<p>2:4&nbsp;<i>O</i><i>r do you despise the riches of his goodness</i>- We can despise God&rsquo;s grace if we condemn others; for who are we to say that God in the end will not save the sinners of 1:26-31? By condemning others which is the burden of 2:1-3 we are despising God&rsquo;s grace, limiting it, counting it as not very powerful nor wonderful. And by condemning others we fail to realize that God&rsquo;s limitless grace and goodness- the very grace we wish to limit by condemning others- is in fact leading us personally to repentance from the sins which will in their turn condemn us too.<br /></p><p><i>And forbearance</i>- Gk. self-restraint. God restrains Himself by His grace. Not condemning us is a struggle for Him, and we despise that characteristic of His, ignore and downplay His marvellous internal struggle, if we simply write people off as &lsquo;condemned&rsquo;.<br /></p><p><i>And longsuffering, not knowing that the goodness of God leads you</i>- Gk. &lsquo;is leading you&rsquo;, continuous present- all the while we are despising His grace, thinking others can&rsquo;t possibly be saved by it, He by grace is trying to patiently lead us to repentance. The only other time in Romans the word is used is in Rom. 8:14, where we learn that all the children of God are &ldquo;led by the spirit of God&rdquo; just as God leads, same word, His children unto glory, Heb. 2:10. This leading is therefore specifically to repentance, to actual concrete change in our lives in specific areas, not just a general sense that we are &lsquo;led on the journey of life&rsquo;. It&rsquo;s amazing that God tries to lead even the self-righteous, proud and judgmental of others to repentance. In Rom. 8:14 we read that all God&rsquo;s true children are led of the Spirit. Here in Rom. 2:4 it is the goodness, the kindness, the grace of God which leads us- to the end point of repentance. We are being led somewhere- to change, not just led on some road to Wigan Pier, to nowhere, led for the sake of being led&hellip; a journey for the sake of a journey. It&rsquo;s common to speak of &lsquo;being on a journey&rsquo;, but the question is, are we arriving anywhere, are we coming to radical change,&nbsp;<i>metanoia</i>, or not?<br /></p><p><i>To repentance</i>- from being judgmental? For that is the context of 2:1-3.&nbsp;<br />The context of Paul&rsquo;s challenge about whether we despise God&rsquo;s rich grace is his plea for us not to be judgmental and unmerciful. If we consider our brethren condemned by God and refuse to show them mercy and sympathy, then we are despising God&rsquo;s goodness; we&rsquo;re saying that all the riches of His grace aren&rsquo;t enough to save that person. Thus our condemning of others is effectively a limiting and despising of God&rsquo;s saving grace. All the time we are despising God&rsquo;s grace like this, God&rsquo;s grace is leading continuous present tense&nbsp;<i>us</i>&nbsp;to repentance of the sins which shall condemn&nbsp;<i>us</i>. The implication is that focusing upon judging others results in little attention to one&rsquo;s own need for repentance. This would explain why those so publicly judgmental of others are so often exposed in due course as having hypocritically harboured some secret vice or moral failure in their own lives. Psychologically, this situation develops because their focus is so upon the failures of others that they perceive &ldquo;sin&rdquo; to be something purely external to themselves.&nbsp;</p><p>Paul summarises his argument of Romans chapters 1 and 2 by saying that there he has accused / charged (in a legal sense) all men and women, Jews and Gentiles, of being &ldquo;under judgment for sin&rdquo; (Rom. 3:9 Gk.). With typically devastating logic, he has demonstrated the universal guilt of man. Twice he stresses that whoever we are, we are without excuse (1:20; 2:1). All men have a conscience which is dynamically equivalent to the specific knowledge of God&rsquo;s law; in this sense they are a &ldquo;law unto themselves&rdquo; (2:14- although this phrase is used in a different sense in modern English). &ldquo;By nature&rdquo; (Strong: &lsquo;native disposition, constitution&rsquo;) they have the same moral sense that God&rsquo;s law teaches. This is why human beings have an innate sense of right and wrong- it&rsquo;s why, e.g., there is protest at ethnic cleansing. God is understood / perceived by what He has created, namely our own bodies. But through, e.g., sexual perversion, man has distorted the image and glory of God which he was intended to be, and has worshipped the created body rather than the creator (1:20-23). Fashion, adverts and power clothing all do this, as well as the present obsession with sexual expression. The Lord Himself taught that because we are in the image of God, therein lies an imperative to give our bodies to Him. The goodness of God can lead&nbsp;<i>all men</i>&nbsp;to repentance (Rom. 2:4). God has set a sense of the eternal in the human heart (Ecc. 3:11 AVmg.). An awareness of judgment is alive as a basic instinct in people. God is &ldquo;not far from every one of us&hellip;forasmuch as we are all the offspring of God&rdquo; (Acts 17:27-29- stated in a preaching context), being created in His image.</p>