Disobedience and Merciful Salvation

The story of Jonah

Jonah is the prophet of the Lord. God had prepared a fish to swallow Jonah, and in the fish belly, Jonah prayed that:

Then Jonah prayed to the Lord his God from the fish's belly. And he said: "I cried out to the Lord because of my affliction, and He answered me. Out of the belly of Sheol I cried, and You heard my voice. For You cast me into the deep, into the heart of the seas, and the floods surrounded me; all Your billows and Your waves passed over me. Then I said, 'I have been cast out of Your sight; yet I will look again toward Your holy temple.' The waters surrounded me, even to my soul; the deep closed around me; weeds were wrapped around my head. I went down to the moorings of the mountains; the earth with its bars closed behind me forever; yet You have brought up my life from the pit, O Lord, my God. When my soul fainted within me, I remembered the Lord; and my prayer went up to You, into Your holy temple. Those who regard worthless idols forsake their own Mercy. But I will sacrifice to You with the voice of thanksgiving; I will pay what I have vowed. Salvation is of the Lord." So the Lord spoke to the fish, and it vomited Jonah onto dry land.

Jonah 2:1–10

But why had God prepared a big fish to swallow Jonah? The answer is in the first chapter of the book of Jonah:

Now the word of the Lord came to Jonah the son of Amittai, saying, "Arise, go to Nineveh, that great city, and cry out against it; for their wickedness has come up before Me." But Jonah arose to flee to Tarshish from the presence of the Lord. He went down to Joppa, and found a ship going to Tarshish; so he paid the fare, and went down into it, to go with them to Tarshish from the presence of the Lord.

Jonah 1:1–3

The scripture briefly describes Jonah as a prophet of the Lord, who was chosen to speak the word of God to the people. However, because of Jonah's disobedience to the command of the Lord, God caused him to encounter these events to bring him to repentance and turn Jonah back to Him. In fact, I believe that in chapter 4 of the book of Jonah, we can catch a glimpse of why Jonah fled from the Lord's command. But it's not the main point for now. The critical question I'm asking is, what is God telling us through Jonah's story? Conclusively, from my perspective, it would be:

For God has committed them all to disobedience, that He might have mercy on all.

Romans 11:32

Does this scripture mean that God makes us bad people in order to show us mercy? It must be clear that God does not "make" us disobedience. God "commits" us to disobedience, allowing our sinfulness to reveal itself, so that He might have mercy on all those who repent to Christ, showing that the salvation is done not by human, but by the grace of God.

If God were to count us obedient to Him, where there's no need for repentance, even so, sin would still affect humanity and dwell within people. In order to save people from sin, God must count us as disobedience according to His perfect law of righteousness, and save people from sin through Christ, from His eternal punishment through His salvation.

If we are guilty, how can the righteous God count us as obedient? If God does not have a loving nature that He would have mercy on us, how can a sinful man be saved? Therefore, God committed us to disobedience in the sense that we are counted as unrighteous due to sin, not that God makes us unrighteous. Since we are counted as unrighteous in front of the righteous law of God, He might have mercy on all based on His character of love. As stated in Galatians and Romans:

But the Scripture has confined all under sin, that the promise by faith in Jesus Christ might be given to those who believe.

Galatians 3:22

Now we know that whatever the law says, it says to those who are under the law, that every mouth may be stopped, and all the world may become guilty before God. Therefore by the deeds of the law no flesh will be justified in His sight, for by the law is the knowledge of sin.

Romans 3:19–20

By the law of the Holy Bible, we could acknowledge the sin inside us. Metaphorically, without human discovery, the fact that the sum of the squares of the two shorter sides of a right triangle equals the square of the hypotenuse still exists. It is through the Pythagorean theorem, which states that a²+b²=c², that we come to acknowledge and understand it.

To this point, it is not the case that the Bible defines righteousness from unrighteousness according to our nature such that we are counted as guilty. Instead, God Himself is righteous, and anything or anyone against the Lord is unrighteous. The creation of humanity came afterward. From Adam onward, sin has been with humanity and cannot be escaped on our own, and the law of the Bible has made this clear. Without the law revealing the sin, we cannot acknowledge it, and we cannot confront it or know why we need to rely on Jesus Christ to overcome sin, which separates us from the eternal and loving God.

What shall we say then? Is the law sin? Certainly not! On the contrary, I would not have known sin except through the law. For I would not have known covetousness unless the law had said, "You shall not covet." But sin, taking opportunity by the commandment, produced in me all manner of evil desire. For apart from the law sin was dead. I was alive once without the law, but when the commandment came, sin revived and I died. And the commandment, which was to bring life, I found to bring death. For sin, taking occasion by the commandment, deceived me, and by it killed me. Therefore the law is holy, and the commandment holy and just and good.

Romans 7:7–12

Jonah reflects believers in Christ

Once we understand the logic behind this statement, we can discuss the salvation of Christ Jesus. In fact, the story of Jonah is a reflection of the lives of many Christians. Jonah clearly knew that God told him to go to Nineveh and call them to repentance, but because of the weakness and sin in his heart, he sought to flee from God. As a result, God made him suffer in the stomach of a big fish. In the midst of these sufferings, Jonah repented to God, and then God saved him from dying in the belly of the fish and being digested. Similarly, we know that God is speaking to us, and we are aware, through the Bible, of His will concerning our situations. However, due to our weakness and sin, we disobey God, leading us to encounter various difficulties. In these hardships, we come to understand God's heart and realize that only He can save us from death. We believe that salvation comes from the Lord, and through Christ Jesus, we repent before God and are saved from eternal punishment. God saves us from death (just as He saved Jonah from dying in the fish's belly), and through our Lord Jesus Christ, the Holy Spirit works within us to will and to overcome sin in faith and deeds.

