Jonah: Old-Testament Believer Versus New-Testament God

Let's start with a (hopefully obvious) disclaimer: I in no way believe that God changed in some way between the Old and New Testaments, or that there were different Gods for those two times. I believe in one eternal, all-powerful, unchanging God. The title is just a little bit clickbaity way of introducing my main point.

Jonah is one of my personal favorite books of the Bible, partially because it's just uniquely entertaining in the canon. Don't take this in the wrong way: all the Bible is inspired by God and profitable for teaching, and it should be taken seriously. But there's a definite sarcastic tone in Jonah that you don't see often. Consider the most obvious example, Jonah 4:1-4 (ESV):

But it [Nineveh had responded to Jonah's message and repented of their sins, and God had relented of the judgment he had planned for them] displeased Jonah exceedingly, and he was angry. And he prayed to the Lord and said, “O Lord, is not this what I said when I was yet in my country? That is why I made haste to flee to Tarshish; for I knew that you are a gracious God and merciful, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love, and relenting from disaster. Therefore now, O Lord, please take my life from me, for it is better for me to die than to live.” And the Lord said, “Do you do well to be angry?”

The irony is obvious. Jonah is infuriated by one of the greatest blessings known to mankind: God's abiding steadfast love and mercy. It's comically out of the character you'd expect from one of the chosen prophets of Yahweh: the picture we have of these men is someone heavy-hearted, grieving as their message is rejected and unheeded. Think of Jeremiah, the "Weeping Prophet", who wrote a book called "Lamentations", or Micah's despondency after prophesying the bleakness of Israel's future (Micah 7). It's what you'd expect: prophets are giving calls to repentance, and are saddened by the coldhearted rebellion of their recipients. But Jonah is the complete opposite, and for one key reason.

Here's where the clickbaity title of this post comes in. We've all heard of the alleged discrepancy between God in the Old Testament versus the New. How the Old Testament God is bloodthirsty and legalistic, perpetrating genocide against the Canaanite peoples, while in the New Testament, he preaches a soft-hearted, gospel of 'love your enemies'. This argument stems from an incomplete understanding of God in both Testaments, but that's not the point of this article. I argue that Jonah was under this incorrect assumption.

For think of what Jonah's idea of God would have been. It is completely plausible that Jonah along with many other Israelites would have (mistakenly) believed some combination of 1) God only cares about us, the Israelites, since we're his chosen people, 2) all other peoples are heathen pagans, undeserving and incapable of receiving God's love, and deserving only of punishment, and 3) that this judgment is only a matter of time, since God has promised that David's line will reign forever. Jonah likely hated the Ninevites. For all his life, they had been Israel's enemies. Probably Israelites feared them as well.

But the Ninevites were people too. They needed God's grace just as much as Jonah did. And as the book shows, they also understood it better than he did. God's grace was never restricted to the Israelites, whether in the time of the Old Testament or the New.

What should this teach us nowadays? Jonah's story calls us to remember how undeserving we are of our salvation. We are not 'better' people just because we have been saved. And unbelievers are not our enemies, they are people who need the Gospel just as much as we do. Unbelievers won't believe the same things we do, and will disagree with us on important things. That shouldn't surprise or off-put us; it should be what we expect. That doesn't make them unworthy of our time or affection. In something of a parallel to Peter and Cornelius in Acts 10, Jonah was startled that God's love wasn't just limited to the Israelites; instead, it applies to all people. God has always been the "New Testament God." Let us never fall into the trap of thinking that only our people, our denomination, or even our faith are loved by God.