Goodness Leading to Repentance

“Or do you despise the riches of His goodness, forbearance, and longsuffering, not knowing that the goodness of God leads you to repentance?” Romans 2:4

 

It is very common for men to lay the blame of their sinful condition upon God; to say that they are just as God made them. This kind of talk is increasing, and the logical result is the denial of any future punishment for sin. But that such a position is directly contrary to Bible teaching, it needs only this verse to disprove. God cannot deny himself, and therefore he cannot work at cross-purposes. He cannot at one time deliberately set about to undo that which he has once done. That he has deliberately set about the salvation of men, the entire Bible attests. He manifested his hatred for sin, and his desire to rescue men from it, by giving his Son to die. This was the supreme manifestation of his goodness to lead men to repentance. All this effort to save men from sin is utterly inconsistent with the theory that God is any way responsible for sin.

The apostle tells us plainly that “just as through one man sin entered the world, and death through sin, and thus death spread to all men, because all sinned.” Romans 5:12. The terrible depth of sin into which man fell, and the first act of God’s goodness to lead him from it, are brought to view in Genesis 3:15, where these words of the Lord to the serpent—Satan—are recorded: “And I will put enmity
 between you and the woman, and between your seed and her Seed.” The fact that God had to put enmity between man and Satan shows that in the fall all of man’s natural enmity to Satan had been obliterated.

God made man in his own image, both physically and spiritually; but when man yielded to the tempter, he deliberately rejected God, and became, body and soul, the servant of Satan. In that condition all his desires would have been for evil, and, like Satan and his angels, he would have had not the shadow of a desire to do right. Of course a simple offer of salvation from sin could not have been any benefit to a man in such a condition. “Why is there in the hand of a fool the purchase price of wisdom, since he has no heart for it?” Proverbs 17:16. Or, of what use to offer freedom from sin to a man incapable of appreciating goodness? Therefore as the first act in the great plan of salvation, God put into the heart of man an enmity against Satan. It was purely an act of divine love. And since this enmity has been a part of the inheritance of every one of Adam’s race, it follows that not a man has lived in earth, no matter how wicked, who was not just to the extent that he ever had a thought of goodness, a subject of the grace of God.

It is this enmity implanted in the heart of men by God, upon which the Spirit works when it strives with men. It is this seed which the Spirit waters into fruitfulness, in those who will yield to its influence. Thus the Spirit of God, through His goodness, is leading all men toward repentance. God “desires all men to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth.” 1 Timothy 2:4. But all men will not be saved. Thousands