Or do you show contempt for the riches of his kindness, tolerance and patience, not realizing that God’s kindness leads you toward repentance?
In my library in Philadelphia I have a large number of books that deal with the attributes of God. They are among my favorite volumes. I think, for example, of A. W. Tozer’s books on knowing God: The Pursuit of God and The Knowledge of the Holy. Or Arthur Pink’s studies of God’s character: The Attributes of God and Gleanings in the Godhead. Some are heavy theological works, like Emil Brunner’s The Christian Doctrine of God, Herman Bavinck’s The Doctrine of God4 and Carl F. H. Henry’s multivolumed God, Revelation and Authority. There is also the well-deserved popular favorite: Knowing God, by J. I. Packer.
I find as I look over these books that there is little in them concerning two of the three attributes we are to study in this chapter: tolerance (forbearance) and patience (longsuffering). Why is this? Pink calls attention to it, saying, “It is not easy to suggest a reason … for surely the longsuffering of God is as much one of the divine perfections as is his wisdom, power or holiness, and as much to be admired and revered by us.”
The reason many of us ignore these attributes may be precisely what Paul suggests it may be, when he asks in our text, “Do you show contempt for the riches of his [God’s] kindness, tolerance and patience, not realizing that God’s kindness leads you toward repentance?” The reason why we do not think often of God’s tolerance and patience is our insensitivity to sin and our reluctance to turn from it.
The Goodness of God
I have said that two of the three attributes mentioned in our text are frequently neglected: tolerance and patience. But the first of the three attributes is “goodness” (kjv), or “kindness” (niv), and goodness is not usually ignored. I suppose this is because goodness is so desirable a part of God’s nature. Our word God points in that direction. It comes to us from Anglo-Saxon speech, where “God” originally meant “The Good.” This was an important insight, for it meant that in the minds of the Anglo-Saxons, God was not only “the Greatest” of all beings, though they recognized that as well, but that he was also “the Best.” All the goodness there is originates in God. That is why the apostle James could write, “Every good and perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of the heavenly lights, who does not change like shifting shadows” (James 1:17). In the language of philosophy the simplest of all definitions of God is summum bonum, the chief good.
Yet, when Paul speaks of the goodness of God in Romans 2, he is not thinking of this as having to do primarily with what God is in himself, but as having to do with God’s actions toward us. This may be why the New International Version renders the Greek term chrēstotēs (later, chrēstos) as “kindness” rather than “goodness,” as it is in the King James Bible.
1. Creation. The first place at which the goodness of God is seen is in creation. We remember that on each of the successive days of creation, after God had made the heavens and the earth, the sea and the land, and all the creatures that live in the sea, inhabit the land, and fly in the air, God said, “It is good.” And it really was good—and continues to be, in spite of the increasing spoilage of creation that has come to it because of human sin.
The world about us is good, and this is a great proof of God’s goodness. Every time we breathe God’s good air, we demonstrate how indebted we are to this goodness. Every time we use the resources of the world to make homes and clothes and to grow food, we show that God is kind toward us. And what of our bodies? How suited are our hands to perform useful work! How valuable are our arms and legs! How amazing our eyes! How marvelous our minds! Paul Brand’s study of the wonders of the human body—cells, bones, skin, and motion—Fearfully and Wonderfully Made, highlights some of this goodness.
2. Providence. God’s goodness is also revealed in providence, that is, by his continual ordering of the world and world events for good. Providence is seen in what theologians call “common grace.” Jesus spoke of this when he observed that God “causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous” (Matt. 5:45).
3. The Gospel Call. But the kindness of God toward us is seen not only in the physical creation and providence. It is also seen in many spiritual matters. Above all, it is seen in the widespread proclamation of the gospel. To be sure, the gospel has not yet penetrated everywhere. There are still many millions of people who have not heard that Jesus loves them and has died for them. But you have! You at least know God’s goodness in the gospel.
Charles Haddon Spurgeon, the great Baptist preacher of the nineteenth century, wrote on Romans 2:4:
Myriads of our fellow men have never had an opportunity of knowing Christ. The missionary’s foot has never trodden the cities wherein they dwell, and so they die in the dark. Multitudes are going downward, downward; but they do not know the upward road. Their minds have never been enlightened by the teachings of God’s word, and hence they sin with less grievousness of fault. You are placed in the very focus of Christian light, and yet you follow evil! Will you not think of this? Time was when a man would have to work for years to earn enough money to buy a Bible. There were times when he could not have earned one even with that toil. Now the word of God lies upon your table, and you have a copy of it in almost every room of your house. Is not this a boon from God? This is the land of the open Bible, and the land of the preached word of God. In this you prove the richness of God’s goodness. Do you despise this wealth of mercy? … Is this a small thing?
The kindness of God is not a small thing. We dare not despise it, as Paul tells us.
