Good story-writing allows readers to see what the author didn’t fully describe because he has helped them imagine. In narrative writing the writer says what he sees and gets on with the story.1 God is the ultimate story teller. “Not only are there narratives in the Bible,” but also “the Bible itself is overall best described as a narrative.”2 One reason God tells stories is so that we can find ourselves in the story wrestling with the same themes as the characters. Because Jonah’s story involves us we mustn’t tune out. Because the story is all about Jesus we mustn’t lose heart.

It isn’t hard to find yourself on the deck of that boat bound from Joppa to Tarshish. You can see the terror in the eyes of the sailors as they gradually come to understand what is really happening. A prophet of the only powerful God tried to defy his will. God had thrown a great storm at the getaway ship; he’s arresting his runaway prophet. You can hear the constant thrum of the wind and the crashing of waves. The ships planks scream as if being tortured. In the midst of the chaos the sailors grasp for a way out: Jonah might know how his God could be pacified. They ask him. But they don’t like his advice: “Pick me up and hurl me into the sea” (1:12, English Standard Version). Instead they fight to get back to shore.3 Eventually, they realize that Jonah had told the truth: his God is the “God of heaven who had made the sea and the dry land” (1:9). In fighting against the sea they were fighting against its maker. It would be a losing battle. At last, weary and worried, they picked up Jonah and cast him into the sea. The result is startling; the storm vanished. Any hint of coincidence is out of the question. The violent storm had begun suddenly and had been growing steadily worse, as if deliberately responding to the actions of the crew. Suddenly it was calm. Jonah had sown the whirlwind in his flight from God. But God had prevailed.

By the end of this chapter some resolution has been achieved. Jonah is no longer heading in the wrong direction. The storm is gone. The sailors have met the Lord. But we can’t close the book. We’ve been hooked by the story. We are no longer merely studying Jonah. We are studying ourselves. What does this leg of our journey teach us?

Take Responsibility for Your Sin

Jonah’s mea culpa—his admission of error—is refreshing: “It is because of me that this great tempest has come upon you” (Jon. 1:12). It sounds, at first, like the crucified thief at Jesus’ side: We are under condemnation “justly, for we are receiving the due reward of our deeds” (Luke 23:41).

Those who are confident of God’s love, awestruck by Jesus’ grace, and comforted by the Spirit’s presence aren’t afraid to own their sin. If there is “now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus” (Rom. 8:1), admissions of guilt are not condemning; they are freeing. Our flesh tempts us to find security in being right, or even imagining that we are right. The Spirit urges us to find security in Christ even when we are wrong.

The church and the world need more of this. Imagine if husbands and wives, parents and children, church leaders and members were eager and willing to admit faults. Wouldn’t such vulnerable openness help us practice the discipline of forgiveness, willingly freeing the consciences of guilty parties? Wouldn’t such defenseless humility help us come to God’s throne of grace together? Communities of grace invite the transparency of confession and are eager to offer the gift of forgiveness. Jonah helps us take responsibility for our sin. But his own admission raises questions.

Does Jonah genuinely repent? Or is it possible that he only goes half way? Wouldn’t true repentance accept consequences while expecting mercy? I wonder if Jonah models for us the sort of guiltiness and self-loathing that refuses to plead God’s kindness, seek God’s forgiveness, and yearn for God’s smile. Jonah might realize that his sin has brought about this storm. He knows from Scripture that violations of God’s justice invite retribution. The sinner falls into the pit he has dug; trouble shall return upon his own head (Ps. 7:15–16). Jonah deserves death for opposing God. But isn’t God also merciful? Isn’t there a place for repentance? Only if the sinner does not turn back does God bend his bow and make it ready (Ps. 7:12). Is Jonah already so angry at God that he would rather die than humble himself? Jonah seems to still be resisting God, as if to say, “I would rather be dead than go to Nineveh. Just throw me overboard!”?4 Calvin is right. “It is uncertain whether [Jonah] . . . entertained a hope of deliverance, that is, whether he confidently relied at this time on the grace of God.”5

Acknowledging guilt is a vital first step of repentance. But it is not the same as repentance. There is a kind of fatalistic, pessimistic, self-deprecating admission of faults that perversely promotes a self-sufficiency that refuses to rest in the forgiveness of God and others. To say “I was wrong” keeps me in control. To say, “I was wrong. I’m sorry I have caused you pain. Please forgive me and with God’s help refuse to hold my sin against me” puts me at another’s mercy. That scares us. But it also shows that we are truly taking responsibility for our sin, accepting the consequences, and actively seeking restoration.

Don’t Rest in a Partial Conversion

It isn’t clear whether the sailors truly converted. Commentators differ on this. Their disagreement seems to reinforce why Scripture doesn’t definitively answer this question: we don’t need to know. In fact, the story may deliberately inject suspense on this question to help us process our own relationship with God.

Perhaps we see encouraging signs that might initially suggest that the heathen sailors had fully converted.

• The sailors feared God (Jon. 1:16). That’s good. But there are different ways of fearing God. There is the child-like reverence of true believers (e.g., Ps. 34:9–10). And there is a “servile fear” of the Lord which recognizes God as sovereign but not as Father.6 The devils tremble but are unsaved (James 2:19).

• The sailors practiced morality. These heathens demonstrate an amazing respect for the image of God in man. Jonah told them to cast him overboard. They had regard for his life and, in their own words, his “innocent blood” (v. 14). Jonah had less interest in the scores of lost Ninevites. But even unbelievers can practice lawful morality (Rom. 2:12–16).

