⁴ Or do you think lightly of the riches of His kindness and tolerance and patience, not knowing that the kindness of God leads you to repentance?

Kindness mixed with wrath (1:18), how can that be? The world caricaturizes God as a cosmic killjoy, capricious in His wrath, arbitrary in His demands. Medieval depictions of an angry God and Dante’s dramatic poem “Inferno” have been used to scare people into salvation, or at least into submission to the church. Clerics over the years have discovered that fear motivates and controls.

However, God’s primary mode of operation in reaching out to lost humans is not to lash them with hell fire and damnation. As we have seen earlier in this study, God created the world with built-in consequences for rejecting God. To use fear and intimidation to bring people in line completely misses the point. The consequences now are already in place, for we all have already sinned. Fear of those consequences cannot prevent people from changing the past, and the past decisions and behaviors have already resulted in condemnation.

God’s motivation is to be kind and tolerant and patient. The word “tolerant” (NASB, NLT) can also be translated “forbearance” (NIV, ESV, NKJV). This does not carry the meaning of “live and let live” as is the common use of the word today. Rather, it refers to delaying the consequences, which blends in with “patience.” God is holding off the consequences rather than bringing immediate retribution. With Adam and Eve, He said, “In the day that you eat from [the tree] you will surely die” (Gen 2:17). While they did die in many ways when they sinned (spiritually, emotionally, relationally), their physical death was delayed. The same is true today: “In the forbearance of God He passed over the sins previously committed…” (Rom 3:25).

In thinking about God’s anger and the just consequences of ignoring God, as we have considered in Romans 1:18-32, we must not minimize God’s kindness. To be sure, God is angry at our sin, but His kindness is just as important. In fact, it is His kindness that motivates Him to reach out to us with the offer of forgiveness. The solution to our problem, on our part, is to repent. That was the message of the prophets, of John the Baptist and of our Lord Jesus Christ from the very beginning: “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand” (Matt 4:17). In our fallen nature, left to ourselves, we would never repent, because sin by its very nature is turning away from God. God is infinitely kind to “lead” us to want to repent, rather than leaving us to our consequences.

Lord, thank You that Your kindness motivates You more than Your anger.