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each week. These lessons are from my personal notes or used by permission from licensing agreements to
redeliver orally and not for profit and I encourage you to look up the Bible passages. Make sure that you
read everything and make your own opinion about the Bible Study lesson that is being presented to you.
Please keep it in the context of The Holy Bible. The only way to understand what God's Message is saying
is for you to know the Bible. Open your mind to God's Message. Back to Bible Study Home
Download this Bible Study "How Do I Improve My Spiritual Understandings" in MP3 or PodCast format
HowDoIImproveMySpiritualUnderstandings.mp3 from God's Message on the Web
Every sincere Christian hungers to improve his or her spiritual understandings. Every person genuinely
converted to Jesus Christ wants accurate knowledge. But to possess accurate knowledge, he or she realizes
it is not enough to have accurate facts. It is just as important to have accurate understandings. It was the
desire to understand that played an important role in our conversion.
Our Christian desire to understand is intensified by an enormous personal need. Each of our private worlds
creates a very complex existence for all of us. Life is not simple for any of us. Is life simple for you? Our
lives and worlds challenge each of us. Our lives and worlds often confuse us. We want to do what is good;
we want to do what is right; we want to depend on Jesus--but often the proper way to do that is not clearly
evident. How often do you have a week that does not challenge your spiritual understanding? Often
personal situations and circumstances force us to realize that we do not have enough spiritual understanding.
We are frequently reminded that we need a better understanding of God and His will.
But how do you acquire it? If we want a better understanding, how do we build it? The answer to that
question has many parts, and the answer will not be identical for all of us. But there is a common beginning
point for everyone. Any person who wants a better spiritual understanding must advance his or her
understanding of God. A better understanding of God is essential to a better spiritual understanding.
Tonight we begin focusing on forbearance. I want to illustrate the importance of better understanding God to
increase our spiritual understanding. We will do that by examining the concept of forbearance.
I. Let's begin by reading together Romans 2:1-4.
Romans 2:1-4 (King James Version)
1Therefore thou art inexcusable, O man, whosoever thou art that judgest: for wherein thou judgest another,
thou condemnest thyself; for thou that judgest doest the same things.
2But we are sure that the judgment of God is according to truth against them which commit such things.
3And thinkest thou this, O man, that judgest them which do such things, and doest the same, that thou shalt
escape the judgment of God?
4Or despisest thou the riches of his goodness and forbearance and longsuffering; not knowing that the
goodness of God leadeth thee to repentance?
Romans 2:1-4 (The Message)
1-2 Those people are on a dark spiral downward. But if you think that leaves you on the high ground where
you can point your finger at others, think again. Every time you criticize someone, you condemn yourself. It
takes one to know one. Judgmental criticism of others is a well-known way of escaping detection in your
own crimes and misdemeanors. But God isn't so easily diverted. He sees right through all such smoke
screens and holds you to what you've done.
3-4You didn't think, did you, that just by pointing your finger at others you would distract God from seeing
all your misdoings and from coming down on you hard? Or did you think that because he's such a nice God,
he'd let you off the hook? Better think this one through from the beginning. God is kind, but he's not soft. In
kindness he takes us firmly by the hand and leads us into a radical life-change.
A. Consider the context of this scripture:
1. Because of his devotion to the gospel (the good news about Jesus Christ), Paul suffered major
physical abuse--but that abuse did not cause him to be ashamed of that good news (Romans 1:16).
a. He was not ashamed because he knew that the good news revealed God's power to save anyone who
believes.
b. He was not ashamed because the good news revealed God's righteousness.
2. Paul verified that everyone--excluding no one--needed the righteousness revealed by this good news.
a. This revealed righteousness allows a person to become righteous through faith, and everyone
desperately needs the means of becoming righteous.
b. Those who abandon themselves to ungodliness need the way to become righteous through faith
(Romans 1:18-29).
c. The "good moral person" who passes judgment on people who do not meet his or her moral standards
needs the way to become righteous through faith (Romans 2:1-16).
d. The teacher and defender of the Old Testament law needs the way to become righteous through faith
(Romans 2:17-29).
