Jonah and the Love of God

"Men have been looking so hard at the great fish that they have failed to see the great God."

--G. Campbell Morgan--

Googleing the word “love” gives you over 9 billion results. Love, in one sense or another, has been the subject of more songs, books, private conversations, and jokes than nearly anything else. It is a short word, but it has been the theme of countless discourses in ethics, sociology, literature, philosophy, and theology. If you ask most people, they would tell you that love is a very good thing--many would say it is the greatest thing.

Love is a common word in our world, but too often what is called “love” doesn't seem to “live up to the hype.” What really is love? What is it really like? Well, the Bible also has a great deal to say about love. God is love and all human love is only a reflection (sadly, often a very blurred reflection) of God's love. If we want to learn what love is like, we have to look at God. And there is one book in the Bible, one story in the Bible that tells us a great deal about God and God's love. And that book is the book of Jonah:

I know it may seem odd to connect “love” with the story of Jonah since it doesn't explicitly deal with love. The word is never even found in that book. And I think if Jonah were the only book of the Bible we had, we might find it rather puzzling. Just why did God do what he did in that book, what did He act the way He did? But we know the rest of the Bible--we know that God is Love, that love is a part of everything that God does. And once we see that, we see that the story of Jonah is also a revelation of the love of God.

The first thing we see is that God's love reaches across all boundaries.

The important point to understand about Jonah is that Jonah was a Jew, one of the children of Abraham, living in the land of Israel. The Jews were the chosen people of God, separated out from all nations on the earth so that they could maintain God's law and pave the way for the coming of the Messiah. They were always very much aware of their identity as a distinct and separate nation. They were the chosen people. That was what God had intended, what God wanted them to be. The problem was that some of the Jews came to believe that God was their special property--that they had a corner on the love of God--that God cared about them and them only.

That was why Jonah was so shocked when God gave him this message--a message to go to Ninevah and preach. He was to go to Ninevah, to cry against it because of their great wickedness (1:2), to tell them that God was going to send judgment so that the city would be destroyed in forty days. (3:4) But though his message was one of judgment, Jonah understood that there was a deeper meaning behind it. In Jonah 4:2, Jonah tells God: “I knew that thou art a gracious God, and merciful, slow to anger, and of great kindness, and repentest thee of the evil.” Jonah realized that his message was not just one of judgment, but of mercy--that by sending him to Ninevah, God was actually offering them mercy, a chance to escape judgment by repenting. In other words, what shocked and upset Jonah so much was this idea--the idea that God loved the people of Ninevah and was going to give them a chance to repent.

This attitude carried through into the days of the New Testament. This, more than anything else, caused friction between Christians and Jews in the early church--the idea that God cared about the Gentiles and had provided salvation for them. Even for Christian Jews, it was a difficult concept to handle, and for the rest of the Jews, it was an outrage. When Paul told the people of Jerusalem that God had sent him to preach to the Gentiles, it was enough to make them cry out for his death. They simply could not accept the idea that God cared and had offered salvation equally to Gentiles as to the Jews.

And it would be easy for us to judge them, but the truth is that human nature hasn't changed much. Our love is always limited and it is still easy to assume that God's love is as well. We love those who around us, those we have some reason to love. This is necessary because of our limited minds and scope of attention. And we tend, naturally, to withhold love from those who are different from us, those who are divided from us by boundaries of nation, of position, of ethnicity. For the natural man, there are always people left definitely on the outside of the boundaries of love. That was why the lawyer asked Jesus that famous question: “Who is my neighbor?” The lawyer knew there were some people he was supposed to love, but he also felt certain that there were some people he didn't have to love and he wanted to find out who they were.

But God's love isn't like that. God is love--it is part of Who He Is. His love is complete and unlimited, reaching to all people. Of course, from God's perspective, many of the things that divide men aren't very important. A fence doesn't look very tall when you're in an airplane. But God loves all people, regardless, not because all people are lovable but because God is love. It is a common trope on fiction for a man and woman from very different backgrounds to meet and fall in love, despite their difference, because love breaks down all boundaries. And the same is true even more of the love of God. That was why God sent a message of warning and offered repentance to the people of Ninevah, even though they were not the chosen people--because God's love crosses all boundaries.

