And Jonah began to enter into the city a day’s
journey, and he cried, and said, Yet forty days, and Nineveh shall be
overthrown. So the people of Nineveh believed God, and proclaimed a fast,
and put on sackcloth, from the greatest of them even to the least of them. For
word came unto the king of Nineveh, and he arose from his throne, and he laid
his robe from him, and covered him with sackcloth, and sat in ashes. And he
caused it to be proclaimed and published through Nineveh by the decree of the
king and his nobles, saying, Let neither man nor beast, herd nor flock, taste
any thing: let them not feed, nor drink water: But let man and beast be covered
with sackcloth, and cry mightily unto God: yea, let them turn every one from
his evil way, and from the violence that is in their hands. Who can tell if God
will turn and repent, and turn away from his fierce anger, that we perish not?
(Jonah 3:4-9).
COMMON GRACE
ARGUMENT:
The case of Nineveh is an example of the
restraining power of God’s grace in the hearts of the unregenerate—not of His saving
grace. We see religious feelings (they “believed God”) and convictions which so
closely resemble the spiritual experiences of the true believer (they forsook
their gross sins of which the Lord had said that they “came up before Him”
(1:2); they repented of their deeds of violence, of their immorality and of all
their other gross sins. How can we explain the trembling of these unregenerate
before the Word of God, their temporary humbling and sorrow for their sin,
except for a gracious operation of the Holy Spirit?
It may be suggested that these people were
actually regenerate. However: (1) we know of no Bible-scholar who has taught
this, (2) we do not read that the Ninevites cast away their idols to serve only
the God of Israel, (3) we do not read that the people of Nineveh believed “in”
God, but merely that they believed God, (4) we do not read that they became
defenders of Jehovah’s people, Israel, and (5) it may have been national
repentance, but nations or masses never turn to God in true saving faith.
(I)
Prof. David J. Engelsma
[With regards to] Jonah and Nineveh, specifically
whether the history of the prophet and the great heathen city do not prove a
common grace of God, that is, a non-saving grace of God toward the heathen in
the Old Testament.
First, I think that a strong case could be made for
the explanation that the repentance of Nineveh and the sparing of the city
were, in fact, a marvelous saving work of God by His (special) saving
grace in Jesus Christ in the OT. Then it would have been a powerful
prophecy in the deed of the saving of the Gentiles when Israel (in the time of
Jonah) was apostate. Jesus Himself explained Jonah's being in the belly
of the great fish as prophetic of Jesus death and burial (Matthew 12 and Luke
11.) In these passages He declares that Nineveh repented at the preaching
of Jonah, as Israel refused to repent. This explanation may not quickly
be dismissed. It is not absurd that God would have worked a clear sign of
the coming salvation of the Gentiles. An astounding miracle? To be
sure! But such is the work of salvation. And the sparing of the
city was accompanied by the undeniable wonder of the saving of Jonah in the
belly of the fish, which was a prophecy of the wonder of the death and burial
of Jesus, with the subsequent resurrection.
Second, if the sparing of Nineveh were,
indeed, only physical, as your questions imply, the explanation
of the event still concerns special, saving grace in Jesus Christ, and not a
common grace, that merely provides earthly life in the face of earthly
disaster. The meaning of the book of Jonah is not a common grace of God,
but His saving grace in Jesus Christ. Jesus Himself teaches this in
Matthew 12 and Luke 11. The event had nothing to do with the supposed
sphere of common grace whatever, which merely has to do with material welfare
and earthly life. Jonah prophesied the coming death, burial, and
resurrection of Jesus and the salvation by special grace of
the Gentiles. The NT readers of the book must not think about rain and
sunshine, health, and earthly life at all. To introduce these things (the
subjects of common grace) into the passage is to sin against the passage at its
very heart and to fly into the face of Jesus's own explanation of the
book. The extraordinary, merely external "repentance" of
Nineveh and the merely physical sparing of the city were a special, dramatic sign
of the saving work of God in Jesus Christ that was coming. This was the
one, true meaning of it all.
To make all of the event merely the expression of a
common grace of God and thus to make it serve the theology of some temporal
blessing of the ungodly on the part of God is, not only to miss the truth of
Jonah entirely, but also to obliterate the gospel of Jesus Christ and His
salvation that is the one, great message of the book.
