Stubbornness of God

Excerpt from Tullian Tchividjian post:  The Gospel According to Jonah

On Monday, my friend Collin Hansen (editorial director for The Gospel Coalition) posted an interview he did with me on the gospel according to Jonah.  He writes, “We’re accustomed to describing the book of Jonah as that book about the guy who survived three days in a big fish. What if we began to understand it as a remarkable testimony to God’s extravagant, persevering grace, supremely demonstrated in the gospel of Jesus Christ?”

Those are the questions I seek to answer in my book Surprised By Grace: God’s Relentless Pursuit of Rebels. As part of The Gospel Coalition’s commitment to Preaching Christ in the Old Testament, Collin asked me questions on how to see the gospel in the story of Jonah.

Why do you say Jonah is one of the best books for helping us get a better grip on the gospel? 

 

Surprised by Grace started out as a series of sermons on Jonah that I preached during the hardest year of my life. Preparing those sermons and preaching them proved to be a functional lifeline for me, not because of things I learned about Jonah (everything we learn about Jonah we learn by way of negative example), but because of things I learned about God’s amazing, sustaining, pursuing grace.

 

I learned that God’s capacity to clean things up is infinitely greater than our human capacity to mess things up. I learned about the “stubbornness” of God to accomplish his will, regardless of how hard we may try and thwart it. In fact, as I reflect on that painful season of my life now, I can honestly say that I am genuinely thankful for all the ache I experienced. For it was during this trying time that God helped me recognize, through the story of Jonah, the practical relevance of the gospel—that everything I need and long for, in Christ, I already possess.

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