God Relenting – Jonah 3:10
10 When God saw what they did, how they turned from their evil way, God relented of the disaster that he had said he would do to them, and he did not do it.
R.C. Sproul:
- Discussed as #3 in “How to Study the Bible” – do not interpret the didactic by the narrative
- the bible will tell you a story and later on like in the epistles you read the meaning of the narrative
- if you are there watching the crucifixion, it is not immediately clear to you that what is happening here is a cosmic act of atonement – you need the didactic portion of scripture to explain those events to you
- what happens if you interpret the didactic by the narrative?
- his complaint with Pentecostal theology is that it interprets Pentecost in a way that is completely opposed to the NT interpretation of Pentecost
- it’s view of Pentecost is too low, because they submerge the didactic portion of scripture to inference drawn from the narrative
- even worse the scourge in Evangelism today is open theism – it is now trying to persuade you that the Lord God omniscient, is not the Lord God omniscient, that He does not know all things, he doesn’t know what you are going to do before you do it, because there is no way He can know the future of free events done by moral agents and the bible proves it because in the narratives we see Abraham offering Isaac and the angel coming and saying “now I know that you are going to obey Me
- and they heap up these verses of God’s relenting and God’s repenting and they say see the Bible teaches that God changes His mind, He is not immutable, that God learns things, he is not omniscient, and this justifies our gastly theology – never mind the portions of scripture that God is not a man that He should not repent and teaches you didactly and that God does know what you are going to say before you say it even though in the narrative it may be told from a human perspective as if God were learning – you are kept from coming to that conclusion by the didactic portion – interpret scripture by scripture
ESV Study Bible Notes:
- evil . . . disaster.
- Both terms translate Hebrew ra‘ah (see note on 1:2).
- The use of the same word underscores the close connection between human action and divine response.
- God did not carry out the threatened disaster because the Ninevites repented of their evil (see note on 3:4).
- From a temporal perspective, God responds to human action; from an eternal perspective, God chooses the means (human repenting) as well as the end (divine relenting).
- The repentance of Gentiles contrasts with the repeated lack of repentance on the part of Israel
- reference post
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