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 and trust in God? Yes to all those—and more.

artfully crafted work of literature. Its four chapters recount two incidents. In chapters 1 and 2 Jonah is given a command from God but fails to obey it; and in chapters 3 and 4 he is given the command again and this time carries it out. The two accounts are laid out in almost completely parallel patterns.

The book of Jonah yields many insights about God’s love for societies and people beyond the community of believers; about his opposition to toxic nationalism and disdain for other races; and about how to be “in mission” in the world despite the subtle and unavoidable power of idolatry in our own lives and hearts.

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?

Jonah had supported Jeroboam’s aggressive military policy to extend the nation’s power and influence. The original 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 concluded that because he could not see any good reasons for God’s command, there couldn’t be any. Jonah doubted the goodness, wisdom, and justice of 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.

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.

We think that if we are religiously observant, virtuous, and good, then we’ve paid our dues, as it were. Now God can’t just ask anything of us—he owes us. He is obligated to answer our prayers and bless us. This is not moving toward him in grateful joy, glad surrender, and love, but is instead a way of controlling God and, as a result, keeping him at arm’s length.

Both of these two ways of escaping God assume the lie that we cannot trust God’s commitment to our good.

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. 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.

and continually extends mercy to us in new ways, even though we neither understand nor deserve it.

every act of disobedience to God has a storm attached to it.

not to say that every difficult thing that comes into our lives is the punishment for some particular sin.

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 violate the laws of God, we are violating our own design, since God built us to know, serve, and love him.

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

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).

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.

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. 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.

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

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.

What is the captain rebuking Jonah for? It is because he has no interest in their common good.

crime plagues a community, or poor health, or a water shortage, or the loss of jobs, if an economy and social order is broken, we are all in the same boat. For a moment, Jonah lives in the same “neighborhood”

Jonah fled because he did not want to work for the good of the pagans—he wanted to serve exclusively the interests of believers. But God shows him here that he is the God of all people and Jonah needs to see himself as being part of the whole human community, not only a member of a faith community.

His private faith is of no public good.

We deserve the critique of the world if the church does not exhibit visible love in practical deeds.

We also learn that believers are to respect and learn from the wisdom God gives to those who don’t believe.

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.

Jesus takes the seemingly pedestrian exhortation “love thy neighbor” and gives it the most radical possible definition. He tells us that all in need, including those of other races and beliefs, are our neighbors. 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.

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.

how we constitute our identity. To ask about purpose, place, and people is an insightful way of asking, “Who are you?”

So this superstitious view—that your identity is rooted in what you worship—is irrelevant today.” To say this is to commit a fundamental error.

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.

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.

Shallow Christian identities explain why professing Christians can be racists and greedy materialists, addicted to beauty and pleasure, or filled with anxiety and prone to overwork. All this comes because it is not Christ’s love but the world’s power, approval, comfort, and control that are the real roots of our self-identity.

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. He was confident before God and humanity because, he thought, he was a fully devoted follower of Christ. There are two results of such an identity.

The first is blindness to one’s real self.

The second result is hostility, rather than respect, for people who are different.

Any identity based on your own achievement and performance is an insecure one. You are never sure you have done enough. That means, on the one hand, that you cannot be honest with yourself about your own flaws. But it also means that you always need to reinforce it by contrasting yourself with—and

Often the first step in coming to one’s senses spiritually is when we finally start thinking of somebody—anybody—other than ourselves. So

True love meets the needs of the loved one no matter the cost to oneself. All life-changing love is some kind of substitutionary sacrifice.

We decrease that they may increase. Yet in such love we are not diminished, but we become stronger, wiser, happier, and deeper. That’s the pattern of true love, not a so-called love that uses others to meet our needs for self-realization.

Jonah’s whole problem was the same as ours: a conviction that if we fully surrender our will to God, he will not be committed to our good and joy. But here is the ultimate proof that this deeply rooted belief is a lie. A God who substitutes himself for us and suffers so that we may go free is a God you can trust.

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.

“But not until he was all the way down, finally stripped of his own buoyant self-sufficiency, was deliverance possible.”2 There was a fatal flaw in Jonah’s character, and it had lain hidden from him as long as his life was going well. It was only through complete failure that he could begin to see it and change it.

Abraham, Joseph, David, Elijah, and Peter all became powerful leaders through failure and suffering. Countless Christians can attest to the same experience. It is only when you reach the very bottom, when everything falls apart, when all your schemes and resources are broken and exhausted, that you are finally open to learning how to completely depend on God.

you never realize that Jesus is all you need until Jesus is all you have. You must lose your life to find your life (Matthew 10:39).

If Jonah was to begin finally to ascend, both in the water and in faith, he had to be brought to the very end of himself. ...