capitalism or for communism fail to convince.12 The best social policies

Christians, especially today, cannot allow the church to be fully aligned with any particular party is the problem of “ethical package deals.” Many political parties today insist that members commit to all the proper positions on all issues. So you cannot align on one issue if you don’t embrace the full gamut of all approved positions.13

No one really can tell anyone else what is right or wrong, they say, and so we have to include all viewpoints. 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.

Everyone ultimately believes in some moral absolutes. Once we realize this, the new question becomes: Which set of beliefs and moral absolutes leads us to embrace most fully those from whom we deeply differ?

Christian identity, however, is received, not achieved. In C. S. Lewis’s The Chronicles of Narnia, one of the characters is asked if he knows Aslan, a lion who is the Christ figure of the books. He answers, “Well—he knows me.”

Keep in mind that to know someone in the Bible does not mean simply to know about but to be in a personal relationship.

With Paul we can say that in ourselves we are “unworthy” but “by the grace of God I am what I am” (1 Corinthians 15:10).

Jesus certainly had the right to exclude us, but he did not. He loved, welcomed, and reconciled us to himself—all the while not merely affirming us in some general sense but calling us to radical repentance. He neither included us as if we had a right to be welcomed nor excluded and rejected us as our sins deserved. His voluntary sacrificial death to pay the penalty for our sins both convicts us of sin and the need to change and assures us of his love and pardon despite our flaws, at once.

“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)

One of the reasons that believers today dislike cities is because they are often places of great opposition to Christianity. Cities are seldom hotbeds of orthodox faith, and many young Christians move to cities and lose their faith.

God rejects both assimilation and tribalism for his people. He forbids both blending in and withdrawal.

Seeking the common good, yet without any compromise of faith and practice, is much more difficult. Yet that is God’s call to his people.