God is good—and it’s ridiculous that this would ever be upsetting to someone! But in a world ridden with sin and selfishness, it often is. If we’re not careful, we begin to grow comfortable with our own idea of what is good, an idea rooted in our own selfishness, and to hate everything that goes against it. But God is not a God who caters to whatever we want, and he never has been. That can be infuriating at times.
The book of Jonah is a story about repentance and God’s mercy. The prophet Jonah himself is the central character of the first half; he runs from the Lord, is faced with the reality of divine wrath, repents of his sin, and encounters God’s amazing grace. In the second half, the Assyrian city of Nineveh is given the opportunity to do the same. They repent immediately—far quicker than Jonah had—and, surprise surprise, the God of mercy shows them mercy.
But Jonah hates this. He hated the Assyrian foreigners anyway, but on top of that, in his mind he had probably magnified someone else’s sin while downplaying his own. (But none of us have ever done that, I’d assume.) Ironically, even though his description of God in verse 2 comes almost directly from God’s description of his own goodness in Exodus 34:6-7, Jonah uses it as an accusation! How dare the Lord be good and just and faithful and merciful! How dare he show someone else the same mercy he just showed me! How dare he fail to serve my own agenda, and bless someone that I can’t stand!
It is incredibly good news that God is far more righteous than we are. It’s good news that we are not God. The Lord will uphold justice, and he will show mercy, even where we selfishly think he shouldn’t. We might as well get on board with his agenda. So who are the Ninevites in your life? Who are the people you can’t stand, to whom you wish God wouldn’t show mercy? Those people—yes, even they—are invited to encounter God’s amazing grace just as much as you are. As a friend of mine often says, repentance is a party to which we are all invited. Let’s rejoice and not grow bitter when God’s goodness is accomplished in even our greatest enemies.
