God’s Kindness Leads to Repentance

Or do you presume on the riches of his kindness and forbearance and patience, not knowing that God’s kindness is meant to lead you to repentance?

Romans 2:4 ESV

Unfortunately, most of us know a parent who wants to be their child’s best friend.

They let them get away with everything or give them whatever they want, and it usually makes us mad. We look at the child and call him or her “spoiled”. We may say “they sure will be in for a shock when they get into the real world,” or even “that the child should be more grateful and learn that when they do wrong they won’t be rewarded”.

The parent’s kindness toward the child isn’t helping them at all. On the outside it might look like kindness, but in actuality, it is hurting the child. It makes us angry just thinking about these people.

Many in the world expect God to act like this parent we all hate. They look at the hurt in the world or catastrophic events and ask, “Where is God?”. They hold the belief that this God cannot truly be a loving God when these devastating events occur.

Yet, when good things happen, when there’s money in the bank and food on the table, there is no change in their life, no repentance. They continue to live in sin.

Romans tells us that God’s kindness toward us should lead us to repentance, not continual sin as the world does. When we truly understand how the God who made the world gives every good gift to us, we try to live a life that is pleasing to him. Just as the world only seems to look to God when the bad happens,we are just as guilty as Christians.

It is only when things are going wrong for us that we examine our lives to see if there is any sin which needs to be rooted out.

Many times when things are going good we ignore the the sin in our life because we think God somehow doesn’t see it and is happier with what we are doing that is right instead of wrong. Examine yourself in this light then, in good times and bad repent of your sin.

Meditate on God’s kindness today and let it lead you to repentance.