It may be easy to say that we should love people regardless of their personality, position, wealth, or background. That principle is commonly acknowledged in the world today, though not necessarily practiced. If you say that sort of thing in public, no one will give you an argument. But the love of God goes further than that; God's love does something seemingly bizarre and nonsensical.

God's love is given even to the worst of people.

The people of Ninevah were not good people. Of course, in any large city, probably there were individuals both good and bad. But Ninevah was the capital of Assyria. And Assyria was not a good country. Assyria is largely known in the ancient world for its cruelty. Keep that fact in perspective--Assyria gained a reputation for cruelty in a world in which cruelty was pretty much the norm. I pointed out already that Ninevah was not a Jewish city, which was why Jonah felt unwilling to go there. But it wasn't as if this were just a random Gentile city somewhere in the world. This was the capital of a nation that was Israel's active enemy and which would, some time later, conquer and virtually destroy the northern kingdom of Israel. These were not strangers--they were enemies.

Imagine if, during the heat of the Cold War, God had called an American preacher to go and deliver a message of warning and an offer of mercy to the leaders of Soviet Russia. That is a parallel to what Jonah was called to do--called to go to people that were his enemies, the people that threatened his people with destruction and worse than destruction and to tell them that God loved them enough to send them a warning and a chance to repent.

The Ninevites were bad people, undeserving of love. But we can't say that and ignore the fact that Jonah wasn't exactly a sterling specimen either. The main thing everyone remembers about Jonah is that he ran away. He was a prophet, charged with a sacred mission. His one job in life was to carry God's message to man, to tell people what God had told to him. And yet when God gave him a message he didn't want to carry, he simply quit and ran away. When the revelation came telling him to inland towards Ninevah, he went in the exact opposite direction, going down to the seaport of Joppa and boarding a ship bound for Tarshish. He had a duty to obey God--both as a human being and as a prophet--and yet when the going got rough, he turned tail and quit.

And notice that he knew full well what he was doing. In Jonah 1:10, the Bible comments that the sailors on Jonah's ship “knew that he fled from the presence of the LORD, because he had told them.” A couple of verses later, Jonah admits that the storm which had struck the ship was because of him, because of his disobedience: “I know that for my sake this great tempest is upon you.” Ignorance of the law is no excuse--but Jonah couldn't even claim that. He was Jew, a prophet, very much aware of God and His requirements, and yet he had betrayed his trust, turned his back on God, and tried to get as far away from God as he could. In the end, he was no better than the people of Ninevah and he did not even have as much of an excuse.

And if we are honest, we realize that we were also undeserving of God's love. Paul says that all have sinned and come short of the glory of God and it does not take a degree in theology or an extensive knowledge of the world to realize that he's right. The human race, generally speaking, is a mess. Many of us may hide our sins more successfully than Jonah or the people of Ninevah, but the truth is if you want examples of cruelty or cowardice, you don't have to search through the pages of ancient history to find them. You will find them all around you today and perhaps some of them closer than you'd want to admit. If we are honest with ourselves, we know that in our past we have done things every bit as wrong (and idiotic) as Jonah running away from God. We do not deserve God's love.

But the point is that love is, by definition, undeserved. We can earn recognition, admiration, honor, or reward--but we can never earn love. Love is something that it is given without being deserved. People recognize this when they say that a certain person has “a face only a mother could love.” Whenever a couple gets married, there will always be some standing in the background saying: “What does HE see in HER?” “What does SHE see in him?” Love is something that can never be bought or sold, can never be earned--it can only be given. In a famous passage in the Song of Solomon, Solomon writes: “If a man would give all the substance of his house for love, it would utterly be contemned.” There is not enough money in the world to buy love from another person, let alone from God.

But because love is something so valuable, we tend to be very cautious about who we give it to, and if our love is spurned or betrayed, we are hurt and withdraw our love. A stanza from a modern song says: “Only a friend can betray a friend/A stranger has nothing to gain/And only a friend can come close enough/To ever cause so much pain.” The deepest loss and betrayal we can experience is if when we give love to someone and they betray that love. Love cannot be bought, but it can be stolen. That is why you often have those tragic breaks within a family where a father and daughter or a brother and a sister will become staunch enemies and refuse to speak to each other. It is those whom we love who can turn most quickly to our enemies. Love may be blind, but it's not as blind as all that--not usually, anyway--not human love.