B. I want to focus your attention for a moment on the good moral person.
1. It is common for a person committed to a moral code to judge everyone who fails to measure up to
that moral code--that is very characteristic of people committed to a moral code.
2. It is also common for few people to meet his or her moral expectations.
3. Paul said what the moral person fails to realize that each time he or she passes judgment on other's
failure to meet his or her moral code, he or she automatically passes judgment on himself or herself.
4. Why? Because no moral person perfectly meets the standards of her or her moral code--thus
condemning the short comings of others automatically condemns his or her own shortcomings.
5. Paul said in verse 4 that the moralist makes this mistake because he or she places too little
significance, to little importance on God's kindness, forbearance, and patience.
a. Forbearance is a divine attribute, a part of God's divine nature that is reflected in His divine character.
b. Understanding God's kindness, forbearance, and patience is extremely important, for that is the
understanding that motivates a person to repent.
c. But what is forbearance? How much do you understand about forbearance?
d. How can you increase your understanding of forbearance? By better understanding God.
II. Consider the concept of forbearance.
A. Divine forbearance keeps some close friends: divine kindness, divine patience, and divine mercy.
1. Forbearance always exists and functions in conjunction with kindness, patience, and mercy.
2. Forbearance is one of the ways that patience expresses itself.
3. It is also a specific element of mercy.
4. The kind God's patience and mercy interact with each other and express themselves through
forbearance.
B. What does forbearance do?
1. To forbear means to restrain oneself.
2. One forbears by holding oneself back.
3. In God's actions, divine forbearance restrains divine wrath.
C. But does God really do that?
1. Does he really hold himself back?
2. Did he really restrain his wrath?
3. Absolutely!
a. God has been doing that from the time of the first human evil.
b. God did it in incredible ways until He could offer Jesus in sacrifice for us.
c. Until God satisfied justice with Jesus' blood by paying for the evil people committed, it was God's
forbearance that governed His response to human evil.
4. Read with me Romans 3:21-25.
Romans 3:21-25 (King James Version)
21But now the righteousness of God without the law is manifested, being witnessed by the law and the
prophets;
22Even the righteousness of God which is by faith of Jesus Christ unto all and upon all them that believe:
for there is no difference:
23For all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God;
24Being justified freely by his grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus:
25Whom God hath set forth to be a propitiation through faith in his blood, to declare his righteousness for
the remission of sins that are past, through the forbearance of God;
Romans 3:21-25 (The Message)
21-24But in our time something new has been added. What Moses and the prophets witnessed to all those
years has happened. The God-setting-things-right that we read about has become Jesus-setting-things-right
for us. And not only for us, but for everyone who believes in him. For there is no difference between us and
them in this. Since we've compiled this long and sorry record as sinners (both us and them) and proved that
we are utterly incapable of living the glorious lives God wills for us, God did it for us. Out of sheer
generosity he put us in right standing with himself. A pure gift. He got us out of the mess we're in and
restored us to where he always wanted us to be. And he did it by means of Jesus Christ.
25-26God sacrificed Jesus on the altar of the world to clear that world of sin. Having faith in him sets us in
the clear. God decided on this course of action in full view of the public—to set the world in the clear with
himself through the sacrifice of Jesus, finally taking care of the sins he had so patiently endured. This is not
only clear, but it's now—this is current history! God sets things right. He also makes it possible for us to
live in his rightness.
a. God has revealed a way to righteous that has nothing to do with law--not Old Testament law, not any
form of law.
i. In this revealed way to be righteous, God could be true to His own righteous nature.
ii. Evil people could become righteous.
iii. The Old Testament law and the Old Testament prophets stood as the witnesses to this revealed way
to be righteous.
b. In this revealed way, righteousness exists through faith in Jesus Christ.
