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Romans 2:4   Or do you show contempt for the riches of his kindness, forbearance and patience, not realising that God’s kindness is intended to lead you to repentance?

The Apostle Paul was very familiar with the Jewish mindset, because he himself had been one of the shapers of it – an extremely zealous Pharisee (see Philippians 3)!  This mindset was so intent on earning acceptance by God through Law-keeping and good works that it had no concept of God’s grace and the need for repentance.  This is sad, because the [OT] Scriptures, which they studied and held in such high regard, were replete with references to our sinful condition and need for God’s loving kindness and mercy (ches-ed) and grace.  In Psalm 130, which they sang every time they went up to Jerusalem for a Temple festival, they would voice the words, “Out of the depths I cry to you, LORD; Lord, hear my voice. Let your ears be attentive to my cry for mercy. If you, LORD, kept a record of sins, Lord, who could stand?  But with you there is forgiveness, therefore you are feared.”

But when God finally sent them their Rescuer, their Saviour, they failed to recognise him; they were looking for someone to save them from subservience to other nations, not to save them from their sin.  Jesus touched on their totally wrong mindset when he said to them: ““It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick.  I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance.” (Luke 5:31-32).  The very first step towards being saved is to recognise that we are sinners who need to repent.

As Paul writes to the Early Christians in Rome, he is leading up to the truth that “All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and All [Gentile and Jew] are justified freely [and only] by his grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus” (Romans 3:23-24); and in the process he points out in Chapter 2 the disqualifying problem of the Jewish mindset.

But we too, coming out of generations of ‘Christendom’, can fall into the same trap of such a mindset.  I often quote the well-known response of Dr John Simpson, the British Royal Physician to Queen Victoria and discoverer of chloroform.  When Simpson was asked the ‘leading’ question in an interview, “What is the greatest discovery you ever made?”, to the interviewer’s great surprise, instead of saying ‘Chloroform’, the famous doctor replied, “That I was a sinner who needs a Saviour!”.  Until we all make this discovery, we can have no part in the salvation Jesus came to bring us, because we are showing “contempt for the riches of [God’s] kindness, forbearance and patience, not realising that God’s kindness is intended to lead [us] to repentance.”  Let us not be guilty of such contempt and so miss out on God’s gracious gift of Eternal Life.

– Bruce Christian