And if God were going to play by those rules, He would have good cause to have given up in His love for Jonah--and for us. Because that is exactly what Jonah did. He betrayed the love and trust which God had given him. Like the Prodigal Son, he had rejected his father's house and chosen instead a far country. And, as I said, we are no better. But God's love is given even to the worst of people, even those who have turned away from, those who have spurned His love and betrayed His trust.

This is really the same idea as before--God's love breaks across all boundaries, and reaches not just to people regardless of class or color but also regardless of whether they are good or bad. There is no one alive today that God does not love, no matter how unlovable they may seem to us. God's love reaches still to the worst of people even as it reached to Jonah and the people of Ninevah. God's love is infinite, that is to say, it is not limited. That is very counterintuitive to the world. The world is very much for love but will usually add that there are some people you can't, shouldn't love--that certain people, especially those who have once rejected or betrayed your love, should not be given love. But God's love doesn't work like that. Again, quoting from the Song of Solomon: “Many waters cannot quench love, neither can the floods drown it.”

But, still, there are some people who would say in the abstract that, yes, we should love all people, even the worst of people. But that's as far as it goes--just a statement. Too often love seems to be just a feeling or cliché. As one song puts it: “Too many moonlight kisses/Seem to melt in the light of the sun.” But God's love isn't like that. It a living, active thing. God's love is always at work, even at the worst of times.

The people of Ninevah were bad people and Jonah was almost worst, having deliberately rejected God's call. And yet, this is the point to note. God's love still reached to the people of Ninevah and it still reached to Jonah. God is working in love throughout all the book of Jonah.

It was God's love for the Ninevites that prompted Him to send Jonah. Ninevah deserved judgment. God would have been justified in simply destroying it out of hand without sending any warning. The reason God gave them advance warning was that He loved them and wanted to give them a second chance. In 2 Peter, Peter explains why God delays sending judgment for so long: “The Lord is not slack concerning his promise, as some men count slackness; but is longsuffering [towards us], not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance.” (2 Peter 3:9) The reason why God sent Jonah with this message, the reason why He gave Ninevah forty days, was so that they could repent, because God loved the people of Ninevah, bad as they were, and wanted them to repent. If they had not repented, God would have sent judgment. Later in history, God did send judgment on Ninevah for its sins. But first, God wanted to give them that chance to repent.

And, while we can't say this for sure, I believe it was because of God's love for Jonah that He sent Jonah to Ninevah. After Jonah ran away, it would have been easy for God to throw Jonah to the side and send His message some other way. Jonah was not the only prophet in the world and God never lacks for the means to do what needs to be done. But that isn't what God did. Instead, He pursued Jonah, using a storm and a big fish to catch Jonah's attention and force Jonah to come to grips with what he had done.

And this is what Jonah testified about his experience: “I went down to the bottoms of the mountains; the earth with her bars was about me for ever: yet hast thou brought up my life from corruption, O LORD my God. When my soul fainted within me I remembered the LORD: and my prayer came in unto thee, into thine holy temple. They that observe lying vanities forsake their own mercy. But I will sacrifice unto thee with the voice of thanksgiving; I will pay that that I have vowed. Salvation is of the LORD.” (Jonah 2:6-9) This is the language of worship and repentance. Jonah realized what he had done wrong and was genuinely sorry. He recognized that he had a responsibility to God and had betrayed that responsibility, that God was worthy of a worship and obedience that he had not given. In other words, he had been reached by God's love.

The book of Jonah is a revelation of how far God's love will go to reach to someone. I mean, God had Jonah swallowed by a giant fish. That's about the farthest reach you could think of love going--rather than giving up on Jonah or visiting him with judgment, God moved heaven and earth and sea (and large fish) in order to bring Jonah back to Himself.