i. It is available to every person who will place his or her faith in Jesus Christ.
ii. Every person needs this revealed way to become righteous because every person is guilty of doing
evil.
c. This revealed way to be righteous can exist because God gives His grace as a gift.
i. God acquired this right to expresss His goodness because God justified us.
ii. He justified us by redeeming us with Jesus Christ.
iii. He allowed His son to die publicly, substituting His innocent life for our guilty lives, paying the
penalty for our evil with His own son's blood.
d. God did this for two reasons:
i. First, to create a "doable" means by which every evil person can become righteous.
ii. Second, to be true to his own righteous nature.
iii. It was necessary for God to demonstrate His loyalty to His own righteousness because He had been
forbearing--He had passed over the evil that was committed before the death of Christ.
iv. He had held Himself back, He had restrained His wrath, until He could pay for human evil with the
blood of His innocent son.
III. Let me show you in a clear manner that is exactly what God did before He sent Jesus to die for
human evil.
A. Go all the way back to Adam and Eve in the garden of Eden.
1. Genesis 2:8, 9 states that God planted a garden to exist as the ideal place for Adam and Eve to live.
a. He placed them in the garden to cultivate and keep it (2:15).
b. They were permitted to eat fruit from everything that grew in the garden except for one tree--the tree
of the knowledge of good and evil (2:16).
c. They were told that if they ate of that tree, on that day they would surely die (2:17), and they clearly
understood what God said and meant (3:3).
2. Most of my past life I did not understand forbearance, nor did I understand God's forbearance.
a. In my lack of understanding, I oversimplified this situation and created a problem.
b. God said that the day they ate the fruit that they would die.
c. They ate the fruit, and they did not die.
d. In my too narrow, too shallow understanding, that fact created a dilemma for me: Why did they not
die that day? Did God lie when He told them they would die?
e. The possibility that God lied was totally unacceptable and contradictory to what other scriptures
clearly state--God cannot lie.
f. Then I created a theological answer to the dilemma: God did not mean that they would physically die
(since they obviously did not), so the word "death" as God used it meant something else--it meant that they
would be separated from God.
g. But it is very obvious in Genesis four that there was not a complete separation between God, and
Adam and Eve, or Able, or Seth, the men that began to call upon the name of the Lord.
3. When God did not kill Adam and Eve, it had nothing to do with truthfulness or lying; it had
everything to do with divine forbearance.
a. Adam and Eve defied God in the face of all His love, all His goodness, and all His kindness.
b. And when they did, God held Himself back, He restrained His wrath, He further extended His
kindness in exercising patience and mercy.
B. That is only the first expression of His forbearance.
1. Consider God's refusal to kill Cain when Cain murdered his brother.
2. Consider God's saving of Noah and his family.
3. Consider the way God continued to work with Isaac and Jacob when they did some very ungodly
things.
4. Consider the ways God repeatedly refused to completely destroy the wicked, rebellious nation of
Israel in the wilderness.
5. Consider the centuries that God endured incredible ungodliness in Israel through the periods of the
judges, the united kingdom, and the divided kingdom.
6. Over and over and over you see God's forbearance, God's holding Himself back, God's restraining His
wrath.
7. Even when God exercised His wrath, He restrained it--He never completely destroyed evil humanity,
never completely destroyed evil Israel.
Because of God's forbearance, you and I can be Christians. Because of God's forbearance you and I have a
Savior. Because of God's forbearance you and I can be forgiven.
And the forbearing God asks those who accept His forgiveness and live in the Savior to be forbearing. But
we cannot possibly understand how to be forbearing, we cannot even understand what forbearance is, unless
we first understand the forbearance of God.
Don't you rejoice in the fact that God was and is a God of forbearance?
