The Kindness of God Leads to Repentance

The verb Paul uses, kataphroneis, is the word for despising, which the lexicon glosses as to think against, and the Berean text renders it disregard. It is in the present tense and the singular, addressed to one reader.

Charles Spurgeon's sermon Earnest Expostulation, No. 1714 of the Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit, turns on this point, since in the verse the apostle "fixes his eyes upon a single person".

What the reader disregards is the riches, ploutos, of three things in God, which are His kindness (chrestotes), His tolerance (anoche) and His patience (makrothumia). The lexicon glosses anoche as forbearance and as a delay of punishment.

John Wesley, in his Explanatory Notes upon the New Testament, wrote that the three "are afterwards comprised in the single word goodness".

In the second half of the verse Paul uses the adjective, to chreston, the kind thing of God, which the Berean text renders God's kindness. The verb for leads is agei, a present indicative of the word the lexicon glosses as to lead, bring or carry. The reader disregards the kindness while not realizing, agnoon, what it is for.

God's patience and the wrath it holds back are taught in full on The Patience and the Wrath of God.

In Romans 11 Paul speaks to Gentile believers as wild olive shoots grafted in among branches that were broken off because of unbelief (Romans 11:13, Romans 11:17 and Romans 11:20).

The word for severity, apotomia, is glossed in the lexicon as decisiveness or rigor, and the New Testament uses it only in this verse, twice. Paul asks the reader to look at both in one God, the severity on those who fell and the kindness on those who stand by faith.

Adam Clarke, in his Commentary on the Bible, wrote that the call to behold the goodness of God "is frequent among the Jewish writers". He added that they use it "to call the attention of men to particular displays of God’s mercy, especially towards those who are singularly unworthy".

Matthew Henry, in his Commentary on the Whole Bible, read the severity shown to Israel as a rejection that "is not final", and he wrote that "mercy is remembered in the midst of wrath".

The verb of the condition, epimenes, is a present subjunctive of the word the lexicon glosses as to remain and, figuratively, to persevere. Readers divide over whether the warning that a believer may be cut off can be fulfilled in one who truly believes. Theophylact, in his Commentary on Romans, observed that Paul named the goodness of God where he might have named the reader's merit, "for all is the work of God's grace".

The verb appeared, epephane, is the word the lexicon glosses as to shine upon or to become visible. Paul uses it in the chapter before of the grace of God, which "has appeared, bringing salvation to everyone" (Titus 2:11).

The lexicon glosses philanthropia as fondness of mankind or benevolence, and it gives the English word philanthropy beside the gloss. Adam Clarke regretted that the word had been "entirely lost by a paraphrastical translation", and he wrote, "Philanthropy is a character which God gives here to himself".

Verse 5 sets the righteous deeds we had done aside as the ground of the saving and names His mercy, eleos, in their place. John Gill, in his Exposition of the New Testament, wrote that the kindness appeared when these people "were in the full career of sin, and so had done no preparatory works".

The means Paul names are the washing of new birth, palingenesia, a word the lexicon glosses as spiritual rebirth, and the renewal by the Holy Spirit, whom God poured out abundantly through Jesus Christ. John Wesley's note on the passage gives justification as the first effect, which he described as being "pardoned and accepted through the alone merits of Christ, not from any desert in us".

Ephesians 2:7 uses the same noun, chrestotes, for the kindness God shows believers in Christ.

The next two verses, on salvation by grace through faith as the gift of God, are taught on Saved by Grace Through Faith.