I grew up thinking that Christianity was just a religious cycle that had a lot to do with my disobedience and God's punishment.
The cycle went something like this: we are disobedient, so God punishes us. We repent as a result, and we live in obedience. That's the cycle: disobedience, punishment, repentance, obedience. Repeat cycle.
In other words, I knew that I was only one step away from either being punished or being disobedient at all times. And although God's love for me wasn't totally dependent on how well I was doing according to the cycle–it mostly was. I was well aware that God was definitely going to be happier if I obeyed, and would be disappointed in me if I didn't.
A lot of people see the religious cycle in Jonah's story. He was disobedient to God, God punished him with a storm and then a fish, he repented, and then he obeyed. Boom. Cycle completed. Jonah is okay with God again.
The problem with that assessment is that it misses the main point and therefore obscures the way that God deals with his people.
There are a few themes in the book of Jonah that are present from beginning to end. God's sovereignty is a big one. Jonah's consistent rebellion is another. But in between those two stands the main one that holds the other two together: God's unrelenting love towards his people.
David expressed that love in Psalm 139 when he said that even if he made his bed in Sheol, God would be there; if he dwelt in the uttermost parts of the sea, David knew he could not get away from God's love (Psalm 139:8-9). Jonah didn't just write it, he lived it. He went to the literal depths of Sheol, on the verge of death. In a metaphorical sense, he "made his own bed" and God could have let him lie in it; but that's not what God did.
Everything about Jonah's story reveals God's unrelenting love towards wicked and rebellious people. HIs love towards Ninevah. His love towards Jonah. His love towards the Sailors. His love towards his creation. Even his love for cattle, which we'll see in the very last verse of the text.
God us unrelenting in his pursuit of his people.
What we see in Jonah as "punishment", therefore, isn't punishment at all–it's God's gracious voice calling out to Jonah by all means necessary so that Jonah would come back to Him. It's God's love calling out, not his wrath. That's what Jonah learns when he's in the belly of the fish in chapter 2, and it's what he knows when he's laying on the beach in chapter 3.
Perhaps you've heard the old saying that we serve a God of second chances? It's a lie.
A God of second chances is a God who wants to deal with you on the religious cycle. Disobedience, punishment, repentance, obedience...second chance. The God who gives you second chances is the kind of God who is treating you according to your own effort. It sounds like good news on the surface, but it's really not.
The good news of the Bible is that God doesn't deal with us according to our own efforts, but deals with us according to the efforts of Christ. When God looks at his children, they are clothed in the perfect righteousness of Jesus; their chief status as his sons and daughters has never changed.
Do you remember the story of the prodigal son that Jesus tells? The son takes his inheritance, leaves his father, and goes and blows it all. He's lying in a pile of pig's feces when he comes to his senses and thinks to himself that he should go back and ask his father for a second chance. When he rounds the last bend headed home, he is shocked that his Father runs out to meet him and calls him "son". Before he can get home; before he can ask for a second chance. Why?
Because his status as a "son" never changed. The father was waiting, day after day, for his son to come home. And when he finally did, it wasn't a second chance. It was the first chance that never ended.
None of this means that we're not going to blow it, like Jonah. We'll have those moments where we run from God, rebel, and act contrary to the way his kids are supposed to act. But when we do, we don't run back to God, begging for a second chance. We run back to God because we're his sons and daughters, and he has never stopped loving us.