Download this Bible Study "How Do I Improve My Spiritual Understandings" in MP3 or PodCast format
HowDoIImproveMySpiritualUnderstandings.mp3 from God's Message on the Web
Used with permission from David Chadwell, West-Ark Church of Christ
Visit God's Message Blog to comment on this Bible Study Lesson
http://godsmessageontheweb.blogspot.com/2007/11/how-do-i-improve-my-spiritual.html
Last updated on November 6th 2007 God's Message on the Web
HowDoIImproveMySpiritualUnderstandings.mp3 from God's Message on the Web
Every sincere Christian hungers to improve his or her spiritual understandings. Every person genuinely
converted to Jesus Christ wants accurate knowledge. But to possess accurate knowledge, he or she realizes
it is not enough to have accurate facts. It is just as important to have accurate understandings. It was the
desire to understand that played an important role in our conversion.
Our Christian desire to understand is intensified by an enormous personal need. Each of our private worlds
creates a very complex existence for all of us. Life is not simple for any of us. Is life simple for you? Our
lives and worlds challenge each of us. Our lives and worlds often confuse us. We want to do what is good;
we want to do what is right; we want to depend on Jesus--but often the proper way to do that is not clearly
evident. How often do you have a week that does not challenge your spiritual understanding? Often
personal situations and circumstances force us to realize that we do not have enough spiritual understanding.
We are frequently reminded that we need a better understanding of God and His will.
But how do you acquire it? If we want a better understanding, how do we build it? The answer to that
question has many parts, and the answer will not be identical for all of us. But there is a common beginning
point for everyone. Any person who wants a better spiritual understanding must advance his or her
understanding of God. A better understanding of God is essential to a better spiritual understanding.
Tonight we begin focusing on forbearance. I want to illustrate the importance of better understanding God to
increase our spiritual understanding. We will do that by examining the concept of forbearance.
I. Let's begin by reading together Romans 2:1-4.
Romans 2:1-4 (King James Version)
1Therefore thou art inexcusable, O man, whosoever thou art that judgest: for wherein thou judgest another,
thou condemnest thyself; for thou that judgest doest the same things.
2But we are sure that the judgment of God is according to truth against them which commit such things.
3And thinkest thou this, O man, that judgest them which do such things, and doest the same, that thou shalt
escape the judgment of God?
4Or despisest thou the riches of his goodness and forbearance and longsuffering; not knowing that the
goodness of God leadeth thee to repentance?
Romans 2:1-4 (The Message)
1-2 Those people are on a dark spiral downward. But if you think that leaves you on the high ground where
you can point your finger at others, think again. Every time you criticize someone, you condemn yourself. It
takes one to know one. Judgmental criticism of others is a well-known way of escaping detection in your
own crimes and misdemeanors. But God isn't so easily diverted. He sees right through all such smoke
screens and holds you to what you've done.
3-4You didn't think, did you, that just by pointing your finger at others you would distract God from seeing
all your misdoings and from coming down on you hard? Or did you think that because he's such a nice God,
he'd let you off the hook? Better think this one through from the beginning. God is kind, but he's not soft. In
kindness he takes us firmly by the hand and leads us into a radical life-change.
A. Consider the context of this scripture:
1. Because of his devotion to the gospel (the good news about Jesus Christ), Paul suffered major
physical abuse--but that abuse did not cause him to be ashamed of that good news (Romans 1:16).
a. He was not ashamed because he knew that the good news revealed God's power to save anyone who
believes.
b. He was not ashamed because the good news revealed God's righteousness.
2. Paul verified that everyone--excluding no one--needed the righteousness revealed by this good news.
a. This revealed righteousness allows a person to become righteous through faith, and everyone
desperately needs the means of becoming righteous.
b. Those who abandon themselves to ungodliness need the way to become righteous through faith
(Romans 1:18-29).
c. The "good moral person" who passes judgment on people who do not meet his or her moral standards
needs the way to become righteous through faith (Romans 2:1-16).
d. The teacher and defender of the Old Testament law needs the way to become righteous through faith
(Romans 2:17-29).
