Willet:

Quest. 6. Of the reasons why the Lord uses patience and forbearance towards sinners.

1. The Apostle uses three words, chrestotes, goodness, bountifulness, which is seen in the general benefits, which God vouchsafes to the wicked, as in granting them the Sunshine and rain, and such other temporal blessings: anoche, patience and forbearance, which is in bearing with the wicked, and not punishing them in their sins: makrothumia, longamanity, and long sufferance: when God still defers his punishments, though men heap sin to sin: the first and chief cause of this long sufferance, is the expectation of men’s repentance, that they should thereby come to amendment of life, as S. Peter says, 2. epist. c.3.9 “God is patient toward us, and would have no man to perish, but would have all men come to repentance.” 2. As God’s mercy and goodness herein appears so also the malice of men, in abusing the Lord’s patience, and their more just condemnation in the end is made manifest, as the old world was most justly destroyed, after they had been warned an 120. years by the preaching of Noah. 3. God takes occasion by the malice, impenitence, and hardness of heart in the wicked, to show his powerful and wonderful, as Pharaoh’s hardness of heart gave occasion to the Lord, to show his wondrous works in Egypt. 4. While the impenitent abusing God’s longamanity, are more hardened in their sins, others in the mean time make good use of the divine patience, and are converted unto repentance: as in Egypt, though Pharaoh became worse, yet many of the Egyptians were humbled by these plagues, and were turned unto God, and joined unto his people. 5. God uses patience toward some, for the example, encouragement, and confirmation of others, that they should not despair of the goodness of God: as S. Paul says, that “Jesus Christ might first show on me all long suffering, unto the example of them, that in time to come, shall believe in him to eternal life,” 1. Timoth. 1.16.

Quest. 7. Whether the leading of men to repentance by God’s long sufferance, argues that they are not reprobate.

It will be here objected, that seeing the long sufferance of God calls all unto repentance, and whom he would have repent, he would have saved: it seems then, that none are rejected or reprobate, whom the Lord so invites and calls unto repentance.

Answer. 1. Such as are effectually called unto repentance by God’s patience and long suffering, are indeed elected: for the elect only are effectually called to repentance, but such as abuse God’s patience, and are impenitent still, may not withstanding be in the state of reprobation: for though the same means be offered unto them to bring them to repentance, yet they have not the grace: the decree then concerning the rejecting of such impenitent persons, and the offer of such means, as might lead them unto repentance, may very well stand together: because it is of their own hardness of heart that the means offered are not effectual. 2. And thus also another objection may be answered, that if it be God’s will, that such should come to repentance, whether the malice of man therein can resist the will of God: for, if it were God’s absolute will and good pleasure, that such should come unto repentance, no man could resist it: God is able to change and turn the most impenitent and hard heart, if it pleased him: But here we must distinguish between effectual calling, which always takes place and none can hinder it, and calling not effectual, yet sufficient if men did not put in a bar by their own hardness of heart: God’s absolute will then is not resisted, when men come not to repentance: for his will is to leave such to themselves by his just judgment: and not to give them of his effectual grace, Faius. Now hereof no hereof no other reason can be given, why God does not give his effectual grace to all, but his good pleasure, as our Blessed Savior says, Matth. 11.26. “It is so Father, because thy good pleasure is such.

Source: Andrew Willet, Hexapla: That is, A Six-fold Commentarie upon the most Diuine Epistle of the holy Apostle. S. Pavl to the Romanes (Printed by Cantrell Legge, Printer to the the Vniversitie of Cambridge, 1611), 104-105.

Trapp:

Verse 4. The goodness of God] Gr. His native goodness, ready to be employed to the behoof and benefit of the creature, Tit. 3.4. Now is the beam of the Sun shining on fire, does discourage the burning of that; so the shining of God’s mercies on us should dishearten and extinguish lust in us. This is so equal, and needful a duty, that Peter picks this flower out of Paul’s garden, as one of the choicest, and urges it upon those who he writes, 2 Pet. 3.15.

John Trapp, A Commentary or Exposition Upon all the Books of the New Testament (London: Printed by R.W. and are to be sold by Nath. Ekins, at the Gun in Pauls Church-yeard, 1656), 621.

Romans 2:4:

III. He draws up a charge against them (v. 4, 5) consisting of two branches:—

1. (v. 4), the riches of his goodness. This is especially applicable to the Jews, who had singular tokens of the divine favour. Means are mercies, and the more light we sin against the more love we sin against. Low and mean thoughts of the divine goodness are at the bottom of a great deal of sin. There is in every wilful sin an interpretative contempt of the goodness of God; it is spurning at his bowels, particularly the goodness of his patience, his forbearance and long-suffering, taking occasion thence to be so much the more bold in sin, Eccl. viii. 11. Not knowing, that is, not considering, not knowing practically and with application, that the goodness of God leadeth thee, the design of it is to lead thee, to repentance. It is not enough for us to know that God’s goodness leads to repentance, but we must know that it leads us—thee in particular. See here what method God takes to bring sinners to repentance. He leads them, not drives them like beasts, but leads them like rational creatures, allures them (Hos. ii. 14); and it is goodness that leads, bands of love, Hos. xi. 4. Compare Jer. xxxi. 3. The consideration of the goodness of God, his common goodness to all (the goodness of his providence, of his patience, and of his offers), should be effectual to bring us all to repentance; and the reason why so many continue in impenitency is because they do not know and consider this.

