Political discourse today is increasingly marked more by bitter conflict than by consensus. Evangelicals are often at the forefront of these contests. They confront social challenges on issues like abortion, gender, and immigration that seem to threaten biblical values. But in doing so, Christian leaders walk a precarious line between addressing society’s errors and succumbing to its acrimony.
Preachers especially, as much as ever, need to cultivate a prophetic voice with a prophetic heart—a heart of compassion. One important resource for that formation is the Book of Jonah.
Contrary to popular stereotype, Jonah is much more than a children’s story. Jonah is a prophet sent to confront injustice, but he lacks the compassion God wants from him. Through a series of lessons, God teaches Jonah—and he teaches us as we attend to Jonah’s story—the compassion God requires.
The story of Jonah offers timely guidance for proclaimers today to overcome their own feelings of bitterness and to speak truth with love.
At the beginning of the book, God calls Jonah to go to Nineveh, but Jonah despises the Ninevites and refuses. Importantly, Jonah’s anger toward Nineveh is justified. It was a royal city of the Assyrian Empire, which was committing atrocities across the ancient world. The boundaries of the expanding empire had not yet reached Israel, but they were steadily approaching. Furthermore, for several generations already, Israel had been paying tribute to Assyria.
The oppressive tributes and the fearful conquest drawing near gives Jonah good reasons to desire Nineveh’s fall. And God himself is angry at Nineveh: “Arise, go to Nineveh, that great city,” God tells Jonah, “and call out against it, for their evil has come up before me” (1:2, ESV throughout).
God does not dispute Jonah’s anger. He shares it. The Assyrians are cruel, and Israel’s fears are justified. In the same way, believers today often feel anger at cultural evils. Such indignation has its place.
However, the marvel of God’s compassion is that, unlike ours, it is not quenched by anger. And God calls us, like Jonah, to face society’s evils with an indignation that is both led by and ready to yield to compassion.
As the book continues, God sends two experiences to cultivate compassion in Jonah’s heart. In the first, Jonah faces his own deserved judgment and rediscovers God’s compassion toward himself.
Upon being commanded to go to Ninevah, the prophet instead boards a ship for Tarshish to “flee from the presence of the Lord” (v. 3). But God sends a storm to stop the ship, threatening its destruction. The very justice Jonah wishes upon Nineveh falls upon himself. And Jonah knows he deserves it. “I know that it is because of me that this great tempest has come upon you,” he confesses to the sailors (v. 12).
Jonah persuades the sailors to throw him overboard. And that is where the surprise of God’s compassion appears. Cast into the sea, Jonah is swallowed by a great fish. Initially, that fish seems to seal Jonah’s demise, but then it spits him out—safe and whole—back on dry ground.
Jonah’s heart is deeply moved to have escaped death. “The waters closed in over me to take my life,” he recalls. “Yet you brought up my life from the pit, O Lord my God” (2:5–6).
That same awareness of God’s love is essential for proclaiming his Word today. We may warn of judgment, but we are not ministers of judgment. We are ministers of the gospel by which we ourselves are loved.
After the lesson at sea, Jonah obeys God and goes to Nineveh. He has rediscovered God’s love for him and goes out of obedience to the Lord. But Jonah still feels no concern for Nineveh. He has more to learn.
Upon arrival in Nineveh, the prophet preaches God’s judgment. Then he retreats outside the city to watch heaven’s wrath destroy it. He wants to see Nineveh burn. But God cancels Nineveh’s judgment; the people abandon their evil ways, so God relents. Now Jonah is angry with God for failing to follow through.
In that setting, Jonah’s second lesson begins. This next lesson expands Jonah’s renewed awareness of God’s love for himself to include compassion for Ninevites too.
God raises up a large, leafy plant to shelter Jonah from the sun. Jonah is “exceedingly glad” for the plant (4:6). Then God sends a tiny worm to eat its stalk. The plant quickly withers, and Jonah is left exposed to the desert sun. He is furious.
God chastens Jonah for showing care (hus) for the plant but failing to care (hus) for thousands in Nineveh, including children and animals (4:9–11). That Hebrew word hus is the capstone term for the book. It is an emotional word denoting the inner turmoil that leads to heartfelt compassion. God wants his prophets to genuinely care, with real feeling, about others—even Ninevites.
Jonah has no rebuttal. God’s rebuke silences him. His desert lesson shows that God wants his messengers, today as then, to condemn injustice but always with heartfelt love.
But there is more to these lessons. Further driving home this calling to love, there is another, surprising layer to Jonah’s experiences at sea and in the desert.
Toward the beginning of the book, when Jonah retreats to the ship’s hold during the storm, the crew works to save the ship from sinking—and they pray.
At first, each sailor cries out to his own god, but their own gods don’t respond. So they rouse Jonah. “Arise, call out to your god!” the ship’s captain urges. “Perhaps [your] god will give a thought to us, that we may not perish” (1:6).
Here is a great irony: The sailor calls the prophet to pray. And he expects that Jonah’s God is the one who will care, who “will give a thought to us.” These sailors show more urgency in prayer, more concern for life, and more awareness of God’s compassion than the prophet himself!
A similar twist emerges in the Nineveh episode of chapter 3. Jonah barely starts preaching when Nineveh’s ruler humbles himself. He “arose from his throne, removed his robe, covered himself with sackcloth, and sat in ashes.” Then he calls the city to repentance. “Who knows?” the king declares. “God may turn and relent and turn from his fierce anger, so that we may not perish” (vv. 6–9).
Once again, it is the Gentile leader who comprehends heaven’s compassion. The Ninevite king responds with humility and public concern better than the prophet.
These may be the most convicting features of the story. When God’s people let bitterness quench their compassion, he awakens that compassion in worldly elites—putting his own people to shame. In this way, God humbles and transforms his own followers.
Is God doing this same work today? Christians should be known for love—welcoming immigrants (Lev. 19:33–34; Heb. 13:2); promoting relief for the poor, both personally and as a society (Lev. 25; Isa. 1:17; Matt. 25:35); and caring for creation (Gen. 1:28; 2:15). Yet too often, it is atheistic scientists, politicians, and celebrities who champion these causes, while evangelicals have become known for many things besides love.
One of Jonah’s key lessons is this: While God sends his church to confront society’s evils, he also uses the world to expose our failures. Wise prophets learn even from their opponents, and that humility fuels a heart of compassion.
The word evangelical once carried a reputation for social good—leading in the fight against slavery, caring for the poor, and building hospitals and schools. Today, it is more often tied to political tactics and culture-war battles than to Christlike love. The Book of Jonah offers a needed corrective.
Christians must not abandon their prophetic voice. But unless the church recovers the prophet’s heart—genuine hus, real compassion for neighbor and enemy alike—our words will be hollow.
Jonah’s preaching shook Nineveh, but the greater miracle was the change in Jonah himself. That same transformation is what the church needs today. If we want our voice to be heard, our love must first be seen.
Michael LeFebvre is a Presbyterian minister, a senior fellow with the Center for Pastor Theologians, and author of a devotional study of the Book of Jonah from which this article is adapted, Loving the Other: Jonah’s Contempt Meets God’s Compassion.
