or despisest thou the riches of his goodness, and forbearance, and long-suffering, not knowing that the goodness of God leads thee to repentance?
Paul turns from open sinners to the man who condemns them. This verse strips that man of his last defence. It asks what he is doing with the kindness he has been living on all along. Where the ESV says he "presumes on" that kindness, older wording says he despises "the riches of his goodness" — that is the phrasing the writers below use.
Who Is Being Addressed
The verse follows a chain of questions aimed at someone who feels safe because he disapproves of other people's sins. One writer traces the shift from the previous verse:
In verse 3 his thoughts tell him he is safe from the judgment of God. In verse 4 his thoughts despise the goodness of God. How contemptible the pride of man!
Learning is no shield here. Kelly presses the same charge against philosophy:
The truth is that philosophy does not know God. So it easily forgets His judgment, and it can never grasp His love. It is self-satisfied and has man for its object, not God. So it despises His lavish goodness and His patience, and it never learns the lesson of His purpose in it all.
Why Judgment Is Delayed
Three words stack up here: kindness, forbearance, patience. All three describe a God who holds back. The delay has a purpose:
God's judgment will most surely come, though in His goodness it may be long delayed. In His goodness God holds back from judging and bears with evil for a long time. It was so in the days of Noah, when God waited one hundred and twenty years before He sent the judgment of the flood... Because He holds back, men think God will never judge. Because He bears with them so long, men think God does not care about evil. So men despise the goodness of God. They do not see why He holds back and bears with them: it is to give men space to repent.
The same patience can harden a man instead:
With Pharaoh, what hardened his heart was simply God's patient mercy (Ex. 8:15; Ex. 9:34); so what should have done good turns to evil again and again, because man's will rebels against his Maker. Treasures of mercy are stored up for the future as treasures of wrath.
Which Way the Causation Runs
The verse sets the order: kindness comes first and repentance follows. Reverse that order and the gospel is lost:
Many preach repentance as works for salvation, as something that comes before faith in the riches of God's goodness. But it is when we know and believe the goodness of God in sending His beloved Son to die for our sins that this leads us to repentance and produces it in us. Indeed, we can only know how deep our sin and guilt go when we know the depths He had to go down into to save us... it is not our repentance that leads to, or causes, God's goodness to us. It is God's goodness that leads to, and causes, repentance in us.
Fear alone does not produce repentance. Another writer explains why:
But repentance is far from the natural heart. There may well be fear of punishment. But being broken and sorry for sin is foreign to the proud will of man. Nothing will, or can lead him to it but the goodness of God — goodness that has melted and subdued many a proud, stubborn heart.
What Repentance Is Not
People have drawn wrong conclusions from this verse about what repentance is. Kelly answers two of them:
Different schools of doctrine have drawn a wrong conclusion, one from Romans 2:4, the other from 2 Corinthians 7:10. One side thinks that seeing God's goodness is repentance. The other side thinks it is godly sorrow for sin. Scripture says nothing of the sort in either case. It shows that repentance always involves a change of mind, but goes much further. It is a matter of conscience in the light of God, not just a work of the mind.
The Two Outcomes
Everything hangs on what a man does with this kindness. He either lets it lead him, or he refuses it:
But this very chapter says that if men will not let the goodness of God take them by the hand and lead them to repentance, the severity of God will seize them and drag them to judgment.
Summary
- Aimed — The verse targets the man who judges others and thinks he is safe. He despises the very kindness he lives on.
- Delayed — God holds back to give space to repent. His patience is not proof that judgment will never come.
- Led — Goodness comes first and produces repentance; repentance does not earn the goodness.
- Melted — A man can fear punishment and still not be broken. Only kindness subdues a proud will.
- Or Judged — Kindness either takes a man by the hand to repentance, or he despises it and stores up wrath instead.