What does the Bible say about second chances?

For us, who perhaps also have turned aside from some service that has been given to us, we may find in the first verse of the third of Jonah, a rich mine of comfort. Even suppose the mercy of God had delivered His failing servant from the awful death that threatened him, who could expect that the Lord would give to him a second opportunity to carry out this service, which he had once been privileged to have the opportunity of doing for Him. Such is the grace of God. Not only did the Lord save His servant from death, but He patiently taught him the lessons that he needed, and then saved and pardoned and equipped more fully than before through these new lessons, once more the Lord sent him on the very message that he had formerly refused.

I cannot but think that the unspeakable grace of God shown to him again in this re-commission, must have touched the heart of Jonah. I cannot but think that many times the thought must have gone through his mind, amidst his deep repentance, "Oh, how gladly would I show the reality of my repentance by once again having the opportunity to go on the message that I once refused." Mark, the failing servant, became the profitable servant: and Jonah the disobedient servant, became the obedient one. The Master in both cases received them back, and once again gave to them the opportunity of continuing in that service that they had once refused. I cannot but think that most of the servants of the same blessed Master today may take comfort and hope and encouragement from these two failing servants we have been considering.

The message is very much the same. Before it had been, "Arise, go to Nineveh, that great city, and cry against it; for their wickedness is come up before Me." Now the message is, "Arise, go unto Nineveh, that great city, and preach unto it the preaching that I bid thee."

Luke, then, was the only companion of the apostle. He had been his fellow-labourer during much of his ministry; he abides with him before his death. But, not content with this, the apostle desires Timothy to take up Mark on his way and bring him along with himself, for he adds with exceeding grace, "he is to me useful for ministry." We know how greatly grieved Paul had been with Mark's desertion in early days, and how it had led even to a breach with Barnabas (Acts 15:37-40). But this was long blotted out by the healing goodness of God. And already the apostle had joined Mark with himself as one of the few fellow-workers unto the kingdom of God which had been a comfort to him; as in the same Epistle to the Colossians he alludes to charges they had received to welcome him if he came to them (Col. 4:10-11). But now he goes farther and reinstates him in personal nearness of service to himself, the very thing in which he had originally failed. In nature a breakdown is irreparable, not so where grace prevails; for "we are more than conquerors through Him that loved us" (Rom. 8:37).

It is, however, like the long-suffering of God not to visit the full consequences of one's wrong-doing upon him at once, and to grant, if it may be, a space for repentance and an opportunity for one to retrieve himself, if his former error has been a 'slip rather than the habit of his mind. God is not unrighteous, to confound one's being overtaken in a fault with the expression of what is his radical character. It will be found, in the day when He will judge the secrets of men, that amplest opportunity was given for men to recover themselves from any course of evil upon which they had set out. Indeed, the history of the people of God gives many illustrations of this recovering mercy.

We cannot measure the patience of the Lord, nor can we ever predict of Him that He has exhausted the resources of His grace in His dealings with men. When He announces that the day of grace is to have an end, or that it has run to its close and judgment must take its place, then is the occasion for the obedience of faith in us, and we can but bow and own that it is right that it should be so. But He has shown us in His dealings with men that it is His prerogative (while maintaining all the time a perfect balance between right and wrong, good and evil, so that men dare not presume upon His grace with impunity, still when men have completely failed and broken down in faithfulness to Him) to place them anew in circumstances in which it is possible for them to walk in obedience to His revealed will, even though this is done in view of the actual failure which has taken place, and which has to all appearance rendered it impossible for His mind to be carried out.

Here, in plain language, you have Peter restored in the most beautiful way publicly. Restoration of a brother publicly is, alas! a very rare thing in this day. How beautifully the Lord put this man right first with Himself, and then with his brethren. There is one thing the Lord greatly desires for each of us, that we should be right with Himself and also with our brethren. So in the presence of them all, He manifestly says, "I trust that man absolutely, for I put into his hands the objects of My tenderest love and solicitude — My lambs and My sheep to feed by his ministry." By the threefold commission here given to His servant the Lord shows how profoundly He can trust him. When Peter trusted himself he failed. When he had the springs of self-confidence broken, that was the moment Christ could trust him. And here in the presence of his brethren he is beautifully and publicly restored to the Lord's confidence.

