2:4
“God will forgive me”, “That’s His job!” “Do you presume on the kindness, forbearance and patience?” God is indeed kind, forbearing and patient, but we easily draw the conclusion, usually implicitly, rather than explicitly, that that means I can get away with sin. The correct conclusion is that God’s kindness is meant to lead me to repentance. This needs to be a part of our thinking at all times, it also needs to be part of our attitude in evangelism. There is a common thought these days that we must not mention sin, for it might put people off! Might make them feel guilty. Part of the purpose of the gospel is to make us aware of our guilt! Now when someone is convicted there are essentially two things that can happen. One is that they will react against it and harden their hearts. The other is that the Holy Spirit is at work in them and it leads them to repentance, and so to receive forgiveness from God.
2:5
“Because of your hard and impertinent heart you are storing up wrath for yourself”. This is addressed to those who were confident of their own righteousness, especially the Jews. They stressed how bad other people were, neglecting their own sinfulness. While this may make someone feel better for a while, it is a foolish road to take. If we deny our own sinfulness then all we are doing is storing up wrath for ourselves. For on the “day of wrath” God’s righteousness judgement will be revealed. In our day we could apply this to matters of sexual behaviour. Those of us who hold to the clear Biblical teaching on these matters are branded as haters, and those who support the modern “morality” (which is actually immorality) consider themselves morally superior. There will come a day when God’s righteous judgements are made known, and everyone will see the truth on that day.
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