Romans 2:4

Romans 2:4 Or despisest thou the riches of his goodness and forbearance and longsuffering; not knowing that the goodness of God leadeth thee to repentance? There are three difficult words in our verse for today. Let’s look at them: The first word is despise. Despise means something that we really don’t like. You may despise to take out the garbage. Or you may despise to eat beets. Or you may despise spiders. The other two words are forbearance and longsuffering. Have you ever been in a store and seen and heard a really bad kid? They are whining and crying and trying to get their way. You just want to give them a time out. If their mother is patient with them and gentle with them, she is looooooooooooongsuffering. But then our verse tells us that the goodness of God brings us to repentance. God has two opposite characteristics: God will punish wickedness, but God also wants to forgive wickedness. Both are true. We obey our parents because we will get into trouble if we don’t. But the best reason to obey our parents is because they love us. The same is true about God. God will punish wickedness, but God’s love brings us to repentance. We are afraid of God’s punishment, but we love God’s goodness.