This past Sunday morning, in my sermon based out of the book of Jonah, I worked with three words that jump out at me from this minor-prophet book: justice, reconciliation, and grace. Let’s explore these words again here.
Justice
Justice is an attempt to take a wrong, apply appropriate punishment, and try to make it right again.
In the Old Testament story, Jonah was instructed to go share God’s Word with a wicked and perverted society in the great city of Nineveh. He at first ran the opposite direction because he wanted justice for the Ninevites, but followed by two different words: punishment and revenge. He wanted punishment to rain down on their heads and let that evil society get what they deserved. Jonah did not want to see them have a chance at repentance and restoration. His view of justice was based on what he knew they really deserved. He was measuring fairness and justice based on his own hatred for them, all the while forgetting how far God had gone to hold back real justice on his own life. Jonah was forgetting what he personally deserved.
Justice is very real. Punishment for what we deserve is also very real and stares us in the face all the time (Psalm 44:20-22). We often live a life of self-justice (known well as “self-justification”), assuming that real justice somehow doesn’t apply to me. We measure justice with our own measuring ruler, considering how badly others have offended us, without knowing the depth of the offense we have been to the Holy God (1 Peter 3:18). Justice cannot be truly understood without knowing who Jesus is and how very far he has come for me (2 Corinthians 5:21).
Reconciliation
Jonah’s assignment was to warn Ninevah of the doom waiting for them if they persisted down their destructive path. Again, Jonah wanted punishment, while God was seeking reconciliation. Jonah was calling for, and even excited to watch, the punishment administered on the Ninevites—not unlike an angry mob gathering for a hanging in the Old West. Jonah wanted to see revenge fulfilled. Revenge comes out of our arrogant forgetfulness of how far God went to bring his salvation to us (Ephesians 2:12-13). Forgetfulness leads to a sense of personal entitlement and an arrogant belief about how much we deserve. Jonah forgot, much as you and I so easily forget, that the greatest offense is our unholy life against a holy God (Romans 3:23).
This is why reconciliation is when we come equally and bring people to the foot of the cross. We are all equally destitute without the Savior. All men and women of all ages, backgrounds, languages, ethnicities, and economics are equally sinners in need of the Savior Jesus Christ. True equality can only be found at the foot of the cross of Jesus (Romans 5:8). At the foot of the cross is the only place to begin the lasting path to reconciliation (2 Corinthians 5:11-21).
Grace
There, and only there, at the foot of the cross where Jesus died for us, do we find real grace. The cross is where Jesus, the holy Son of God, the one who did not deserve any punishment, willingly gave up his life as a substitute for my sinful life; that is where we find God’s marvelous grace, God’s forgiveness, and God’s full restoration.
As we face these days of chaos in our society—the pandemic of a virus, the pandemic of social upheaval, the pandemic of economic uncertainty—may we recognize that the greatest pandemic of all is a spiritual pandemic. As you wrestle with your own responses to the news of the day and the many messages out there, please remember that when we have found Jesus ourselves, we are appointed by God to be messengers of justice, reconciliation, and grace.
Are we going to behave like Jonah did? Or are we going to bring people to the foot of the cross of Jesus, and there find real reconciliation and God’s amazing grace?