The Tolerance of God
The second attribute of God in our text is tolerance, and this, as I wrote earlier, is frequently neglected. The Greek word is anochēs, variously translated “tolerance,” “forbearance,” “holding back,” “delay,” “pause,” or “clemency.”
The new idea introduced by this term is that of human offense to God’s goodness, offense that should evoke an immediate outpouring of fierce judgment but which God actually endures. We see this quality at the beginning of the Bible. God had warned Adam that on the day he ate of the forbidden tree he would die (Gen. 1:17). But when God came to Adam and Eve in the garden to confront our first parents with the fact of their disobedience, he did not actually execute the sentence. Someone has pointed out that Adam and Eve did die in their spirits, which they proved by running away from God when he came calling. That is true. But they did not die physically, at least not at once. And they never did die eternally, because God came with an offer of salvation through a future deliverer who would defeat Satan, which they then believed and trusted. This first great outcropping of sin and God’s dealings with it show God’s tolerance.
So it is with us all. We sin, but God does not immediately implement the judgment we deserve. He bears with us, enduring the affront to his great majesty and holiness. And he offers us salvation!
The irony is that we do not appreciate this and instead actually turn God’s temporary tolerance of some sin into an accusation against him. Do you remember the question raised by those who had witnessed a few instances of evil in the days of Jesus Christ? Apparently some Galileans had been visiting Jerusalem and had been worshiping at the temple. While they were in the midst of their pious acts, soldiers from Pilate fell upon them and killed some of them. Again, about this same time a tower fell over and killed eighteen persons who were standing beside it. Jesus was asked how it was possible that something like this could happen in a world ruled by a just yet merciful God. Was it because these people were worse sinners than others? Or was it because God was either too weak to avert the tragedies or just didn’t care?
Jesus replied, “Do you think that these Galileans were worse sinners than all the other Galileans because they suffered this way? I tell you, no! But unless you repent, you too will all perish. Or those eighteen who died when the tower of Siloam fell on them—do you think they were more guilty than all the others living in Jerusalem? I tell you, no! But unless you repent, you too will all perish” (Luke 13:2–5).
Jesus’ point was that our way of asking that question is entirely wrong. The question is not why God somehow “lets down” and allows others to perish, but rather why he has spared us, we being the sinners we are. If we could understand how sinful we are, we could understand that the soldiers should have killed us, or the tower should have fallen on us. We should be dead and in hell this very instant. That we are not in hell is an evidence of God’s tolerance. He has not yet confined us to the punishment we deserve.
God’s tolerance should lead us to repentance, before it is too late.
The Patience of God
The last of these three attributes is the greatest from the point of view of our text, for it is linked to the call for repentance in that God spares us for a very long time that we might do so. The Greek word makrothymia is interesting, because the first half of it, makro (macro), emphasizes how great God’s longsuffering, or patience, is.
Here is a good place to put these three terms together and compare them. I quote first from Robert Haldane. He thinks these words apply to the Jews explicitly, which I do not. But his definitions and contrasts are significant nevertheless: “Goodness imports the benefits which God hath bestowed on the Jews. Forbearance denotes God’s bearing with them, without immediately executing vengeance—his delaying to punish them.… Long-suffering signifies the extent of that forbearance during many ages.” Here is another quotation, from Charles Hodge: “The first means kindness in general, as expressed in giving favors; the second, patience; the third, forbearance, slowness in the infliction of punishment.”11
I would define each of these three terms as aspects of God’s goodness: the first as goodness to man without any specific relationship to sin; the second as goodness in relation to sin’s magnitude; the third as goodness in relation to sin’s endurance or continuation. Spurgeon was thinking along these lines when he wrote, “Forbearance has to do with the magnitude of sin; longsuffering with the multiplicity of it.”
“Patience” means that God bears with sin a long time. Here are some examples:
First, God was patient with those who sinned in the early ages of the race before the great flood. This was a particularly evil time. Some of the evil is described in Genesis 4, which begins with Cain’s murder of his brother Abel and ends with Lamech’s boast about having killed a man just for wounding him. This evil is summarized in Genesis 6:5, where we are told, “The Lord saw how great man’s wickedness on the earth had become, and that every inclination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil all the time.” What a devastating statement—“only evil all the time”! This was a dreadful age. Yet, in spite of this great evil, God was patient with the antediluvian generation. He spared it for 120 years while Noah was in the process of constructing and outfitting the ark. It was only at the end of that period, after ample warnings from Noah and the other pre-flood preachers, like Enoch, that the flood came.
A second example is Israel, with whom God was exceptionally patient. He was patient with the Jews for forty years in the wilderness, as Paul reminds us in a sermon to Gentiles and Jews at Antioch (“He endured their conduct for about forty years in the desert,” Acts 13:18). Later, when the Israelites entered the Promised Land and were soon found following the debased customs and worship of the nations around them, God did not immediately chastise his people but instead sent a long line of deliverers. Even when their sin was so great that a judgment by invasion and deportment was inevitable, God still sent generations of prophets to warn both Israel and Judah and turn them from sin.
