The Lord spoke to Jonah the prophet, directing him to go to Nineveh to “cry against it”. It is described as a “great city”, but one that was wicked. But Jonah had a mind of his own which he went on to exercise, with a wilful independence of the authority of the great God who truly exists, the God whom he professed to fear. Jonah did have a sincere respect for His Creator and for His commandments, however imperfect that obedience was. Instead of making his way toward Nineveh, he set off in the opposite direction, boarding a ship for Tarshish, possibly Spain – which meant that he was going “from the presence of the Lord” (Jnh 1:3). Jonah’s progress was impeded by a severe storm “sent out” by the Lord, which led to the wilful passenger being cast overboard at his own suggestion; he knew that his disobedience was the cause of the storm. But the Lord “prepared a great fish to swallow up Jonah”, and he spent three days inside the fish.
From there, in spite of the utter unlikelihood of ever seeing dry land again, Jonah prayed. No matter how far away from God he felt, he said believably: “I will look again toward Thy holy temple”, where sacrifices were offered for sinners. In particular, the morning and evening sacrifices were for all Israel, disobedient Jonah among them. Thus he could hold on to a hope of being delivered, and accordingly he stated in his prayer: “Salvation is of the Lord” (Jnh 2:9). He heard Jonah’s prayer, for the fish vomited Jonah out onto dry land.
Jonah was absolutely right: deliverance from perishing inside the fish was the Lord’s to give. And this is true of salvation from the power and guilt of sin, and in particular deliverance from perishing in a lost eternity; it is entirely the Lord’s. The whole work of saving sinners is the Lord’s; it is He who must save, or else they will perish.
The Psalmist makes it plain: no one “can by any means redeem his brother” (Ps 49:7); the ransom required in order to forgiveness is far too great for any human being to pay; it is altogether beyond their power. God demands the payment of “the uttermost farthing” (Mt 5:26) if the sinner is to escape from hell; the whole of the infinite debt that sinners owe to God because of their
sins must be paid off before the sinner may go free. This is clearly beyond the power of sinners; none of them can begin to deliver themselves from the wrath to come. And when sinners go down to a lost eternity, they continue to sin; they can never begin to do God’s will sincerely, and so they are continually adding to the debt that they owe to Him. If they are to be delivered, God must provide the ransom; only He can provide a salvation for them, and that deliverance is only to be obtained in this life.
Paul emphasises, “By the deeds of the law there shall no flesh be justified in His sight” (Rom 3:20). No matter how well people might seem to keep the law of God, they cannot keep it perfectly – and that is God’s standard. When he was rejecting Jesus of Nazareth as the Messiah, Paul no doubt impressed his fellow Pharisees with his keeping of the law; but if he had remembered this summary of God’s law, “Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thine heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy might” (Deut 6:5), he would surely have come to a more realistic view of his obedience to God than the view he actually held. He needed to learn, as David did: “If Thou, Lord, shouldest mark iniquities, O Lord, who shall stand?” (Ps 130:3).
In his commentary on the Psalms, J A Alexander points out that “to stand is to stand one’s ground, maintain one’s innocence, and perhaps in this case, to endure one’s sentence”. So if God was to note David’s sin, or the sins of any individual, with a view to inflicting on them the punishment they deserve, they could not maintain their innocence or endure the sentence that the righteous Judge has passed against them. If the sinner is to be treated as innocent – in other words, if this sinner is to be justified – it is God who must justify; it is God who must do all that is necessary so that He can be righteous when He justifies the ungodly.
Just as salvation in general is the Lord’s, so He must provide this particular aspect of salvation. Which is why He sent His only-begotten Son into the world – to suffer fully, on behalf of those who will believe on His Son, the punishment that must otherwise be inflicted on them; and also to keep the whole law perfectly in their place. Thus all their sins can be forgiven and they can be accounted righteous – treated as if they had never sinned. Thus they can be justified. It is God who justifies, no one else.
We not only need forgiveness; we need to be purified. No one can be received into heaven unless he or she is perfect. Yet we cannot change our nature; that is altogether beyond our powers; it is God’s work; the Holy Spirit must transform the sinner. Paul was clear that it is “not by works of righteousness which we have done, but according to His mercy He saved us, by the washing of regeneration, and renewing of the Holy Ghost” (Tts 3:5).
There must be good works in the one who is saved, says Matthew Henry’s
Commentary on this verse, “but not among the causes of His salvation; they are the way to the kingdom, not the meriting price of it; all is upon the principle of undeserved favour and mercy from first to last”. It is God the Spirit who applies the benefits of salvation to the soul; it is He who must create a new heart, a clean heart, in regeneration; it is He who must put a new principle of holiness in the soul – so that there is the beginning of a holy life. And by the Holy Spirit’s continuing gracious work, that holiness continues and becomes stronger, until at last the soul is made perfect in holiness when it is separated from the body and passes into the eternal blessedness of heaven, where there is no sin – where there is no possibility of ever sinning again.
Matthew Henry’s Commentary further describes the results of the Spirit’s work: “It is the same man, but with other dispositions and habits; evil ones are done away, as to the prevalency of them at present; and all remains of them in due time will be so, when the work shall be perfected in heaven. A new prevailing principle of grace and holiness is wrought, which inclines and sways and governs and makes the man a new man, a new creature, having new thoughts, desires and affections, a new and holy turn of life and actions.” All this work of renewal is the Lord’s to give; to Him we must look, not only for its beginning, but also that it may be brought to a conclusion.
We must also remember that we are spiritually ignorant. How many people, when God has begun to deal with their souls, have realised that they do not know how to obtain deliverance! Bildad was right to acknowledge, “We are but of yesterday, and know nothing” (Job 8:9); we too should confess this in relation to the things of the soul. If we are to be saved, we need a revelation. And that is what we have in Scripture, where God gives us all the instruction we require for time and for eternity. But we need something further; we need to have our souls enlightened through the Holy Spirit applying the truths of Scripture to us. We need to learn, not merely intellectually, what God has revealed about sin and its consequences, and about the way of salvation through Jesus Christ. We need the Holy Spirit to work in our hearts – to make us able and willing to flee from sin and to look to Christ Jesus, as He calls, “Look unto Me, and be ye saved, all the ends of the earth: for I am God, and there is none else” (Is 45:22).
It was obvious to Jonah that deliverance from perishing inside the great fish was God’s to give; no other power could avail. We need to learn that salvation from sin, and every part of that work, is in God’s power alone. May we then cry to Him that, in His infinite mercy, He would begin His work of salvation in our souls; or if that work has begun, that He would continue it “until the day of Jesus Christ”! How great is God’s goodness that makes ignorant, guilty rebels into holy beings who know the way to heaven!