To put it bluntly: Jonah is not about
material blessings by a common grace of God, apart from Jesus Christ. It
is not about common grace, regardless whether one explains Nineveh's repentance
as heartfelt and genuine, or as merely outward. Jonah is about
spiritual blessings by the special grace of God in Jesus Christ, who was buried
in the ground for three days and nights and rose again for the salvation mainly
of the nations, who repent at the message of the gospel. To appeal
to the book on behalf of a common grace of God is to show that one has not
heard the gospel of Jonah in light of Matthew 12 and Luke 11. (DJE,
28/03/2020)
------------------------------------------------------
(II)
Herman Hoeksema (1886-1965)
(a)
Certainly nothing
in the word of God contradicts the view that the men of Nineveh were really
converted. Not all were converted, but only the elect whom God had in the city
at that time for his prophetic purpose. Everything is in favor of such an
interpretation. This is evident from Jonah 3:5–9, which describes the
conversion of the Ninevites. It is also clear from the Lord’s repeated reference
to the sign of Jonah the prophet, a sign of Jesus’ death and burial and his
leaving the nation of Israel to turn to the world with the gospel of salvation.
Nineveh is an old-dispensational type of the world from which Christ calls his
elect and gathers his “other sheep … which are not of this fold” [John 10:16].
The Savior, in words that leave no doubt as to their meaning, asserts that the
men of Nineveh repented through the preaching of Jonah, while the men of his
own generation refused to repent through the preaching of one much greater than
Jonah. Sound interpretation certainly requires us to understand the word repentance each time in the same sense.
I maintain that God for his sovereign purpose, chiefly of creating the
prophetic sign of Jonah the prophet, had some of his elect in the city of
Nineveh at the time of Jonah. They repented through his preaching, and for a
time the city was spared for their sakes. Shortly afterward the city was
destroyed.
---------------------------------------
(b)
Another Illustration of the same truth is the
example of Nineveh. We must consider the incident of Nineveh as historical
fact. The chief significance of the book of Jonah is its prophetic character.
Nineveh is typical of the world to whom the gospel will be preached after
Christ has risen from the dead. Even as Jonah goes forth after his three days
in the fish’s belly to preach the word of God to a people outside of Israel, so
the risen Christ will go forth after a three day’s stay in the heart of the
earth to preach the glad evangel to every nation. But that is not our
consideration at present. We must view the matter as historical reality.
The wickedness of Nineveh is great, and because of
this Jonah is sent to preach its destruction. Also here final punishment is
preached: Jonah must announce extermination of Nineveh as a city. The question also
in this case is whether Nineveh, as Sodom of old, is ripe for destruction.
Jonah preaches, and Nineveh humbles itself. The announcement of punishment
still terrifies its inhabitants. As in Ahab’s case, this is a sign that the
time for final judgment is not yet ripe.
The destruction of the city is postponed for the
while. Surely, not long afterward Nineveh is destroyed. But when Jonah preached
against the city, the wickedness of its inhabitants had not reached its
culmination. Hence the Lord’s final sentence is not executed. Nineveh’s
example, like that of Ahab, assures us that final punishment will be inflicted
only when the measure of iniquity is full. This filling of the measure of
iniquity takes place only along the organic line of the development of the
race, and even of individual tribes and families.
---------------------------------------
(II)
(II)
More to come! (DV)
QUESTION
BOX:
Q.
1. “Okay, so it was the elect who repented, and it was genuine repentance. But
that doesn’t negate the fact that the reprobate in the nation were spared from
the threatened judgment as well. Wasn’t that time of sparing (up until they
were finally destroyed years later) a temporal blessing for them?
After all, everything above the lip of hell is a blessing, isn’t it?”
“Let their table be a snare” (Ps. 69:22)—the words of Christ on the cross—seem an
appropriate biblical answer to this short-sighted misconception (see also Psalm
73:18 and 92:7).
The Scriptures never argue in that way, but
consistently present the exact opposite.
If “everything above the lip of hell is a
blessing,” then what does it mean that all mankind is subject to the curse since the Fall?
Scripture tells us what God has revealed concerning
what His attitude is toward the reprobate, and the specific reasons why He has
not cast them into Hell immediately. It is that they fill up the measure of their iniquities and face greater
condemnation (Gen. 15:16; Matt. 23:32; Rom. 2:5). It would actually be more
“merciful” (so to speak) if they had not
been born—a point specifically made with reference to Judas (Matt. 26:24).
“What if God, willing
to shew his wrath, and to make his power known, endured with much
longsuffering the vessels of wrath fitted to destruction: And that he might
make known the riches of his glory on the vessels of mercy, which he had afore
prepared unto glory” (Rom. 9:22-23).
The point to note here is that God’s longsuffering
is toward the vessels of mercy, and is the way in which He “endures” the
vessels of wrath. He’s not being merciful and gracious to them as they march
rebelliously into hell; He is “enduring” them.
“… and he that believeth not the Son shall not see
life; but the wrath of God abideth on him” (John 3:36)—The wrath of God
presently abides on the unbeliever.
