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

by Timothy J. Keller

While Jeremiah, Isaiah, and Amos all pronounced a few prophetic oracles addressed to pagan countries, they are brief, and none of those other men was actually sent out to the nations in order to preach. Jonah’s mission was unprecedented.

heavy tribute from Israel during the reign of King Jehu (842–815 BC) and continued to threaten the Jewish northern kingdom throughout the lifetime of

Jonah. In 722 BC it finally invaded and destroyed the northern kingdom of Israel and its capital, Samaria.

Though God told Jonah to “proclaim against” the city for its wickedness, there would have been no reason to send a warning unless there was a chance of judgment be...

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

Jonah had supported Jeroboam’s aggressive military policy to extend the nation’s power and influence.

The prophet Nahum had some years before prophesied that God would destroy Nineveh for its evil.7 Jonah and Israel would have accepted Nahum’s prediction as making perfect sense.

When this happens 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.

simply reject God overtly and “have become filled with every kind of wickedness, evil, greed and depravity” (Romans 1:29).

In chapter 2, however, he talks of those who seek to follow the Bible. “You rely on the law and boast . . . in God. . . . You know his will and approve of what is superior because you are instructed by the law” (Romans 2:17–18). Then, after looking at both pagan, immoral Gentiles and Bible-believing, moral Jews, he concludes in a remarkable summation “that there is no one righteous, not even one. . . . All have turned away” (Romans 3:10–12).

The elder brother was not obeying out of love but only as a way, he thought, of putting his father in his debt, getting control over him so he had to do as his older son asked. Neither son trusted his father’s love. Both were trying to find ways of escaping his control. One did it by obeying all the father’s rules, the other by disobeying them all.

And that is the problem facing Jonah, namely, the mystery of God’s mercy. It is a theological problem, but it is at the same time a heart problem.

Jonah runs and runs. But even though he uses multiple strategies, the Lord is always a step ahead. God varies his strategies too, and continually extends mercy to us in new ways, even though we neither understand nor deserve it.

This is not to say that every difficult thing that comes into our lives is the punishment for some particular sin. The entire book of Job contradicts the common belief that good people will have lives that go well, and that if your life is going badly, it must be your fault. 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.

If we build our lives and meaning on anything more than God, we are acting against the grain of the universe and of our own design and therefore of our own being.

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.

Here’s just one example. When you indulge yourself in bitter thoughts, it feels so satisfying to fantasize about payback. But slowly and surely it will enlarge your capacity for self-pity, erode your ability to trust and enjoy relationships, and generally drain the happiness out of your daily life. Sin always hardens the conscience, locks you in the prison of your own defensiveness and rationalizations, and eats you up slowly from the inside.

For Jonah the storm was the consequence of his sin, yet the sailors were caught in it too. Most often the storms of life come upon us not as the consequence of a particular sin but as the unavoidable consequence of living in a fallen, troubled world.

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).

for Christians, every difficulty can help reduce the power of sin over our hearts. Storms can wake us up to truths we would otherwise never see. Storms can develop faith, hope, love, patience, humility, and self-control in us that nothing else can. And innumerable people have testified that they found faith in Christ and eternal life only because some great storm drove them toward God.

In both cases his behavior is dismissive and unhelpful, while the pagans uniformly act more admirably than he does. This is one of the main messages of the book, namely, that God cares how we believers relate to and treat people who are deeply different from us.

The nineteenth-century Scottish minister Hugh Martin says Jonah was sleeping “the sleep of sorrow.” Many of us know exactly what that is—the desire to escape reality through sleep, even for a little while.1 He was profoundly spent and exhausted, drained by powerful emotions of anger, guilt, anxiety, and grief.

While Jonah is out of touch with his peril, the sailors are extremely alert. While Jonah is thoroughly absorbed by his own problems, they are seeking the common good of everyone in the boat. They pray each to their own god, but Jonah does not pray to his. They are also spiritually aware enough to sense that this is not just a random storm but of peculiar intensity.

Casting lots in order to discern the divine will was quite common in ancient times. It is possible that each man’s name was put on a stick, and the one that was chosen was Jonah’s.4 God uses the lot casting, in this case, to point the finger at Jonah.

They show him and his God the greatest of respect. Even when Jonah proposes that they throw him overboard, they do everything possible to avoid doing it. At every point they outshine Jonah.

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

And so we have this memorable picture of the heathen captain reprimanding God’s holy prophet. Hugh Martin preached a sermon on this text entitled “The World Rebuking the Church”5 and concluded that Jonah deserved it and, to a great extent, the church today deserves it too.

