Jonah 3:10 (NKJV)
Then God saw their works, that they turned from their evil way; and God relented from the disaster that He had said He would bring upon them, and He did not do it.
How can this happen? Jonah’s prophecy was, “Yet forty days, and Nineveh shall be overthrown!” He definitely did not say, “If you don’t repent, Nineveh shall be overthrown!” There was no hint that the coming disaster was conditional. What’s going on?
The Hebrew in this passage doesn’t translate well. There are idioms involved that are specific to prophecy. Prophecies like this are not irrevocable. Irrevocable ones use terms like, “I swear by Myself.” We see the same linguistic idioms when Nathan called out David for his sin with Bathsheba.
So David said to Nathan, “I have sinned against the LORD.”
And Nathan said to David, “The LORD also has put away your sin; you shall not die. However, because by this deed you have given great occasion to the enemies of the LORD to blaspheme, the child also who is born to you shall surely die.”
Then Nathan departed to his house. And the LORD struck the child that Uriah’s wife bore to David, and it became ill. David therefore pleaded with God for the child, and David fasted and went in and lay all night on the ground. — 2 Samuel 12:13–16 (NKJV)
David’s fasting and praying for his son would have been silly if Nathan’s prophecy was irrevocable. Nathan even used the word “surely,” but that’s about certainty of meaning, not of future events.
Jonah knew that his prophecy didn’t assure Nineveh’s overthrow. Otherwise, Jonah wouldn’t have run away from delivering it.
God’s mercy isn’t just infinite; it’s complicated. That’s grace.
We tend to think of grace in terms of how it affects us. What about how it affects Him? Why does grace even exist? What is its purpose? It must be to glorify God, but how?
God created a universe of cause and effect. You push something to the left; it moves left. You hammer on a nail; it moves down. Cause and effect are part of the structure of reality.
The same applies to justice. Like cause and effect, moral choices have consequences. This can get distorted by sin, but the concept remains. This, too, is part of the structure of God’s magnificent creation.
But God’s mercy sits atop justice. By grace we are saved, while justice is maintained.
Grace gloriously displays God’s character, like a beautiful melody dancing on top of the accompaniment.
