In Surprised by Grace: God’s Relentless Pursuit of Rebels, I retell the story of Jonah and show how Jonah was just as much in need of God’s grace as the sailors and the Ninevites. But the fascinating thing about Jonah is that, unlike the pagan sailors and wicked Ninevites, Jonah was one of the “good guys.” He was a prophet. He was moral. He was one who “kept all the rules,” and did everything he was supposed to do. He was not some long-haired, tattooed indie rocker; he was a clean-cut prep. He was not a liberal; he was a conservative. He was not irreligious; he was religious. If you have ever read S.E. Hinton’s novel The Outsiders, then you will immediately see that the Ninevites and sailors in the story were like the “greasers,” while Jonah was like a “soash.”

Fascinatingly, not only in the story of Jonah, but throughout the Bible, it is always the immoral person that gets the Gospel before the moral person. It is the prostitute who understands grace and the Pharisee who does not. It is the unrighteous younger brother who gets it before the self-righteous older brother.

There is, however, another side to self-righteousness that younger-brother types are blind to. There is an equally dangerous form of self-righteousness that plagues the unconventional and the non-religious types. We “authentic,” anti-legalists can become just as guilty of legalism in the opposite direction. We become self-righteous against those who are self-righteous. We become Pharisaical about Pharisees.

Many younger Christians today react to their parents’ conservative, buttoned-down, rule-keeping flavor of “older brother religion” with a type of liberal, untucked, rule-breaking flavor of “younger brother irreligion” which screams, “I know I do not have it all together and you think you do; I know I am not good and you think you are. That makes me better than you.”

See the irony?
In other words, some of us are proud that we are not self-righteous! Hmmm… think about that one.

Self-righteousness reaches to the religious and the irreligious, the “buttoned down” and the “untucked,” the plastic and the pious, the rule-keepers and the rule-breakers, the “right” and the “wrong.” The entire Bible reveals how shortsighted all of us are when it comes to our own sin. Steve Brown writes: “You will find criticism of Christian fundamentalists by people whose secular fundamentalism dwarfs the fundamentalism of the people being criticized. Political correctness and the attendant feelings of self-righteousness have their equivalent in religious communities with religious correctness. If you look at victims, you’ll find self-righteousness. On the other hand, if you look at the people who wield power, they do it with the self-righteous notion that they know better, understand more, [are] more informed than others… arrogance, condescension, disdain, contemptuousness, and pomposity are everywhere.”

It was easy for Jonah to see the sailors’ idolatry; it was easy for him to see the perverse ways of the Ninevites. What he could not see was his own idolatry, his own perversion. So the question is not whether you are self-righteous, but rather, in which direction does your self-righteousness lean? Depending on who I am with, mine goes in both directions. Arghhh!
Thankfully, while our self-righteousness reaches far, God’s grace reaches farther. And the good news is that it reaches in both directions!

Tullian Tchividjian is a South Florida native, Senior Pastor of Coral Ridge Presbyterian Church, a visiting professor at Reformed Theological Seminary, and grandson of Billy and Ruth Graham. He is the founder of LIBERATE (liberatenet.org), a bestselling author, a contributing editor to Leadership Journal, and a popular conference speaker. Tullian and his family reside in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. Follow Tullian on twitter at: @pastortullian.