So, we don’t judge these things according to our
own feeble and limited understanding, but we look to what Scripture has clearly
revealed to us about these issues.
On a further note: If the temporal “everything” actually
serves to cause one’s eternal placement in hell to be that much deeper, all
according to God’s decree, then those “blessings” are not true blessings, are
they?
Like Judas, it would be better that the unbelieving
had never been born, for with every extra day that they live on this earth
their sentence and God’s judgment upon them only increases in severity. (Rev. Angus Stewart)
######################
Q. 2. “But isn’t is a grace of God and a merciful
act of God to delay impending judgment upon the reprobate? Isn’t is an act of
divine kindness?”
It
would in fact be better for the unbeliever that God would come in judgment
sooner than He does. The punishment of the ungodly would be less severe.
Now he piles up guilt against the day of wrath. When the old
reprobate is sentenced on the world's last day, well might he exclaim, “Oh,
that I had died in my infancy! My guilt and punishment had then been less
severe.” The argument from deferred judgment does not reckon with the
accomplishment of God's purposes with the ungodly in history. Cain must
kill Abel. Babylon must oppress Judah. Judas must betray Christ.
The ungodly today must develop sin and fill the cup of iniquity, so that
God may be just when at last He judges. Is it indeed grace that over a
long life a reprobate ungodly fills his cup of iniquity so that he suffers
greatly eternally? Deferred judgment is greater judgment. It is not
grace. The development of sin whether in an individual or in a race
occurs, not under a grace of God, but under God's wrath. (Prof. David J. Engelsma, 09/08/2016)
It is a strange grace and mercy that enables the
wicked to continue life, filled as it is with grief, sorrow and pain. It is a
strange mercy and love that allows the wicked to live to sin more than ever
than if they had died young—only to be deeper in Dante’s divine inferno when
they die.
The real reason people want to call man’s continued
life in the world grace is because they hope that such men will still,
if given a further chance, accept Christ and be saved. That is why the common
grace theory usually includes a gracious offer of the gospel that proclaims
God’s love for all. For if God is gracious to all, He loves all and wants to
save all. Then, after all, salvation is our work, not God’s work.
I would like to see once a text that explicitly
teaches that because of God’s love, or mercy, or grace, fallen man continues to
exist. The wicked know better than “common grace Christians.” They, says
Scripture, are like the restless sea and have no peace. In the night they say,
“Would God it were morning;” and in the day they say, “Would God it were night”
(cf. Deut. 28:67).
Proverbs 3:33 says that the “curse” of the Lord is
in the house of the wicked. Let anyone show me where Scripture says that the
curse is there, “but love, too”; the curse is their daily experience, “but
mercy, too”; the curse is in their eating and drinking and working and
sleeping, “but so is grace.” What kind of a god is that? It is not the God I
serve and worship. Let us be led in our doctrine of God by Scripture and
not by what we wish He was. (Prof.
Herman C. Hanko, 21/11/2016)
[The]
wicked chaff in the church must serve the cause of God, not only because in the
vessels of wrath the righteousness of God is revealed, but also because the
chaff must serve the wheat, for it is not possible to have wheat without chaff.
Therefore, God forbears the chaff as long as it serves the wheat, and when the chaff
is no longer necessary, it is destroyed. This was the case with Israel. Wicked
Israel, according to God’s purpose, had to serve to erect the cross of Jesus
Christ—not Rome, not the Hottentots of Africa, but Israel. They had to serve in
the shedding of the blood of the atonement. They had to serve to reconcile the
church with God through the blood of the Lamb and to fulfill according to God’s
counsel.
So
it always is. God forbears the wicked for his name’s sake. When they have fully
served his purpose, and when all that he intends to be done by them and through
them has been accomplished, then his wrath is fully poured out, and then God’s
praise is magnified and exalted in the new things.
As
God’s people in the world, we must remember this truth. When we look at the
history of the church, it is very easy to become weary and discouraged because
of the constant battle against the carnal element. We must remember that God is
in charge, even when the wicked prosper or seem to prosper. Not only is God in
charge, but also he is always accomplishing his own purpose and his own
almighty will for his name’s sake. Thus we must not become weary, but be
willing to walk in God’s way to the very end, when he shall perfect his church
and destroy all the wicked. (Homer C.
Hoeksema, “Redeemed With Judgment: Sermons on Isaiah” [RFPA, 2008], pp.
235-236)
######################
Q.
3. “But aren’t the reprobate who are still alive better off compared to
the reprobate who are in hell?”
“All christless and unregenerate men
are no better than dead men, being condemned already.” (John Flavel,
“Method of Grace,” sermon 33)
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