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

by Timothy J. Keller

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

There’s mercy deep inside our storms.

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.

Jonah’s journey away from self-righteous pride will be a slow one.

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. They are events that were difficult or even excruciating at the time but later came to yield more good in our lives than we could have foreseen.

Not the labors of my hands Can fulfill thy law’s demands. Could my zeal no respite know, Could my tears forever flow, All for sin could not atone. Thou must save, and thou alone.8

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. For what [the Bible] teaches us about ourselves is

The word used in verses 10 and 11 for “compassion” is a word that means to grieve over someone or something, to have your heart broken, to weep for it.5 God says, “You had compassion for the plant” (verse 10). That is, God says, “You wept over it, Jonah. Your heart became attached to it. When it died, it grieved you.” 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. God weeps over the evil and lostness of Nineveh. When you put your love on someone, you can be happy only

B. B. Warfield wrote a remarkable scholarly essay called “The Emotional Life of Our Lord,” where he considered every recorded instance in the gospels that described the emotions of Christ.

Calvin replies that even those who in themselves deserve nothing but contempt should be treated as if they were the Lord himself, because his image is upon them all. “Say [about the stranger before you] that you owe nothing for any service of his; but God, as it were, has put him in his own place in order that you may recognize toward him the many and great benefits which God has bound you to himself. . .

Grace becomes, as it were, the background