Or is it that you think slightingly of His infinite goodness, forbearance and patience, unaware that the goodness of God is gently drawing you to repentance?
Jew and Gentile are on precisely the same footing; for the same Lord is Lord over all, and is infinitely kind to all who call upon Him for deliverance.
Notice therefore God's kindness and God's severity. On those who have fallen His severity has descended, but upon you His kindness has come, provided that you do not cease to respond to that kindness. Otherwise you will be cut off also.
Oh, how inexhaustible are God's resources and God's wisdom and God's knowledge! How impossible it is to search into His decrees or trace His footsteps!
He it is whom God put forward as a Mercy-seat, rendered efficacious through faith in His blood, in order to demonstrate His righteousness – because of the passing over, in God's forbearance, of the sins previously committed–
the eyes of your understanding being enlightened so that you may know what is the hope which His call to you inspires, what the wealth of the glory of His inheritance in God's people,
To me who am less than the least of all God's people has this work been graciously entrusted–to proclaim to the Gentiles the Good News of the exhaustless wealth of Christ,
to whom it was His will to make known how vast a wealth of glory for the Gentile world is implied in this truth–the truth that `Christ is in you, the hope of glory.'
in order that their hearts may be cheered, they themselves being welded together in love and enjoying all the advantages of a reasonable certainty, till at last they attain the full knowledge of God's truth, which is Christ Himself.
But mercy was shown me in order that in me as the foremost of sinners Christ Jesus might display the fulness of His long-suffering patience as an example to encourage those who would afterwards be resting their faith on Him with a view to the Life of the Ages.
Impress on those who are rich in the present age that they must not be haughty nor set their hopes on riches –that unstable foundation– but on God who provides us richly with all things for our enjoyment.
who in ancient times had been disobedient, while God's longsuffering was patiently waiting in the days of Noah during the building of the Ark, in which a few persons –eight in number– were brought safely through the water.
And always regard the patient forbearance of our Lord as salvation, as our dear brother Paul also has written to you in virtue of the wisdom granted to him.
The Lord is not slow in fulfilling His promise, in the sense in which some men speak of slowness. But He bears patiently with you, His desire being that no one should perish but that all should come to repentance.
I am now standing at the door and am knocking. If any one listens to My voice and opens the door, I will go in to be with him and will feast with him, and he shall feast with Me.