Romans 2:4 Or despise you the riches of his goodness and forbearance and long-suffering… Adversity has its place in the salutary economy of probation, but God's voice may be discerned in prosperity at least as much as in adversity, and much more frequently. The latter is His common way of addressing us; to the other mode He only resorts when for some reason it is necessary or expedient. I. HOW MAY WE ABUSE THE GOODNESS OF GOD? We do so — 1. When we accept His gifts but ignore Him. How common a thing it is for men to enjoy the good things of this life, without thinking for one moment that they come from God! How many of us take our portion without a thought of thankfulness, as though it came from that office keeper, Nature, instead of from our Father's hands! How does it cut us to the heart when our gifts elicit no grateful recognition! And where is there a man that would go on from year to year repeating his kindnesses where no sort of notice was taken of him? And what do men gain by this? nay, what do they not lose? Should we enjoy His gifts any the less if we took them as coming from the Giver, and found in each an occasion for fresh manifestation of grateful love? Where we receive the gifts of God, but disown the Giver, the gift loses the most precious part of its value. It ceases to be a gift at all to our higher nature. 2. When we accept His gifts, and find in them a substitute for Himself, and so many reasons why we should ignore Him. He gives us many good things, that we think we can dispense with Him, the Giver; so much gratification, that we have no need to seek a truer and deeper gratification in His love. But when His gifts thus become substitutes for Himself, and you turn away from Him because you enjoy them, surely you are making it necessary for Him to take them away. Rather than let you lose all, in your folly and blindness He may see fit to take away some of the many good things that you enjoy. Why not hear His voice in all that He gives you, and let the goodness of God lead you to repentance? 3. By counting upon the continuance of His goodness, in order that we may go on sinning against Him. This is the very worst abuse, and it is to this that St. Paul here specially refers — the abuse of God's forbearance, who, though provoked, in the magnanimity of His nature goes on forbearing to smite when smaller natures must inevitably have lost patience long since. He waits because He loves; and yet this is the very characteristic that men count upon in order to sin against Him, as they hope, with impunity. Were it clearly understood by any that God's long suffering would reach its term this very night, where is there one who would dare to defy the Majesty of heaven? Surely there cannot be any meanness so repulsive. Common manhood should lead us to say, "I can't be at one and the same moment the pensioner of God's bounty and the enemy of His authority." But what are the facts of the case? What is more common than to meet with utterly godless people, who have the fullest intention of turning to God some day or other, most probably in a dying hour! But if we can't be put out of conceit with this, by considering its meanness and unmanliness, it may be well to remember that God's goodness is not weakness, that even His forbearance must have its term. "Because I have called, and ye refused," etc. (Proverbs 1:24-28). He who attempts to mock God finds in the end that he is only mocked himself. It is not that you evade or escape the penalty of your base ingratitude and perfidy, but it is that you treasure it up (ver. 5). Just think of the possibility of laying up treasure in hell! II. ITS USE. The history of sin dates from the first suspicious thought of God. This thought Satan delights in cherishing, until those who yield to his influence get to think of God as if He were a pitiless tyrant, ever ready to diminish our happiness. On the other hand, a real repentance begins with the repudiation of all such false views of God, and to such a repentance the goodness of God, revealed in all His dealings with us, is intended to lead; and surely it will if we will only let it speak to our heart. How can God be stern and unsympathetic when He gives us so much to enjoy? 1. If He provides for the gratification of every sense with which He endows us, multiplying the fair sights and sweet sounds of nature, and sometimes stirring all our being with the vision of the beautiful or the sublime, how can He be the enemy of our happiness? 2. Or, if He enriches you with all that social wealth accumulated through the ages, so constituting society that man may become a source of untold gratification to his fellow man, surely His goodness in all this must needs show that He is the Friend and not the enemy of human happiness. Is it not to Him that we owe music, art, literature, science, and philosophy? and how much of enjoyment do all these add to life? 3. It is from Him that we derive both our faculties of loving and all those tender relations of home and friendship which call forth our love and which contribute so much to increase the joy of life; surely, then, we wrong Him when we shrink from Him as though He were the enemy of our happiness. 4. But is there not one supreme manifestation of His goodness which should move us more than all the rest and bring us to repentance? "God so loved the world," etc. He let His own Son suffer to spare you suffering! Let His goodness carry the day triumphantly. (W. Hay Aitken, M. A.) Parallel Verses KJV: Or despisest thou the riches of his goodness and forbearance and longsuffering; not knowing that the goodness of God leadeth thee to repentance? |
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