Jonah knows exactly what God is like: gracious and merciful, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love. That is why he ran. He feared God would show mercy to Nineveh, the violent city he wanted destroyed.
In Jonah 4, God confronts him with two questions and a plant. Jonah mourns the plant after a worm kills it, yet he has no pity for more than 120,000 people who do not know God. He is glad to receive God’s care when it gives him shade and furious when Nineveh receives the same compassion.
That is uncomfortable because Jonah’s heart is not so foreign to us. We may forgive in theory while quietly wishing judgment on a coworker, politician, or enemy. But if God gave each of us what our sin deserved, none of us could stand. Grace is not about getting what is fair. We depend on it.
God does not ignore evil. Jesus, the true and better Jonah, took the penalty for sin on himself. Jonah sat outside the city hoping judgment would fall. Jesus went to the cross so sinners could be forgiven. Having received that mercy, Christians are called to extend it to the people they find hardest to love.