But I will sacrifice to You with the voice of thanksgiving; I will pay what I have vowed. Salvation is of the Lord.

Jonah 2:9

You, however, are not in the realm of the flesh but are in the realm of the Spirit, if indeed the Spirit of God lives in you. And if anyone does not have the Spirit of Christ, they do not belong to Christ. But if Christ is in you, then even though your body is subject to death because of sin, the Spirit gives life because of righteousness. And if the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead is living in you, he who raised Christ from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies because of his Spirit who lives in you.

Romans 8:9–11

Jonah's story is about the salvation of Jesus

Regarding our innate desire and flesh, we have sin that we cannot conquer on our own. This is true considering the scripture of the Bible and our experience as believers of Christ. But the fact that Jonah is saved resulted from acknowledging that he himself needs to be saved, and can only be saved by God. Jonah was situated in a fish belly for three days. How come a swallowed food can escape from a fish belly? The fact that Jonah wasn't painfully hurt by the fish's stomach acid is already remarkable, let alone being able to breathe and stay alive in such an enclosed space. This is a miracle that only God could accomplish. Therefore, the grace that saved Jonah only comes from the Lord. It is the same circumstance for us: we are trapped in the mud of sin. God made the fish to spit out Jonah to save him. Then in what way does God save us? We were disobedient by nature, and because of the bad fruit that our disobedience produced, we deserved to bear the death that comes from sin. However, Jesus has paid the price we were meant to pay. Jonah's story points to Jesus.

Then some of the scribes and Pharisees answered, saying, "Teacher, we want to see a sign from You." But He answered and said to them, "An evil and adulterous generation seeks after a sign, and no sign will be given to it except the sign of the prophet Jonah. For as Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of the great fish, so will the Son of Man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth. The men of Nineveh will rise up in the judgment with this generation and condemn it, because they repented at the preaching of Jonah; and indeed a greater than Jonah is here. The queen of the South will rise up in the judgment with this generation and condemn it, for she came from the ends of the earth to hear the wisdom of Solomon; and indeed a greater than Solomon is here."

Matthew 12:38–42

As Jesus said, an evil and adulterous generation seeks after a sign, and no sign will be given to it except the sign of Jonah. On behalf of the history of Israel, as described in the Holy Bible, even in witnessing the miracle of crossing the Red Sea, Israelites still disobeyed and turned away from God when they entered the wilderness. The problem isn't with signs of God but with human sin, which causes us to still reject God even after witnessing miracles. So what reason would God have to give a sign? Therefore, what truly saves people is not the signs that we can see with our eyes, but Jesus Christ—who can completely transform us, save us from sin rooting in our soul, and turn our lives around.

Jesus is completely obedient, yet He bears the price of our disobedience

What exactly is Gospel? Based on the Holy Bible, to every believer saved by the faith in Christ, Jesus demonstrated full obedience to His Father.

Let this mind be in you which was also in Christ Jesus, who, being in the form of God, did not consider it robbery to be equal with God, but made Himself of no reputation, taking the form of a bondservant, and coming in the likeness of men. And being found in appearance as a man, He humbled Himself and became obedient to the point of death, even the death of the cross.

Philippians 2:5–8

For I have come down from heaven, not to do My own will, but the will of Him who sent Me.

John 6:38

So also Christ did not glorify Himself to become High Priest, but it was He who said to Him: "You are My Son, today I have begotten You." As He also says in another place: "You are a priest forever according to the order of Melchizedek"; who, in the days of His flesh, when He had offered up prayers and supplications, with vehement cries and tears to Him who was able to save Him from death, and was heard because of His godly fear, though He was a Son, yet He learned obedience by the things which He suffered.

Hebrews 5:5–8

And He took with Him Peter and the two sons of Zebedee, and He began to be sorrowful and deeply distressed. Then He said to them, "My soul is exceedingly sorrowful, even to death. Stay here and watch with Me." He went a little farther and fell on His face, and prayed, saying, "O My Father, if it is possible, let this cup pass from Me; nevertheless, not as I will, but as You will."

Matthew 26:37–39

Jesus is fully obedient to His Heavenly Father, for He is the Holy God who became a man. He never sinned, yet to fulfill the mighty plan of salvation of God, He was crucified and bears the consequences of our disobedience—the price of sin, which is death. The essence of the Gospel, the good news, is that anyone who believes in Jesus Christ can receive God's great mercy and be saved in Christ. Because of the Cross Jesus took for us, all the believers shall not perish in the eternal punishment. And because of God's deep love for humanity, He made His one and only beloved Son to be crucified, bearing the death that we should've paid. Thus, this is why the Bible says in Romans 5:8,

But God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.

Romans 5:8

Summary

Jonah's story reveals that God's mercy is greater than human disobedience. As God saved Jonah through his repentance of disobedience, Christ's death and resurrection bring eternal life to all who repent and believe. Our obedience, though imperfect, is empowered by the Holy Spirit, and His mercy meets us even in our failures (disobedience), calling us to rely on Christ's finished work, His crucifixion on the cross and resurrection from death.

What shall we say then? Shall we continue in sin that grace may abound? Certainly not! How shall we who died to sin live any longer in it? Or do you not know that as many of us as were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into His death? Therefore we were buried with Him through baptism into death, that just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so we also should walk in newness of life.

Romans 6:1–4

May we live lives of repentance, thanksgiving, and obedience, reflecting the love of Christ to the world.