8.5.24

Last week we saw how Jonah was reluctant to go to Nineveh because of the deep self-righteousness of his own heart. He hated the Ninevites and wanted to see them destroyed, not saved. And so God began a deep work in Jonah’s heart to teach him that he needed the grace of God as much as the Ninevites. He stripped him of his pride and started him on his own path toward spiritual transformation.

So how did this spiritual transformation take place? And how can this kind of spiritual transformation take place in our own lives? This is what we will be looking at this week in chapter 2.

The key to spiritual transformation comes in verses 8-9, where he proclaims that “salvation is of the Lord.” This might seem obvious and elementary, but Jonah clearly didn’t believe that. He probably believed it theologically, but practically, functionally, he lived as if salvation was of his own heart. He truly believed that he was superior to these pagans in Nineveh because of his ethnic and religious heritage. And so God begins to expose to Jonah the ugly self-righteousness that forms the basis of his faith - rather than trusting in God.

This is a lesson we all need to learn - and re-learn - over and over again each day. Salvation is of the Lord. So often we look to our religious performance and find either examples of failure that lead us to self-loathing, or examples of success, that lead us to pride and condescension. And as a result, we look at Christian morality on a continuum of good to bad…religious to irreligious. And our goal is to be more religious…to be more “good”.

But as we’ve seen, religion is not the answer. Religion not only fails to deliver the rescue we need, it actually leads to deeper fears. When the basis of your standing before God is rooted in how you are living, the pressure is ramped up. The fears of failure grow. And any stability before God is gone.

And so God comes along to teach Jonah that salvation is REALLY of the Lord. All of the Lord. Genuine spiritual transformation begins in our hearts, not when we decide to walk the aisle and sign up for Christianity. But it begins when the magnitude of his grace begins to dawn on our heart. The beauty of his grace. The magnitude of his grace. And we come to see that grace isn’t just some ticket to get us into heaven, but it’s the daily melting of the heart that is drawn back over and over again to the amazing love of a God who would pursue us to this degree.

Jonah clearly knew all about this grace. He later tells us that this is why he ran from God. Because he KNEW he was gracious. But that grace had not yet penetrated his cold, self-righteous heart. And so this, then, becomes the key to spiritual transformation: having the beauty and depth and magnitude of God’s grace wash over our hearts all over again - to deeper and deeper levels each day.

Believing the gospel is not a one-time decision that now puts the ball in our court to keep it up. But it’s a continual learning process that melts our hearts over and over again. And it’s a process that daily strips away the pride and self-righteousness that keeps us from rejoicing in and living out of the grace that is ours - that could be ours - if we only believed it and lived as if it were true.