• The sailors cried out to the Lord, the covenant-keeping God. Their language changes from god (Jon. 1:5) to God; they invoke the covenant name by which God revealed himself as the rescuer of his people (v. 14; Ex. 3:15). But isn’t divine name dropping common among unconverted but culturally religious people?

• They made sacrifices in God’s name. They were truly grateful for surviving the storm. But the abundance of sacrifices is no sure sign of true faith (Isa. 1:10–15). “The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit; a broken and contrite heart” (Ps. 51:17).

• They took vows. They made religious commitments. They practiced new spiritual rituals. But we aren’t told if these new vows supplanted or merely supplemented their previous religious commitments.

We don’t know whether these men ever progressed in the practice of true godliness. Perhaps they did. We hope they did! But the text comes short of assuring us that they were “suddenly so changed as to devote themselves to the true God,” whether theirs were “such real and thorough conversion[s] of the soul as changed them into new men.”7 Isn’t it possible to use the name of the true God, to fear him, perform external righteousness, offer sacrifices in his name, and make vows, insincerely? In fact, partial, external conversions can be dangerous. Charles Spurgeon sees in the strenuous efforts of the sailors to get to shore a picture of self-reliant religion. “There must be faith in Jesus, or else you will row hard . . . and you will never bring the ship to land.” “Moral reforms are excellent in themselves, but they are dangerous if we rest in them.”8

While powerful impressions of God can be great gifts, religious feelings— unstable as they can be—cannot provide sustainable energy for a renewed life. But they do provide us with opportunities to repent of our sins and trust in Christ.

Trust in the Sacrificial Work of Christ

Jonah tried to quit his calling as a prophet. When the sailors asked his occupation (Jon. 1:8) he didn’t answer. He considered himself unemployed. In his mind he used to be a prophet. But God isn’t finished with him. Like unwitting Caiaphas in the New Testament Jonah prophesied that it would be better for one man to die for the people and not that all the ship’s company should perish (John 11:50–51). “Pick me up and hurl me into the sea; then the sea will quiet down for you, for I know it is because of me that this great tempest has come upon you.” (Jon. 1:12). The sailors are repulsed by the idea; vicarious atonement is scandalous. Why should some people live at the expense of another’s death?

Jonah is a reluctant, ambivalent, unknowing type of Christ. Even their differences accentuate the wonder of the gospel. Jonah offered himself as a guilty sacrifice on behalf of innocent sailors. Jesus offered himself as an innocent sacrifice on behalf of guilty sinners. Jonah’s experience tells the story of everyone for whom Christ was plunged under the waves of God’s wrath. When the water covered Jonah “the sea ceased from its raging” (Jon. 1:15). When the darkness of Calvary covered Jesus he “hushed the law’s loud thunder,” he “quenched Mount Sinai’s flames.” As Jesus calmed the stormy Sea of Galilee so he calmed the curse of the law against elect sinners. The sailors knew that the price had been paid. They could go home in peace. Likewise, when we trust in Jesus “justice smiles and asks no more.”9 “It is a blessed thing for a man to know that he cannot be punished; that heaven and earth may shake, but he cannot be punished for his sins . . . Christ has paid the debt of his people to the last jot and tittle, and received the divine receipt; and unless God can be so unjust as to demand twice payment for one debt, no soul for whom Jesus died can ever be cast into hell.”10

It doesn’t seem like Jonah yet grasped what his “death” at sea symbolized. When he was raised from his watery grave Jonah should have run all the way to Nineveh, shouting a message of salvation. I’ve been raised from the dead! God will do the same for you. Just admit that you deserve to die because of your sin, trust in his righteousness, and commit to love him as he has loved you.

He didn’t.

But we, on the other side of the cross and of Pentecost, can know what the prophets could only study (1 Peter 1:10–12). Christ has suffered for us so that we would experience glory with him. In the meantime we can truly practice what the crew of Jonah’s boat crudely modeled. We can call on his name confident of his gracious response. We can find hope in his rich mercy. We can offer ourselves as living sacrifices. And we can pay our vow to make broadly known his matchless name.

1. Stephen King, On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft (New York: Scribner, 2010), 180.

2. Henry Vander Goot, Interpreting the Bible in Theology and the Church (New York: The Edwin Mellen Press, 1984), 22.

3. That the men tried to row back to shore might indicate that either the ship had not traveled far from Joppa or that they had maintained a course along the coast.

4. James Montgomery Boice, Can You Run Away from God? (Wheaton, IL: SP Publications, 1977), 38.

5. John Calvin, Commentaries on the Twelve Minor Prophets, vol. 3 (Grand Rapids: Baker Books, 1989), 55.

6. Calvin, Commentaries, 64. It is true that the sailors feared God and offered vows after they were delivered. Boice says, “If the mariners had made their vows before their deliverance, I would not be so impressed. If they had made their vows first, theirs may have been a foxhole conversion.” Boice, Can You Run, 41. But even a genuine terror of God is not the same as saving trust.

7. See Calvin, Commentaries, 65.

8. Charles Spurgeon, Spurgeon’s Sermons, vol. 8, Labor in Vain (Grand Rapids: Baker Book House, 1987), 340, 37.

9. Isaac Newton, “Let Us Love and Sing and Wonder,” in Trinity Psalter Hymnal (Willow Grove, PA: Trinity Psalter Hymnal Joint Venture, 2018), 286.

10. Spurgeon, Labor in Vain, 350.

William Boekestein is the pastor of Immanuel Fellowship Reformed Church in Kalamazoo, MI.