Not all who say

Once again I've heard someone appealing to Matthew 7:21–23 to convince an audience that if their works don't line up with their professions, they're not "truly saved."  I've heard this line of reasoning more than once, and I have to admit I find it puzzling. It makes me scratch my head. After all, the ones Christ rejects in those verses are the very ones who appeal to their works in order to prove they're His (Matthew 7:22). 

Accusing God

I was sitting in the Remembrance meeting one morning, and a man stood up and read Luke 15:1–2, "this man receives sinners and eats with them," he looked up and added, "Thank God He does!"

Here are the Pharisees accusing the Son of God of eating with sinners. That's not the only accusation they make against Him, of course, but it's one that sticks because it's true. They know they can't accuse Him of being one of those sinners: there's nothing in what He says or does to support that accusation. They don't like that He's known for eating and drinking – as opposed to fasting – but they haven't seemed to have gotten traction accusing Him of gluttony or drunkenness (Luke 7:33–35). So the accusation that He receives sinners seems like it might get some traction, because it's demonstrably true.

The last chapter of Jonah is in a similar vein: here's the prophet of God, and he points his finger straight at God and rants, "I knew it! I knew it! I knew I couldn't trust you! You're always forgiving people and showing mercy to them! You're always repenting of the evil you said you'd bring!" (Jonah 4:1–3).

Both of these stories are remarkable in that someone is accusing God of something that He actually did. When I think of someone bringing an accusation against God, I don't jump to the accusation being true. Jonah knew God's character better than most of us do. Odd as it sounds, the Pharisees seem to have understood Christ's character better than the disciples did. 

But what the Pharisees didn't understand, what Jonah might not have understood, and what we so frequently miss is, God's mercy to sinners is our only hope. 

The difference between Jonah, a Pharisee, and the man who stood up and read Luke 15 in the Remembrance is that he thanked God for His mercy. The other two resented it.

 

I have been accused of being a "calvinist," which isn't entirely true, but I suppose it's not entirely untrue either. There are many caricatures that come with a label like that. Some of those are built around more than a germ of truth. But there's a truth lurking in there that I'm not sure some of my friends recognize: my only hope for salvation is that God would act unfairly towards me.

It seems to me that a good working definition of grace might be something like: God acting towards me the way He wants to act, with no regard for what I deserve.

Salvation must be an act of sovereign grace, because it's only possible if God acts unilaterally according to His heart, not according to His estimate of me. So when I bask in what Calvinists call, "unconditional election," it's because I recognize that apart from God acting on His own with absolutely no help from me, there's only condemnation for me.

Hymn #181 in the Believers Hymn Book is a favorite of mine. Consider verse 3,

Preserved by Jesus, when
My feet made haste to hell!
And there should I have gone,
But Thou dost all things well:
Thy love was great, Thy mercy free,
Which from the pit delivered me.

Do we really understand that? Do we really appreciate that we were on our way to hell, and doing everything in our power to get there faster? When I think about grace, this hymn comes to mind. I was doing my best to rush to hell, and the Son of God stepped in and ruined all my efforts. He didn't wait for my permission, He didn't wait until I asked for help: He stepped in and stopped it.

 

So we might consider meditating on Jonah's words. We might want to think about his accusations against God. And while we think about the prophet ranting at God – maybe even jabbing his finger in God's face – we might want to add a "Thank God!" at the end of every line.

Has God really said?

Someone was talking about revival in the context of the current events at Asbury. The person made the statement that they're not preaching repentance like Jonah preached repentance. Regardless of what's going on at Asbury – I'm skeptical – , I'm having trouble understanding how someone can read the book of Jonah and conclude that Jonah preached repentance.

Jonah is a remarkable book both because of what it says and because of what it doesn't say. If you read Jonah in a KJV or Darby Translation or even the ASV, you'll be surprised to find that the only Person who is said to repent in the book of Jonah is God (Jonah 3:9–10, Jonah 4:2). Newer translations (NASB, ESV, NKJV, etc.) use the word "relent" instead.

But the point remains that the text doesn't say that either Jonah or the people of Nineveh repented. It's true that the king of Nineveh commanded all the people to "every one turn from his evil way" (Jonah 3:8), so we might see that as repentance, but Scripture doesn't use that word.

It's even harder to make the case that Jonah preached repentance. Scripture tells us explicitly what Jonah preached – "Yet forty days, and Nineveh shall be overthrown!" (Jonah 3:4, ESV). There's no call to repentance in that, it's only a proclamation of judgment. In fact, it's difficult to put a message of repentance in Jonah's words given in Jonah 3:5–10. The king's words in particular are difficult to reconcile with the notion that Jonah was preaching repentance: he explicitly says they should all turn from their evils ways so that perhaps God might see it and change His mind (Jonah 3:9).  That's not someone who believed a message of repentance, it's someone who believed a message of judgment.

So no, Jonah did not preach repentance.

This wouldn't perhaps be worth comment, except that it's a trend I'm seeing in a whole lot of places: the tendency to appeal to Scripture, while not apparently paying attention to what Scripture actually says. And I think the Jonah example is one of the clearest.

On the whole, I think referring to Jonah with respect to so-called revivals is wise. There is a good deal of value in contrasting the repentance of Nineveh with modern "revivals" that don't seem to involve encounters with the holy God, or with one's own need of the Savior. I think this is a good use of Scripture. 

And I can't miss the irony that so many preachers I have heard expound on how Eve got into trouble by misquoting God's words (Genesis 3:3) do the very same thing. I was commenting to my wife recently, that there's a preacher I have found very helpful; but I have never – never – heard him quote Scripture correctly. Every single time, without fail, he slightly misquotes the verse. 

It is good and right that we should judge ourselves by the word of God. It is only proper that we should appeal to its authority and submit ourselves to it. And it should absolutely be the standard that we use to judge what we see and hear. But when we're not careful to say only the words God has said – when we misquote God – that's not evidence that we hold His words in awe. That's not respect, it's merely trying to put the authority of Scripture on our own ideas.

Of course we don't want to make a man a transgressor for a word. Especially when we have so many Bible translations to use, quoting Scripture gets complicated. 

At the same time, if we're going to claim to be speaking the words God spoke, we need to be sure we're quoting them correctly. And when misquoting Scripture is a habit, not something remarkable, then we need to carefully judge whether we really respect what God has said.

Maybe we need to learn to fear God more.