God’s Kindness, Our Judgment

Romans 1-4 

“They have become filled with every kind of wickedness, evil, greed and depravity. They are full of envy, murder, strife, deceit and malice. They are gossips, slanderers…You, therefore, have no excuse, you who pass judgment on someone else, for at whatever point you judge the other, you are condemning yourself, because you who pass judgment do the same things…Or do you show contempt for the riches of his kindness, tolerance and patience, not realizing that God’s kindness leads you to repentance?”

Romans 1:29; 2:1, 4

Paul’s point is that we all are depraved and desperately in need of God’s grace and kindness before we repent. On the redemptive side of repentance, we can look back on others with critical hearts full of judgment, forgetting that we too have the capacity to sin in the same ways. Rather than judgment, we must appeal to those same riches of God’s kindness, tolerance, and patience as we share the gospel of salvation. It is kindness and mercy that leads us to repentance.

How rich in those qualities are we becoming?

“Lord Jesus, I repent for judgmental attitudes toward those who have not yet repented and received your kindness, mercy, and grace. Fill me with your kindness so I look more like you.”