Jonah Principle

Excerpt from The Gospel and Supremacy of Christ by Tim Keller in The Supremacy of Christ in a Postmodern World, John Piper and Justin Taylor, General Editors.

"In Sinclair Ferguson's little book on Jonah he comments on the broken, humbled prophet who hears the second call to Nineveh and answers it. He says:

God intends to bring life out of death. We may well think of this as the principle behind all evangelism. Indeed we may even call it the Jonah principle, as Jesus seems to have done. ... [I]t is out of Christ's weakness that the sufficiency of his saving power will be born. ... [So] fruitful evangelism is a result of this death-producing principle. It is when we come to share spiritually -- and on occasions physically -- in Christ's death (cf. Phil. 3:10) that his power is demonstrated in our weakness and others are drawn to him. This is exactly what was happening to Jonah.