Excerpt from Tim Keller, The Gospel and the Supremacy of Christ in a Postmodern World in The Supremacy of Christ in a Postmodern World, John Piper and Justin Taylor, general editors.
"When God called Jonah to go to Nineveh the first time, Jonah ran in the other direction. Why? The reader assumes it was just fear, but chapter 4 reveals that there was also a lot of hostility in Jonah toward the Assyrians and Ninevites. I believe the reason he did not have pity on them was that he did not sufficiently realize that he was nothing but a sinner saved by sheer grace. So he ran away from God -- and you know the rest of the story. He was cast into the deep and saved by God from drowning by being swallowed by a great fish. In the second chapter we see Jonah praying, and his prayer ends with the phrase "Salvation is of the Lord!" (2:9). My teacher Ed Clowney used to say that this was the central verse of the Bible. It is an expression of the gospel. Salvation is from and of the Lord and no one else. Period."
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