What of ourselves? Arthur W. Pink writes:
How wondrous is God’s patience with the world today. On every side people are sinning with a high hand. The divine law is trampled under foot and God himself openly despised. It is truly amazing that he does not instantly strike dead those who so brazenly defy him. Why does he not suddenly cut off the haughty infidel and blatant blasphemer, as he did Ananias and Sapphira? Why does he not cause the earth to open its mouth and devour the persecutors of his people, so that, like Dathan and Abiram, they shall go down alive into the Pit? And what of apostate Christendom, where every possible form of sin is now tolerated and practiced under cover of the holy name of Christ? Why does not the righteous wrath of heaven make an end of such abominations? Only one answer is possible: because God bears with “much longsuffering the vessels of wrath fitted to destruction.”
Repent or Perish
Yet, much as I appreciate Arthur Pink and value his description of God’s longsuffering toward those of our own time, I do not think his statement that “only one answer is possible” is correct. Pink asks, “Why does God not immediately destroy all wrong doers?” He answers, “Because God is long-suffering toward the vessels of wrath fitted for destruction.” That means: simply because God is long-suffering. Sinners will perish eventually anyway, but God is nevertheless willing to endure them for a very long time.
Well, that is part of the answer. God does endure for a long time those who eventually will perish. But if our text—which speaks so eloquently of the goodness, tolerance, and patience of God—means anything, it certainly means that God also has quite another purpose in his patience. Paul says that it is to lead us to repentance.
There are two ways we can go, of course. Paul is clear about them. One way is repentance, the way Scripture urges. The other is defiance, or spite toward God’s goodness.
Which will it be for you? You can defy God. You can set yourself against his goodness, tolerance, and patience—as well as against his other attributes like sovereignty, holiness, omniscience, and immutability, which you also despise. But why should you do that? I have previously pointed out that it is quite understandable how a sinner who does not wish to leave his or her sin must hate God’s holiness. It is obvious that a rebellious subject will resent God’s sovereignty. But why should you “show contempt for the riches of his kindness, tolerance and patience”? These are winsome qualities. A kind, tolerant, and patient God is a good God. Why should you fail to realize that God’s exercise of these attributes toward you is for a good end?
I want to give you three reasons why you should allow these attributes to lead you to repentance and should no longer despise the goodness of God.
First, if God is a good God, then whatever you may think to the contrary in your fallen state, to find this good God will mean finding all good for yourself. You do not normally think this way. You think that your own will is the good. You think that if you have to turn from what you think you want—and desperately do want—you will be miserable. Can you not see that it is your own sinful way, and the ways of millions of other people just like you, that is the cause of your miseries. God is not the cause. God is good. God is the source of all good. If you want to find good for yourself as well as others, the way to find it is to turn from whatever is holding you back and find God. God has provided the way for you to turn to him through the death of his Son, the Lord Jesus Christ. He died for your sin to open the door to God’s presence.
Not long ago I was talking to a young girl who had gotten into trouble because of her rebellion against nearly everyone who was in authority over her, had ended up in an institution for troubled teenagers, and had had a very rough time. But in the counseling and small-group sessions she learned something important. As we talked she said, “I learned that the people I thought were my enemies were actually my friends, because they told me the truth, and I learned that my trouble was not caused by other people. I caused it. If I am going to get anywhere, I have to change.”
This teenager had become a lot smarter than many people who fight against God by blaming him for their misery. If you are to be wise and not foolish, you must allow the goodness of God to lead you to repentance.
Second, if God is tolerant of you, it is because he has a will to save you. If he wanted to condemn you outright, he could have done it long ago. If he is tolerant, you will find that if you come to him he will not cast you out. One commentator wrote, “If God is good even to the unkind and the unthankful, surely the door of entrance to the divine favor is open to the penitent.”
Third, if God is patient with you in spite of your many follies, it is because he is giving you an opportunity to be saved. The apostle Peter wrote, “The Lord is not slow in keeping his promise, as some understand slowness. He is patient with you, not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance” (2 Peter 3:9). If God were not good, you might have room to doubt this. You might think of God as a cat playing with a mouse. You might think of him as being patient with you only for his own amusement. But this is not the case at all. If God is good in his patience, his reason for being so must be to do good. His patience must be to give you opportunity to turn to him. Do not make the mistake of thinking that because God is tolerant he will not judge sin. God will judge it. He is just, as well as patient. But now he is patient, and if he has allowed you to live twenty, forty, or even eighty or ninety years, it is so that you might come to him now—before you die and the opportunity for salvation is gone forever.
Paul says that God’s goodness “leads” you to repentance. If he is leading, he will not turn you away if you follow him. If he bids you repent, he will not spurn your repentance.[1]
[1] Boice, J. M. (1991–). Romans: Justification by Faith (Vol. 1, pp. 209–217). Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Book House.
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