Attributes of God - Charnock - LIV - Chapter 14 (God's patience) commenced

Required reading
Attributes of God by Charnock (Available from Amazon or free on the internet, here for example) - Commence Chapter 14 (A discourse upon God's patience) by reading up to the paragraph beginning 'II. The second thing, how this patience or slowness to anger is manifested'.

My summary
This week we begin a new discourse looking at the patience of God.

Firstly Charnock treats us to an exposition from Nahum which leads him to introduce his doctrine: 'Slowness to anger, or admirable patience, is the property of the divine nature.'

Then we read Charnock's first main point on the doctrine: 'The nature of this patience.'

Divine patience is:
(i) part of the divine goodness and mercy, yet differs from both;
(ii) not an insensible patience;
(iii) not a constrained or faint-hearted patience;
(iv) not for want of power over the creature but is from a fulness of power;
(v) founded in the death of Christ.

What grabbed me
Once again Charnock nicely contrasted the attributes of God with one another.

I particularly appreciated the discussion on the interaction between divine justice and patience: 'Again, justice is so far from being wronged by patience, that it rather is made more illustrious, and hath the fuller scope to exercise itself; it is the more righted for being deferred, and will have stronger grounds than before for its activity; the equity of it will be more apparent to every reason, the objections more fully answered against it, when the way of dealing with sinners by patience hath been slighted. When this dam of long-suffering is removed, the floods of fiery justice will rush down with more force and violence; justice will be fully recompensed for the delay, when, after patience is abused, it can spread itself over the offender with a more unquestionable authority; it will have more arguments to hit the sinner in the teeth with, and silence him; there will be a sharper edge for every stroke; the sinner must not only pay for the score of his former sins, but the score of abused patience, so that justice hath no reason to commence a suit against God's slowness to anger: what it shall want by the fulness of mercy upon the truly penitent, it will gain by the contempt of patience on the impenitent abusers. When men, by such a carriage, are ripened for the stroke of justice, justice may strike without any regret in itself, or pull-back from mercy; the contempt of long-suffering will silence the pleas of the one, and spirit the severity of the other.'

Although God's patience may seem like a denial of God's justice, those who do not repent when God is patient will still feel the force of justice. 

And justice will even be served for stubbornly resisting God during his merciful patience.

Next week's reading
Continue Chapter 14 (A discourse upon God's patience) by reading up to the paragraph beginning 'IV. The Use.  Use 1. For Instruction.'

Now it's your turn
Please post your own notes and thoughts in the comments section below.