Salvation Belongs to the Lord
My wife and I love discounts. The only thing better than getting one item at a discount is getting it in bulk. So, a few years ago, we had a Costco rewards check we were excited to use. When my wife tried to pay using the check though, she was unable to redeem the savings. The check had my name on it so she could not use it. The savings belonged to me technically.
I love the book of Jonah for it shows how God is always teaching Jonah. His classroom is in the belly of a fish, beneath the shade of a plant, and under a scorching sun. In every place, Jonah learns important lessons about himself and about God. The most important lesson being that salvation belongs to the Lord. His name is on the check. He owns the right to cash it in.
“No one is immune to brushing past the dust covered diamond of salvation.”
Salvation is a word often buried under the dust of Christian jargon. People have fallen asleep in the front row, only a few feet from me, while I preach on salvation. I was tempted to lash out at how indifferent they were to this great truth, but then I remembered how many times I’ve checked sports scores or social media during similar sermons. No one is immune to brushing past the dust covered diamond of salvation.
Saved by God from God
The story of the prophet Jonah teaches us that salvation belongs to the Lord. God says as much at the end of the book (4:10–11), and Jonah says so in the fish’s belly (2:9). Like Adam in the garden, when Jonah sins, he tries to hide. He boards a boat to “flee from the presence of the Lord.” While on the boat, however, he learns there is no running from the Lord.
God has strong feelings about sin. He doesn’t treat it lightly; he hurls a storm at Jonah (1:4). Jonah sees that he needs rescuing, but not from the storm. He needs to be rescued from God. There is nowhere he can run to and no one who can bargain with God for his life. So how can he be rescued? God has to do it. Only God can appoint a fish to swallow him (1:17) and then bring up his “life from the pit” (2:6).
Most people fight against the idea that they need God to rescue them. We live in a culture where there is a technique for fixing just about anything. You can find books and TED talks about losing weight, rehabbing a house, or managing anger. Whatever the issue, our culture says there is a technique to fix it—and if not, then just create one. Even the sailors on the boat row against the storm rather than submit to God’s way of salvation (1:13).
“As hard as we try, we cannot cash in the check for salvation written in our own strength”
Yet, as hard as we try, we cannot cash in the check for salvation written in our own strength. All their rowing could not get the sailors out of the storm. There is no technique to solve the problem. Only God can save us from God. We receive the riches of salvation when we submit to God’s savior. Salvation belongs to the Lord.
Saved by God to God
Salvation belonging to God shows us only he can save and—more than that—it shows all the saved belong to him. This reality not only speaks to what we are saved from, but also to what we are saved for. It speaks of the restoration of our relationship with God. Inside the fish, Jonah says, “but I with the voice of thanksgiving will sacrifice to you; what I have vowed I will pay” (2:9). God is not forcing obedience from Jonah. He is moving Jonah to trust him. He is disciplining him, like a father to a son, to win his heart. Salvation belongs to the Lord because the people he saves are his cherished children. He rescues them from his wrath and moves their hearts to trust and obey him.
After almost a decade in youth ministry, I am familiar with all the statistics about teens abandoning their faith after high school. When my best friend in high school became one of those teens, my heart broke. He was a great friend who challenged and encouraged my faith. When I came home from a summer job, he took me to dinner to tell me he was walking away from Jesus. I felt as though my brother had died. The realization was devastating.
Initially, I prayed long and hard for him. But, if I’m honest, after a while I gave up. As much as I prayed for him and as much as people tried to convince him otherwise, he was not coming back. It felt hopeless to believe anything else, so I stopped praying.
Meditating on the truth that salvation belongs to the Lord, however, gave my prayers new life. As long as salvation belongs to the Lord my friend has hope! My prayers may seem hopeless, but things are not always what they seem. All these years later, it is still heartbreaking to pray for my friend, but trusting that salvation belongs to God, I can pray for him with hope.
A Greater Salvation
The book of Jonah reveals that only God can save us, but does not answer how he saves us. What could settle the storm of God’s wrath against sinners? The best teachers I have had did not give me all the answers. Instead they helped me wrestle with tough questions, guiding me to discovering the answer for myself. God does that in Jonah. He gives us a question—how can we be saved?—and guides us on a path to discovering where the answer lies.
Jonah is a sign pointing to Jesus. When a crowd demands he give a sign to defend himself, Jesus says, “An evil and adulterous generation seeks for a sign, but no sign will be given to it except the sign of the prophet Jonah. For just as Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of the great fish, so will the Son of Man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth” (Matt. 12:39–40). The story of Jonah being tossed into the sea is a picture of what Jesus will do in his death and resurrection. God rescuing the sailors through Jonah being tossed into the sea points forward to God rescuing sinners through Jesus’s death and resurrection.
Jesus gives himself as a sacrifice to bear the wrath of God aimed at sinners. Rather than let us get wrecked in the storm of God’s wrath, Jesus, the Son of God, throws himself to the storm on our behalf. His death quiets the waters that should rage against us. We can bathe in the sunshine of God’s mercy because Jesus takes the storm.
“God’s rescue of us from him and to him is through Jesus.”
God’s rescue of us from him and to him, through Jesus, is captured in the word atonement. In the book Concise Theology, J. I. Packer says, “Atonement means making amends, blotting out the offense, and giving satisfaction for wrong done; thus reconciling to oneself the alienated other and restoring the disrupted relationship” (134). When we understand it, atonement opens our eyes to behold in awe what Jesus has done for us. What a savior! What salvation!
How can we bury something so precious as salvation under the dust of jargon? God teaches Jonah a lesson he will never forget. Salvation, all the glory of being rescued by God—through Jesus’s atoning sacrifice and rescued to God—is a gift he graciously gives. The check is in his name and the rewards come to us. Let us never look at salvation as a dusty old relic but as a diamond to be displayed and treasured!
Scott Hurst serves as the Student Ministry Director at Morningstar Christian Fellowship in Toronto. You can usually find him reading, watching superhero movies, playing silly games with his kids, and eating good food with his wife.