How has he been kind to you? He has made you; he has formed your constitution. He has with care fashioned you as you are. He has given you a conscious mind – you have one of the most unfathomable things, consciousness. No one can explain that. There is no scientific explanation for it. There is much wrestling with it, much seeking to understand it, but you can't. He has given you a power to love and be happy and to have joy. Yes, to know sorrow too. He has made you complex. You've got your distribution of capacities. Maybe you've got an amazing memory. Maybe you're very good at figures and business and judgments. Maybe you have a huge artistic streak and you can visualise and reproduce and cast things as you wish. You have your own unique distribution of capacities and abilities.
Or do you despise the limitless wealth of God's kindness and goodness to you as an individual? His forbearance and longsuffering: are they two words for the same thing? No. Forbearance has in mind the amount God puts up with in you, the magnitude of your hostility to him, the sheer size of your indifference towards him and the insults you throw at him by ignoring him. Forbearance is the size of the offence. Longsuffering is the long committing of the offences. He has put up with the size of your offensiveness and the length of it. We might be patient with somebody who is very irritating, but may not be hurting us. It becomes longsuffering when we are exercising patience in spite of the fact they are hurting us, and giving considerable aggravation and pain. His kindness, his riches have flowed towards you for twenty, thirty, even seventy years, and still no homage, no thanks, no love, no study of him, no service of him, no praise of him, no seeking after him. Do you despise the fullness, the riches of his goodness, the kindness of God to every rebel sinner all the way up to their death?
And then there are other things in his kindness. He has sent people into your lives – maybe your parents, maybe a friend from time to time – who have said in so many words, ‘Do you walk with God? Do you know the Saviour? Do you know Christ?’ And they've told you how they came to know him, and you've scorned them and rejected them. That's the kindness of God, sending the messengers, making you aware.
Do you have a false security? Because God has not judged you up till now, you say to yourself, ‘I know people who have done terrible things, and they are prospering in every way. They are brimming with health, and they are getting bonuses, and everything is going right for them.’ So do you misinterpret that, and think there will not be any judgment in the future; God will not finally hold us to account? You may be completely misreading what the apostle means by ‘his goodness’ in letting you off so long. It is not his decision never to judge you; it is your opportunity to think, to reflect, to show reverence and respect to your Creator, to come on your knees and to repent. As unbelievers, our minds are so full of suspicion towards God, that we fail to see the goodness of God to us in delaying judgment.
Why is justice delayed? That is beautifully answered here. The immediate context here is, why has the judgment of the Jews been delayed? If what Paul has been saying is right, and only a minority of them really believe the word of God, and the majority of them have been absolutely resistant from generation to generation, then it is natural that they will be thinking to themselves, ‘God will never judge us.’ Why doesn’t God judge them instead of leaving them to think that they are fine and they are acceptable? Paul’s answer applies to us too. Do you Jewish people not realise, that down the centuries God has borne with you, he has put up with so much from you. He has gone on delivering your nation, delivering you from your enemies. Sometimes he has punished you, but he has always relented, and given you new opportunities. He has done this to bring you to repent, to melt you down.
It is exactly the same for us. When we are away from God, it never occurs to us that we are allowed to have our three score years and ten, and more, even though we reject him, because in this world it is the riches of God’s goodness, the magnitude and the extent of his lovingkindness that we so often experience. These are not slam gifts, and they are given with his full awareness. That delay is the greatest of encouragements to come an ask for the forgiveness which we need so much. He is determined, even if the whole world rejects him, to carry on bringing individuals here and there to forgiveness, and into the kingdom of grace.
But then we ask another question: ‘Why do people not respond?’ Is it because sometimes the message is not put clearly? Is it because they did not have a chance? Yes, the message may not be clear, and preachers are responsible for that, but the root cause is our despising, thinking down, the riches of his goodness, and taking advantage of grace to go on sinning. Let me tell you why people don’t respond, he seems to say. Not for any intellectual reason. Not because they are conscientiously unable to believe. Not because they have got a problem, and it seems to suggest there may not be a God, or the gospel may not be true. You are determined not to listen to a message like this, or not to take it seriously, because of hard-heartedness, unreasonableness. It is human beings on the run from God, and determined not to look or to listen. We say, ‘I want to live for myself. I want to have as much as I can in this world. I do not want to be interfered with by God.’ The intellectual questions are produced as excuses to support that attitude. No wonder we need the power of the Spirit to break our stubborn hearts to bring us to Christ.