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

by Timothy J. Keller

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. Every human being who has lived into middle age knows how often we have been mistaken about that. Yet our hearts continue to operate on this same principle, year after year. We remember how foolish we were at age twenty but think now that we are forty we know. But only God knows.

Whenever we disobey God, we are violating our own design, since God created us to serve, know, and enjoy him. There are natural consequences, and so, as it were, 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. Life in the world is filled with storms—with difficulties and suffering—some of which we have directly brought on ourselves but many of which we have not.

1 John 3:16–18 says, “This is how we know what love is: Jesus Christ laid down his life for us. And we ought to lay down our lives for our brothers and sisters.” When John says that “this is how we know what love is,” he is arguing that, on this side of the cross, love is ever after defined as self-giving. “Just as the essence of hate is murder . . . so the essence of love is self-sacrifice. . . . Murder is taking another person’s life; self-sacrifice is laying down one’s own.”9 Many recoil from this definition. The complaint is that it leads some to stay in abusive or exploitative relationships. However, that is to forget the whole definition. Self-sacrifice is always, as Stott says, “in the service of others.” Allowing someone to exploit you or sin against you is not loving them at all. It only confirms them in their wrongful behavior and could lead to the ruin of you both. Some people do indeed allow themselves to be browbeaten and used, for many psychologically toxic reasons, all under the guise of being “self-giving.” In reality it is selfish, a way to feel superior or needed. To say that self-giving love must lead to abuse and oppression is to misunderstand it entirely.

John Stott writes: 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.16

Nonetheless, after a quick look at the bulleted list above, some will respond that it will be impossible to work for the public or common good without Christians getting involved in politics. That is true, and so a careful balance must be achieved.

Since no human society reflects God’s justice and righteousness perfectly, supposedly apolitical Christians are supporting many things that displease God. So to not be political is to be political. Churches in the U.S. in the early nineteenth century that did not speak out about slavery because that would have been “getting political” were actually supporting the slavery status quo by staying silent.

Nevertheless, while individual Christians must do this, they should not identify the church itself with one set of public policies or one political party as the Christian one.8

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. Supposedly rejecting all “binaries” immediately creates new ones.

The early Christians startled the Roman world with this unique facet of their identity. Until that time, one’s religion and faith were nothing but an extension of one’s national identity. Your race determined who your gods were—race came first and religion was just a way of expressing it. Christians said that their God was the God of the whole world, and that people of all races could be Christians, and that therefore faith was more important than race.24 The early Christian churches were multiethnic in an unprecedented way. They brought together people who would never have gotten along before they believed in Christ.

It is unjust to fail to share with the poor. This lack of just generosity can take other forms. Exploiting your employees, paying them an ungenerous wage, is considered injustice (Isaiah 58:6–7). Whatever you have is only by God’s gift and appointment (1 Chronicles 29:12–14). So to not share what you have with those who have less—to fail to meet their basic human needs like food, safe housing, health, and education—is being not simply unmerciful but unjust.

We must realize that since all our social problems stem from our alienation from God (Genesis 3:1–17), the most radical and loving thing you can do for a person is to see him or her reconciled to God. Yet while preaching repentance is fundamental, doing justice must be inseparably attached to it. If you have a new relationship with God, it must affect all your other relationships. The Old Testament prophets regularly declared that while you may be religious and fast and pray, if you don’t do justice, your religion is a sham (Isaiah 58:1–7). Isaiah said that if we don’t care for the poor (Isaiah 29:21), then we may seem to honor God with our lips but our hearts are far from him (Isaiah 29:13).

This is one of the great contradictions of our society today. It insists that all morality is relative and then it demands moral behavior.

The main purpose of God is to get Jonah to understand grace. The main purpose of the book of Jonah is to get us to understand grace.

The doctrine of the grace of God is that which sets Christianity apart from all other faiths. It is the central message, the “gospel.”

Unless we see what it cost him to save us, we won’t be glad to obey and serve him, regardless of the cost to us.

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 matter what you have done. If you were a hundred times worse than you are, your sins would be no match for his mercy.

In the same vein, the postmodern novelist David Foster Wallace said that in daily life “there is no such thing as . . . not worshipping.” He went on to say that “where[ever] you tap real meaning in life”—whether it is having enough money, being beautiful (or having a beautiful partner), or being thought smart or promoting some political cause—“everybody worships. The only choice we get is what to worship.” Wallace knew that modern, secular people would protest very strongly that they are not worshipping, but he likened these denials of secular people about worship to the denials of addicts. “The insidious thing,” he said, “is [that] they are unconscious. They are default settings.”19 Whatever you live for actually owns you. You do not really control yourself. Whatever you live for and love the most controls you.