2. Provoking the wrath of God, v. 5. The rise of this provocation is a hard and impenitent heart; and the ruin of sinners is their walking after such a heart, being led by it. To sin is to walk in the way of the heart; and when that is a hard and impenitent heart (contracted hardness by long custom, besides that which is natural), how desperate must the course needs be! The provocation is expressed by treasuring up wrath. Those that go on in a course of sin are treasuring up unto themselves wrath. A treasure denotes abundance. It is a treasure that will be spending to eternity, and yet never exhausted; and yet sinners are still adding to it as to a treasure. Every wilful sin adds to the score, and will inflame the reckoning; it brings a branch to their wrath, as some read that (Ezek. viii. 17), they put the branch to their nose. A treasure denotes secrecy. The treasury or magazine of wrath is the heart of God himself, in which it lies hid, as treasures in some secret place sealed up; see Deut. xxxii. 34; Job xiv. 17. But withal it denotes reservation to some further occasion; as the treasures of the hail are reserved against the day of battle and war, Job xxxviii. 22, 23. These treasures will be broken open like the fountains of the great deep, Gen. vii. 11. They are treasured up against the day of wrath, when they will be dispensed by the wholesale, poured out by full vials. Though the present day be a day of patience and forbearance towards sinners, yet there is a day of wrath coming—wrath, and nothing but wrath. Indeed, every day is to sinners a day of wrath, for God is angry with the wicked every day (Ps. vii. 11), but there is the great day of wrath coming, Rev. vi. 17. And that day of wrath will be the day of the revelation of the righteous judgment of God. The wrath of God is not like our wrath, a heat and passion; no, fury is not in him (Isa. xxvii. 4): but it is a righteous judgment, his will to punish sin, because he hates it as contrary to his nature. This righteous judgment of God is now many times concealed in the prosperity and success of sinners, but shortly it will be manifested before all the world, these seeming disorders set to rights, and the heavens shall declare his righteousness, Ps. l. 6. Therefore judge nothing before the time.  Romans 2:4

Murray:

2:4. In verse 4 we have another question introduced by “or”, and “despisest thou” is parallel to “reckonest thou” in verse 3. The purpose of this “or” is not that of proposing alternatives; it is rhetorical like the questions themselves. And the effect is to press home upon the Jew in crescendo fashion the impiety of which he is guilty. In other words, these are not alternative ways of interpreting his attitude but different ways of stating what his attitude is. And that the apostle entertains no doubt respecting the contempt offered by the Jew to the riches of God’s goodness is demonstrated by verse 5. Paul is dealing with a hardened Jew and with increasing intensity of derogation points him to the perversity of which he is guilty.

“The riches” of God’s goodness refer to the abundance and magnitude of the goodness bestowed upon the Jew. The strength of the expression indicates that the covenant lovingkindness of which the Jew was the partaker is contemplated (cf. 3:2; 9:4, 5). And the same holds true for “forbearance and longsuffering”. The word “riches” governs all three terms. The abundance of God’s “forbearance and longsuffering” to Israel was exemplified again and again in the history of the Old Testament but the apostle must be thinking particularly, if not exclusively, of the forbearance and longsuffering exercised to the Jew at the time of writing. For in the rejection of the grace and goodness manifested in Christ the Jew had given the utmost of ground for the execution of God’s wrath and punishment to the uttermost. Only “the riches” of forbearance and longsuffering could explain the preservation accorded to him. We must not press unduly and thus artificially the distinction between “forbearance” and “longsuffering”. Together they express the idea that God suspends the infliction of punishment and restrains the execution of his wrath. When he exercises forbearance and longsuffering he does not avenge sin in the instant execution of wrath. Forbearance and longsuffering, therefore, reflect upon the wrath and punishment which sin deserves and refer to the restraint exercised by God in the infliction of sin’s desert. It needs to be noted that the apostle does not think of this restraint as exercised in abstraction from the riches of God’s goodness, the riches of his benignity and lovingkindness. There is a complementation that bespeaks the magnitude of God’s kindness and of which the gifts of covenant privilege are the expression.⁶ It is a metallic conception of God’s forbearance and longsuffering that isolates them from the kindness of disposition and of benefaction which the goodness of God implies.

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