When Jonah set out for Nineveh "according to the word of Jehovah," it is to be feared that there was some uneasiness in his mind as to the real object of his mission. Jehovah's new charge was vague: "preach to it the preaching that I bid thee." When he was first commissioned, the word was, "Arise, go to Nineveh that great city, and cry against it; for their wickedness is come up before Me." This was pure denunciation, which might reasonably be expected to be followed by judgement. But nothing of this is suggested in the new charge, and when Jonah arrived in Nineveh, he was told to cry, "Yet forty days and Nineveh shall be overthrown" (Jonah 2:1-4). Here we detect the grace of the divine heart. Time was granted for repentance. Alas, this did not suit the Galilean prophet! Patience and grace for erring Israel — yes, but not for Gentiles! When shall we learn that God has no pleasure in the death of him that dies, whatever his nationality may be? (Ezek. 18:32).

No doubt grace can and does act in the case of a Christian now, even where he might have slipped seriously aside, but where there followed deep and thorough repentance, and the sense of forgiveness which the Spirit grants. This would become the last starting point, so to speak, and grace if it went back beyond it would use it for good. Not only is He faithful and just to forgive and cleanse, but He loves to bring him who has failed when restored into a better condition than he had ever known before. Witness Simon Peter at the end of the Gospels and the beginning of the Acts. And so it will be with Israel in a future day. But self-judgment, wherever it is thorough, wherever there is a vindication of God against one's own sin, always brings one in the measure of the repentance into a corresponding measure of depth in God's grace never possessed before. There are few things more common than to see a person converted in what may be called a superficial manner. Where this is the case, there is commonly a falling into open failure of one kind or another, sometimes a shameful break-down, by which the man really becomes nothing less than a bag of broken bones, thoroughly brought to nought in his own eyes. After this, when grace has lifted him up, he will be incomparably humbler and will have a more grateful as well as chastened sense of what God is than he had when first converted. Hence, although it be a shame to him that he required such a humiliating process, it is the triumph of divine grace to use his folly for putting him that is restored into a better condition than before he went astray.

This is to "fall away" indeed! To fall from the profession of Christianity right away until the depth of apostasy is reached. This is backsliding in its most aggravated form, so aggravated as to be possible only to an unconverted person and to be worthy of the most tremendous and unsparing judgment. It is IMPOSSIBLE to renew such to repentance. Their doom is irrevocably fixed.

God will not proclaim these glad tidings for ever. Even His long-suffering has a limit. "Behold, now is the accepted time; behold, now is the day of salvation" (2 Cor. 6:2). "To-day, if you will hear His voice, harden not your hearts" (Heb. 3:7-8). Let no man be mistaken in this great matter. Salvation is proclaimed earnestly to all while in this world; when the border-line is passed, salvation's amazing story of divine love and grace is heard no more.

The moment Jonah was delivered "the word of the Lord came unto him the second time, saying, Arise, go unto Nineveh, that great city, and preach unto it the preaching that I bid thee;" for if the Lord pursued His servant with His storm anal tempest, and cast him into the deep, in the midst of the seas, it was for restoration as well as correction, and to put the prophet into a right condition of soul to be the vessel of the divine will. Accordingly he did not now attempt to flee, but he arose and went to Nineveh, according to the word of the Lord. It is always so in the Lord's dealings with His people. If we turn back from the path which He marks out for us, we surely must encounter the chastenings of His hand, and the object of His dealings is never accomplished until we are brought face to face again with the path from which we declined, and made willing, by grace surely, to enter upon it. It is on the principle enunciated by the psalmist — "Before I was afflicted I went astray, but now I have kept thy word."