Yet, as Hugh Martin argues, the criticism is still true. Jonah is not bringing the resources of his faith to bear on the suffering of his fellow citizens. He is not telling them how to get a relationship with the God of the universe. Nor is he, relying on his own spiritual resources in God, simply loving and serving the practical needs of his neighbors. God commands all believers to do both things, but he is doing neither. His private faith is of no public good.

We also learn that believers are to respect and learn from the wisdom God gives to those who don’t believe. The pagan sailors provide a graphic portrayal of what theologians have called “common grace.”

That is, God is ultimately enabling every act of goodness, wisdom, justice, and beauty—no matter who does it. Isaiah 45:1 speaks of Cyrus, a pagan king, whom God anoints and uses for world leadership. Isaiah 28:23–29 tells us that when a farmer is fruitful, it is God who has been teaching him to be so.

There is no indication that the monarch or the farmer mentioned in Isaiah embraced God by faith. 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).

So how was it possible that the pagans were outshining Jonah? 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. Jonah is learning this the hard way.

We are also shown that the way to “love” neighbors is not merely through sentiment but through costly, sacrificial, practical action to meet material and economic needs.

That is why James can say, “Judgment without mercy will be shown to anyone who has not been merciful” (verse 13). The lack of mercy in Jonah’s attitude and actions toward others reveals that he was a stranger in his heart to the saving mercy and grace of God.

And while there is no Venus, goddess of beauty, nevertheless untold numbers of men and women are obsessed with body image or enslaved to an unrealizable idea of sexual fulfillment.

Therefore, the sailors are not wrong in their analysis. Everyone gets an identity from something. Everyone must say to himself or herself, “I’m significant because of This” and “I’m acceptable because I’m welcomed by Them.” But then whatever This is and whoever They are, these things become virtual gods to us, and the deepest truths about who we are.

When financial success commands allegiance that is unconditional and that cannot be questioned, it functions as a religious object, a god, even a “salvation.”2

“To be in the image” means that human beings were not created to stand alone. We must get our significance and security from something of ultimate value outside us. To be created in God’s image means we must live for the true God or we will have to make something else God and orbit our lives around that.3

“Since Jonah identifies himself first ethnically, then religiously, we may infer that his ethnicity is foremost in his self-identity.”

If his race was more foundational to his self-image than his faith, it begins to explain why Jonah was so opposed to calling Nineveh to repentance.

For example, you may sincerely believe that Jesus died for your sins, and yet your significance and security can be far more grounded in your career and financial worth than in the love of God through Christ.

The answer is that 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. His self-regard was rooted in the level of commitment to Christ that he thought he had achieved.

The first is blindness to one’s real self. If you get your sense of worth from how courageous you are, it will be traumatic to admit to any cowardice at all. If your very self is based on your valor, any failure of nerve would mean there would be no “you” left.

The second result is hostility, rather than respect, for people who are different. When they came to arrest Jesus, even though Jesus had told them numerous times that this had to happen, Peter pulled out a sword and cut off the ear of one of the soldiers.

The sailors continue to act admirably when, despite Jonah’s offer, they try to row to shore. Only after they realize that there is no other way to be saved, and only after they acknowledge the gravity of what they are about to do, do they cast Jonah over the side, in fear and trembling and prayer to God.

Jonah is not Jesus Christ . . . but he is one of the long line of types of Jesus, each representing an aspect of what the Son of God will be in totality . . . [and] if it is true that the sacrifice of a man who takes his condemnation can save others around him, then this is far more true when the one sacrificed is the Son of God himself. . . . It is solely because of the sacrifice of Jesus Christ that the sacrifice of Jonah avails and saves.3

To deny God’s wrath upon sin not only robs us of a full view of God’s holiness and justice but also can diminish our wonder, love, and praise at what it was that Jesus bore for us. Unlike Jonah, who was being punished only for his own disobedience, Jesus takes the full divine condemnation so there is none left for those who believe (Romans 8:1). He drains the cup of divine justice so there is not a drop left for us (Matthew 26:39,41).

Jonah mistrusted the goodness of God, but he didn’t know about the cross. What is our excuse?

These men were different. They made their vows after the danger passed. That indicates that they were not seeking God for what he could do for them, but simply for the greatness of who he is in himself. That is the beginning of true faith.

All of this is ironic. Jonah was fleeing God because he did not want to go and show God’s truth to wicked pagans, but that is exactly what he ends up doing. Daniel C. Timmer writes: “Jonah’s anti-missionary activity has ironically resulted in the conversion of non-Israelites.”9 Another commentator adds: “This carries us farther in the lessons of this book about God’s sovereignty. What God is going to do, he will do.”