B. I want to focus your attention for a moment on the good moral person.
1. It is common for a person committed to a moral code to judge everyone who fails to measure up to
that moral code--that is very characteristic of people committed to a moral code.
2. It is also common for few people to meet his or her moral expectations.
3. Paul said what the moral person fails to realize that each time he or she passes judgment on other's
failure to meet his or her moral code, he or she automatically passes judgment on himself or herself.
4. Why? Because no moral person perfectly meets the standards of her or her moral code--thus
condemning the short comings of others automatically condemns his or her own shortcomings.
5. Paul said in verse 4 that the moralist makes this mistake because he or she places too little
significance, to little importance on God's kindness, forbearance, and patience.
a. Forbearance is a divine attribute, a part of God's divine nature that is reflected in His divine character.
b. Understanding God's kindness, forbearance, and patience is extremely important, for that is the
understanding that motivates a person to repent.
c. But what is forbearance? How much do you understand about forbearance?
d. How can you increase your understanding of forbearance? By better understanding God.
II. Consider the concept of forbearance.
A. Divine forbearance keeps some close friends: divine kindness, divine patience, and divine mercy.
1. Forbearance always exists and functions in conjunction with kindness, patience, and mercy.
2. Forbearance is one of the ways that patience expresses itself.
3. It is also a specific element of mercy.
4. The kind God's patience and mercy interact with each other and express themselves through
forbearance.
B. What does forbearance do?
1. To forbear means to restrain oneself.
2. One forbears by holding oneself back.
3. In God's actions, divine forbearance restrains divine wrath.
C. But does God really do that?
1. Does he really hold himself back?
2. Did he really restrain his wrath?
3. Absolutely!
a. God has been doing that from the time of the first human evil.
b. God did it in incredible ways until He could offer Jesus in sacrifice for us.
c. Until God satisfied justice with Jesus' blood by paying for the evil people committed, it was God's
forbearance that governed His response to human evil.
4. Read with me Romans 3:21-25.
Romans 3:21-25 (King James Version)
21But now the righteousness of God without the law is manifested, being witnessed by the law and the
prophets;
22Even the righteousness of God which is by faith of Jesus Christ unto all and upon all them that believe:
for there is no difference:
23For all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God;
24Being justified freely by his grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus:
25Whom God hath set forth to be a propitiation through faith in his blood, to declare his righteousness for
the remission of sins that are past, through the forbearance of God;
Romans 3:21-25 (The Message)
21-24But in our time something new has been added. What Moses and the prophets witnessed to all those
years has happened. The God-setting-things-right that we read about has become Jesus-setting-things-right
for us. And not only for us, but for everyone who believes in him. For there is no difference between us and
them in this. Since we've compiled this long and sorry record as sinners (both us and them) and proved that
we are utterly incapable of living the glorious lives God wills for us, God did it for us. Out of sheer
generosity he put us in right standing with himself. A pure gift. He got us out of the mess we're in and
restored us to where he always wanted us to be. And he did it by means of Jesus Christ.
25-26God sacrificed Jesus on the altar of the world to clear that world of sin. Having faith in him sets us in
the clear. God decided on this course of action in full view of the public—to set the world in the clear with
himself through the sacrifice of Jesus, finally taking care of the sins he had so patiently endured. This is not
only clear, but it's now—this is current history! God sets things right. He also makes it possible for us to
live in his rightness.
a. God has revealed a way to righteous that has nothing to do with law--not Old Testament law, not any
form of law.
i. In this revealed way to be righteous, God could be true to His own righteous nature.
ii. Evil people could become righteous.
iii. The Old Testament law and the Old Testament prophets stood as the witnesses to this revealed way
to be righteous.
b. In this revealed way, righteousness exists through faith in Jesus Christ.
i. It is available to every person who will place his or her faith in Jesus Christ.
ii. Every person needs this revealed way to become righteous because every person is guilty of doing
evil.
c. This revealed way to be righteous can exist because God gives His grace as a gift.
i. God acquired this right to expresss His goodness because God justified us.
