Romans 2:4 puts the matter of God’s common grace to you and others in the form of a question: “Do you show contempt for the riches of his kindness, tolerance and patience?” The answer is, of course you do, unless you have repented of your sin and turned back toward God through faith in Jesus Christ. By nature human beings are filled with ingratitude. By nature you show “contempt” for God’s kindness. Yet it is precisely this kindness that God is using to bring you to repentance.
I quote again from Barnhouse,
To despise the riches of God’s grace is the blackest of all sins. It far outweighs the sins that are a violation of righteousness. Fallen man has a fallen nature. That is why the Lord seemed to overlook the outbreaks of the flesh, knowing man’s frame and remembering that he is but dust (Ps. 103:14). You who boast, perhaps, that you are not guilty of the great fleshly sins, should realize that the despising of God’s goodness is a sin that far transcends an act that might be called a crime under human law.
Why is God so good toward the lost? He declares that the purpose of the riches of his goodness, forbearance and longsuffering is to lead man to repentance; and he further declares that man does not know the object of God’s goodness. Is this not a further picture of the state of man by nature? Can it not be seen that the dark ignorance of unbelief has brought a further fruit of ignorance of the grace of God? You are in good health? Why does God permit it? The answer is that he wants you to turn to him and acknowledge his goodness and accept the riches that he has for you. You have other blessings that come from the common grace of God. The purpose of such riches is to cause you to turn about-face and come to him for further blessing.1
I have spoken of “common grace” in the sense that God’s genuine affection has been poured out upon all persons regardless of who they are or what wrongs they may have done. As Jesus said, God “causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous” (Matt. 5:45). Common grace? Yes! But in another sense, it is not at all common. It is most uncommon. It is extraordinary, and it leads us to the most uncommon or extraordinary love of all. We find it in Romans 5:6-8. “At just the right time, when we were still powerless, Christ died for the ungodly. Very rarely will anyone die for a righteous man, though for a good man someone might possibly dare to die. But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.”
It is “while we were still sinners” that God has done everything for us, of course. But here is love at its fullest. It is while we were still sinners and, in fact, oblivious both to the extent of our sin and to the uncommon kindness of God toward us in all things, that God sent His own son, the Lord Jesus Christ, to die for us.
1Donald Grey Barnhouse, God’s Wrath, The Book of Romans, vol. 2 (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1953), 27.