God's love is at work in the book of Jonah and it has not stopped working since. I said before that God's love reached so far that it even went to Jonah inside the whale. But that's not the farthest God's love has gone. It has gone much father--as far as a dirty stable in the crowded streets of Bethlehem, as far as a humble carpenter's shop in the backwoods town of Nazareth, as far as a green hill on the outside of Jerusalem. And beyond that God's love has gone as far as to come to us. The truth is, there is nowhere that God's love will not go, no limits beyond which it will not pass, no boundaries it will not overcome.

Too often, when we talk about love it is only that. Talk. In American play, one character is described as having loved “everything and everybody” but then it's added: “But he never let on, so nobody ever knew.”  But God's love is living and active. It does things. No matter the odds, it always goes on seeking. But what does it seek? God's love always seeks for ultimate reconciliation.

God loved Jonah. And God loved the people for Ninevah. And to some people, that would seem to be enough. God loves them. End of story. Let's move on. But God's love isn't like that. As I said before, God's love does things and what it does is seeks for reconciliation. This is very clear in the story of Jonah. This is the reason why God sent Jonah to the Ninevites. God loved the people of Ninevah but they had sinned and were bound for a well-deserved judgment. And so He sent Jonah with a warning, knowing that this would catch their attention and cause them to rethink their actions. Sending a message of judgment and destruction might not seem like an act of love at first, but it was. Jonah 3:5 shows what their reaction to Jonah's message was: “So the people of Nineveh believed God, and proclaimed a fast, and put on sackcloth, from the greatest of them even to the least.” Verse 8-9 add part of the king's message to the people: “Cry mightily unto God: yea, let them turn every one from his evil way, and from the violence that is in their hands. Who can tell if God will turn and repent, and turn away from his fierce anger, that we perish not?”

Because of Jonah's message, the people repented, called on God, and changed their lives. No doubt some of them were acting only out of temporary fear and shortly after relapsed into their old way, but I'm sure some of them did truly come to know God because of this; I'm sure that there will people from Ninevah in Heaven because of Jonah's message. God didn't just love the people of Ninevah; He wanted them to be reconciled to Him, to come into a relationship with Him.

And that is even more clear in God's dealing with Jonah himself. I've already talked about how God reached to Jonah through the big fish which swallowed him. But there is a coda to the story of Jonah which is chapter four.  Jonah had repented and had followed God's leading but that doesn't mean he was happy about it. The final chapter of Jonah shows him sitting outside the city of Ninevah sulking because God had chosen to give them mercy. If we remember what the people of Ninevah were like, we can somewhat understand Jonah's attitude--they were bad people, they were his enemies--they were unquestionably worthy of God's judgment, though so was Jonah.

But this is the point to notice. Jonah was bitter and upset with God.  Jonah 4:3 shows just how upset he was: “Therefore now, O LORD, take, I beseech thee, my life from me; for it is better for me to die than to live.” Keep in mind that Jonah had very nearly died just forty days or so before this. Usually, when people have a near brush with death, they become more thankful for life--at least for a little while. But not Jonah.  The man that a few weeks before had been offering a prayer of worship and repentance to God is now throwing bitter reproaches in God's face. The one who had been giving thanks for life is now praying for death.

And yet, for all that, God still was dealing with Jonah. God sent a gourd and a worm to Jonah as an object lesson and then spoke to Jonah, seemingly in an audible voice. The last word of Jonah is God's word--the last thing we see in Jonah is God speaking to Jonah, trying to bring him to repent, trying to make him realize the wrongness of his attitude. We do not know how Jonah responded to God's rebuke, but the point is that God did speak to him. Because God loved Jonah, He did not want the story to end with Jonah stewing in his own bitterness. Whether or not Jonah ultimately repented, God did make that attempt, God did speak to him because God wanted Jonah to repent and be reconciled to Him, just as the people of Ninevah had been.

And this is the way God's love still works. God doesn't just say: “I love you” and leave it at that. Many people talk about the love of God as if it were just a casual, disinterested kind of love that doesn't really care all that much about people or what they do. But that isn't true love; that isn't the love of God. God's love is always seeking for reconciliation, always seeking to bring people into a relationship with him. God doesn't merely seek to save people; He seeks to bring them to Himself. Over and over in the New Testament, we read of God seeking to make us His children, part of His family, citizens of His kingdom, organs of His body, partakers of His nature.