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

by Timothy J. Keller

The results of sin are often more like the physical response you have to a debilitating dose of radiation. You don’t suddenly feel pain the moment you are exposed. It isn’t like a bullet or sword tearing into you. You feel quite normal. Only later do you experience symptoms, but by then it is too late.

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

Moses had to become a fugitive and spend forty years in the lonely wilderness before he could lead.

Yet in such love we are not diminished, but we become stronger, wiser, happier, and deeper.

Perhaps we could say that all theological problems play themselves out not merely in our intellects but in our commitments, desires, and identities.

As long as there is something more important than God to your heart, you will be, like Jonah, both fragile and self-righteous.

Then we begin serving the Lord not in order to get things from him but just for him, for his own sake, just for who he is, for the joy of knowing him, delighting him, and becoming like him.

It meant performing loving actions even if your heart was not drawn out in affection for someone.

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, but it is the character of compassion.

“agape love means self-sacrifice in the service of others.”

The biblical gospel of atonement is of God satisfying himself by substituting himself for us. The concept of substitution may be said, then, to lie at the heart of both sin and salvation. For the essence of sin is man substituting himself for God, while the essence of salvation is God substituting himself for man. Man asserts himself against God and puts himself where only God deserves to be; God sacrifices himself for man and puts himself where only man deserves to be. Man claims prerogatives which belong to God alone; God accepts penalties which belong to man alone.

I love how he put this. Excellent

Is there anything between the poles of completely affirming all viewpoints and excluding people as “the Other”? Yes, there is. Jesus said: “I tell you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you. . . . If you greet only your own people, what are you doing more than others? Do not even pagans do that?” (Matthew 5:44,47).

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.

Salvation BELONGS to God

Mission is not only for a spiritual elite, or for the well rested,

Such confidence and knowledge of God’s grace makes you happy, joyful and bold in your relationship to God and all creatures.

Whatever your problem, God solves it with his grace. God’s grace abolishes guilt forever. You may be filled with regret for the past or you may be living with a sense of great failure. It doesn’t

Salvation belongs to the Lord. It is all from him. It is not partly from you and partly from him. It is from him. If you feel, “I wish I were more worthy,” you still don’t understand it. He is your worthiness. 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.

This!

If you have a friend who’s going through a really hard time, don’t be too busy to spend time with them. Walk