The Goodness of God Leads a Man There, and Nothing Else Does

He has been afraid of God his entire life and he thinks that is what faith is.

He would not say afraid. He would say he has a healthy respect, or that he takes it seriously, or that he does not take liberties. Those are all true descriptions of what is going on and none of them names it.

What it actually is, when he is honest at three in the morning, is a low continuous hum of expecting to be caught, and a sense that any good stretch is being watched to see when it will end, and a habit of reading anything that goes wrong as related.

And it has worked, in the sense that it has kept him inside the lines for four decades. He has not done the large obvious things. He is, by the standard he was raised with, a success.

What it has not done is change one thing about what he actually wants. Forty years of fear produced a man with excellent behavior and an unchanged interior, and he found that out the first time something got past the fence.

There is one verse that names what actually does the work, and it is not the thing he was raised on.

The verse names the mechanism

Here it is, in the King James Version:

Or despisest thou the riches of his goodness and forbearance and longsuffering; not knowing that the goodness of God leadeth thee to repentance? (Romans 2:4)

The goodness of God leadeth thee to repentance.

Read what is doing the leading. Not the severity of God, which Paul is entirely willing to talk about elsewhere in the same letter. Not the threat, not the consequence, not the fear of exposure.

The goodness. The riches of it, and the forbearance, and the longsuffering, which are three words for the same thing seen from three angles.

That is a claim about mechanism rather than about mood. It says the thing that actually turns a man is kindness, and it says it in the middle of a passage that is otherwise about judgment, which means Paul is not being sentimental. He puts it there on purpose, in the hardest chapter, so nobody can read it as softness.

You have been led by goodness rather than driven by fear and you were never going to be turned by the other one. Romans 2:4 says the goodness of God leadeth thee to repentance, and it is the Holy Spirit rather than a sharper warning who does that leading.

Two kinds of sorrow, and only one goes anywhere

Paul says the same thing from a different direction in a later letter, and he distinguishes two things that feel almost identical from inside.

For godly sorrow worketh repentance to salvation not to be repented of: but the sorrow of the world worketh death. (2 Corinthians 7:10)

Godly sorrow worketh repentance. The sorrow of the world worketh death.

Both are sorrow. Both hurt. From the inside, on a Tuesday night, a man cannot easily tell them apart, and that is why this verse exists.

The difference is in what they produce. One moves a man toward something and the other one exhausts him. A man who has spent forty years feeling terrible and is no closer to anything has probably been running the second kind and calling it the first.

And John, in the plainest sentence in the New Testament about this:

There is no fear in love; but perfect love casteth out fear: because fear hath torment. He that feareth is not made perfect in love. (1 John 4:18)

Fear hath torment. Torment is a strong word and it is the one chosen.

Which does not mean a man who is afraid is failing. It means fear is not the finished condition, and it is not the engine, and it was never supposed to be doing the work it has been doing.

You have a sorrow available that goes somewhere and you were never meant to run on the other one. 2 Corinthians 7:10 distinguishes the two by what they produce and 1 John 4:18 says perfect love casts out fear, and it is His Spirit who is named as the one who sheds that love abroad in a man's heart.

And if the exhaustion has gone past tiredness into somewhere darker, if it has reached not wanting to be here, that is not a thing to hold alone. A doctor, a counselor, somebody you trust who will pick up the phone. In the United States the 988 crisis line answers day and night. Nobody is asked to carry that by himself.

The strangest reason in the Psalms

There is a line in the Psalms that says something so backward that most people read it twice.

But there is forgiveness with thee, that thou mayest be feared. (Psalm 130:4)

That thou mayest be feared.

You would expect the opposite. You would expect: there is judgment with thee, that thou mayest be feared. Forgiveness ought to reduce fear, on any ordinary logic.

The psalm says the forgiveness is what produces the fear, and the fear in question is the good kind, the awe a man has in the presence of something he cannot account for.

That reorders everything. It means the reverence a man was trying to manufacture out of dread is actually produced by mercy, and that he has been trying to get to it by the road that does not go there.

You have a reverence that comes out of being forgiven and you were never going to reach it by dread. Psalm 130:4 says there is forgiveness with thee, that thou mayest be feared, and it is the Holy Spirit who makes that inversion something a man experiences rather than only notices.

What it looks like when it happens

And a scene, because this is easier to see than to define.

When Simon Peter saw it, he fell down at Jesus' knees, saying, Depart from me; for I am a sinful man, O Lord. (Luke 5:8)

Read what caused that. Nothing bad had happened. Jesus had just filled his boat with fish after a night of catching nothing. It was a kindness, and it was an unnecessary one, and it was aimed at Peter's actual trade.

And the response to the kindness was the deepest self knowledge Peter had ever had, on the spot, on his knees, with no threat anywhere in the vicinity.

That is Romans 2:4 happening in a boat. The goodness led him there. Nothing else in the scene could have.

And notice what Jesus does not do with it. He does not agree with the assessment and He does not argue with it. He says fear not; from henceforth thou shalt catch men, and puts him to work.

You are able to be turned by a kindness and you were never going to be improved by the fear you have been running on. Luke 5:8 has a man's whole self knowledge arrive out of an act of generosity, and it is His Spirit who makes an ordinary kindness carry that weight in a man's own week.