ii. He justified us by redeeming us with Jesus Christ.
iii. He allowed His son to die publicly, substituting His innocent life for our guilty lives, paying the
penalty for our evil with His own son's blood.
d. God did this for two reasons:
i. First, to create a "doable" means by which every evil person can become righteous.
ii. Second, to be true to his own righteous nature.
iii. It was necessary for God to demonstrate His loyalty to His own righteousness because He had been
forbearing--He had passed over the evil that was committed before the death of Christ.
iv. He had held Himself back, He had restrained His wrath, until He could pay for human evil with the
blood of His innocent son.
III. Let me show you in a clear manner that is exactly what God did before He sent Jesus to die for
human evil.
A. Go all the way back to Adam and Eve in the garden of Eden.
1. Genesis 2:8, 9 states that God planted a garden to exist as the ideal place for Adam and Eve to live.
a. He placed them in the garden to cultivate and keep it (2:15).
b. They were permitted to eat fruit from everything that grew in the garden except for one tree--the tree
of the knowledge of good and evil (2:16).
c. They were told that if they ate of that tree, on that day they would surely die (2:17), and they clearly
understood what God said and meant (3:3).
2. Most of my past life I did not understand forbearance, nor did I understand God's forbearance.
a. In my lack of understanding, I oversimplified this situation and created a problem.
b. God said that the day they ate the fruit that they would die.
c. They ate the fruit, and they did not die.
d. In my too narrow, too shallow understanding, that fact created a dilemma for me: Why did they not
die that day? Did God lie when He told them they would die?
e. The possibility that God lied was totally unacceptable and contradictory to what other scriptures
clearly state--God cannot lie.
f. Then I created a theological answer to the dilemma: God did not mean that they would physically die
(since they obviously did not), so the word "death" as God used it meant something else--it meant that they
would be separated from God.
g. But it is very obvious in Genesis four that there was not a complete separation between God, and
Adam and Eve, or Able, or Seth, the men that began to call upon the name of the Lord.
3. When God did not kill Adam and Eve, it had nothing to do with truthfulness or lying; it had
everything to do with divine forbearance.
a. Adam and Eve defied God in the face of all His love, all His goodness, and all His kindness.
b. And when they did, God held Himself back, He restrained His wrath, He further extended His
kindness in exercising patience and mercy.
B. That is only the first expression of His forbearance.
1. Consider God's refusal to kill Cain when Cain murdered his brother.
2. Consider God's saving of Noah and his family.
3. Consider the way God continued to work with Isaac and Jacob when they did some very ungodly
things.
4. Consider the ways God repeatedly refused to completely destroy the wicked, rebellious nation of
Israel in the wilderness.
5. Consider the centuries that God endured incredible ungodliness in Israel through the periods of the
judges, the united kingdom, and the divided kingdom.
6. Over and over and over you see God's forbearance, God's holding Himself back, God's restraining His
wrath.
7. Even when God exercised His wrath, He restrained it--He never completely destroyed evil humanity,
never completely destroyed evil Israel.
Because of God's forbearance, you and I can be Christians. Because of God's forbearance you and I have a
Savior. Because of God's forbearance you and I can be forgiven.
And the forbearing God asks those who accept His forgiveness and live in the Savior to be forbearing. But
we cannot possibly understand how to be forbearing, we cannot even understand what forbearance is, unless
we first understand the forbearance of God.
Don't you rejoice in the fact that God was and is a God of forbearance?
Download this Bible Study "How Do I Improve My Spiritual Understandings" in MP3 or PodCast format
HowDoIImproveMySpiritualUnderstandings.mp3 from God's Message on the Web
Used with permission from David Chadwell, West-Ark Church of Christ
Visit God's Message Blog to comment on this Bible Study Lesson
http://godsmessageontheweb.blogspot.com/2007/11/how-do-i-improve-my-spiritual.html
Last updated on November 6th 2007 God's Message on the Web