Tag: Christianity

Scandals are usually thought of in negative terms like the sports star who is caught out or the celebrity news on the gossip pages. It’s negative, possibly something immoral to the world, and breaks the internet for a day or two. 

In preaching through the book of Jonah recently I’ve continued to have it pressed home to me just how scandalous the grace of God is. God’s free gift of salvation through Jesus Christ offered to all who receive it is a scandal. Scandalous. It sounds odd to hear as we never name it as such, but it really is. 

In Jonah 4 we find the prophet outside the city of Nineveh, sitting at a lookout point, watching and hoping that God will bring fire and sulphur down on this city like he did on Sodom and Gomorrah. Jonah has just preached his short, reluctant sermon to the Ninevites, seen an entire city turn from its evil ways, and watched God relent from the judgement they deserved.

But Jonah is furious. He’s so angry. You’d think he’d be happy, after all, he is a missionary! 

He says to God in verse 2, 

“I knew that you are a gracious and compassionate God, slow to anger and abounding in love, a God who relents from sending calamity.”

Jonah knows exactly who God is. He knows his character and he has experienced the breadth and depth of that tender mercy of God himself. He was rescued from drowning, delivered from the belly of a fish, and given a second chance when he had run as far as he could in the opposite direction. God showed grace to Jonah, and ironically, when that same grace is extended to Nineveh he cannot bear it. 

It’s a reaction we might understand ourselves. The Ninevites weren’t just a bunch of foreigners Jonah happened to dislike. These were the Nazis, the al-Qaeda, the ISIS of the ancient world. The Assyrians were vicious, brutal, and violent. They had God’s people in their sights and everyone knew it. Within a generation they would conquer the northern tribes of Israel (2 Kings 17:6). Jonah knew what these people were capable of and he seemed to know what was coming.

Yet, God showed them grace anyway.

This is the scandal.

This event and the story of Jonah asks a question of us, it turns the mirror toward us and asks, “How far does our love and grace really extend?”

Perhaps as an illustration we might think of that Navy Seal team who was brought together to take out Osama bin Laden all those years ago. Let’s imagine that instead of this team the US President sent a crack evangelist team to convert him. And in so doing they didn’t kill him, but they reached him with the good news of Jesus. Let’s say he repented, placed his faith in Jesus, and became part of God’s family. 

How are you going to respond to that? 

If you feel a twinge of discomfort, anger even, while reading that then you know exactly how Jonah felt sitting outside Nineveh.  

The scandal of grace is that God’s compassion and mercy is open to the most ghastly serial killer, the most despised paedophile, the rapist, the war criminal, the dictator, the murderer. If I’m honest, there’s a part of me that is angry at God right now, just like Jonah. It’s not fair. It doesn’t feel fair to respond to such evil and wrongdoing with grace. It’s outrageous. My human understanding struggles to believe this.

Alongside this scandal of grace we also need to hold onto something. God is not letting anyone off the hook. He is not being unjust. In fact, in order to even offer this grace, God provided his Son Jesus Christ as the one who absorbed the full force of the justice and judgement that is rightfully deserved by all who have sinned, all who have done evil, all who have broken God’s law and God’s ways (Isaiah 53:5; Romans 5:8). Every murderer and rapist, every liar and adulterer, every person consumed by anger or greed or pride — the judgement they deserve was placed on Jesus where God dealt with evil fully and finally at the cross.

It is at the cross where the grace is offered and it is at the cross where it remains. This isn’t cheap grace. It’s not grace that ignores wrongdoing. But it is costly, blood-bought grace that has dealt with sin at its epicentre and is now extended by invitation to all people everywhere.

This is why we call it amazing grace. This is why I’m calling it scandalous grace. 

God’s final question to Jonah, “Should I not have concern for this great city?”, is a question that exposes the limits we place on grace. It exposes the idols we carry in our hearts. It is that attitude of silently deciding others don’t deserve it. 

In Luke 15 Jesus tells a story along similar lines. A father opens his arms and offers grace to a son who has wasted everything. Standing outside the celebration, unwilling to go in, is the elder brother who has been faithful and dutiful all his life. And there he stands furious that grace has been shown to someone who in his view simply doesn’t deserve it. The father comes out to him and says: everything I have is yours, but one who was lost has been found. 

Like the book of Jonah, the parable of the Prodigal Son ends without answer. The scandal of grace toward the Ninevites and the younger brother is the same grace that God gifts us and is ours to receive. His arms are wide open. 

The mirror has turned toward us, and the question remains, “How far does our love and grace really extend?”