NOTES for Luk 11:29-32
It is no accident that Jesus compares Himself to the prophet Jonah, the hero of the book that bears his name: for the people who lived during His earthly ministry He became the same kind of Witness that Jonah had been for the people of Nineveh. In this case Jesus does not require those listening to Him to acknowledge His divine and human nature or even His messiahship: neither was possible for them; it simply would not have fit within their minds.
They were, however, prepared to acknowledge Him as the Messiah, but not as the Messiah He truly was. They wanted the Messiah their own imagination had pictured for them. Hence the demand for a sign, a miracle confirming His messiahship. Jesus responds by speaking of the sign of the prophet Jonah: Jonah might have been thought dead after being swallowed by the great fish, yet he was alive and fulfilled his mission, which was an evident miracle.
The Savior alludes to a miracle of the same kind when speaking of Himself: His death will not prevent Him either, and the clearest proof of His messiahship will be His resurrection from the dead. Jesus does not intend to display any other signs to anyone. If the people listening to Him had truly wanted to see the Kingdom, or at least the manifestations of God’s power that accompanied Jesus on His way across the earth, they would have seen them.
There were so many miracles and healings that they could go unnoticed only in one case: if a person stubbornly refused to notice anything. This is understandable, for what was happening fit none of their schemes. If only He had displayed some “proper” sign confirming His messiahship in the way the people around Him expected... But it was precisely such a “proper” sign that He had no intention of showing anyone.
He was not going to fit within any framework or conform to anyone’s expectations. This was not a matter of principle, but simply because the Kingdom He brought into the world, and by whose fullness He lives, does not fit within any framework either and usually does not meet the expectations of those who speak and even preach about it. During His earthly journey He had to conform to the Kingdom, not to what people thought about the Kingdom.