Last night we heard the testimony of a man who turned from his former religion to faith in Christ. His family disowned him. His father and other relatives severely beat him and tried to kill him. He eventually escaped his homeland to live as a refugee in another country that did not want him either. He married, had a child and lived in hiding. After several years, he obtained official refugee status, then was adopted by a church in Canada, and finally, after much suffering, he and his family are living in freedom.
This man is soft-spoken, calm, with great patience. He needs it even yet. Their child had not been outside or interacted with others. He can now enjoy the world and meet people but without knowing how to behave. He is super energetic, runs everywhere, yet cannot focus. His parents have been patient in their suffering. Now they need a different kind of patience — as parents!
God is patient, a word that is also translated LONGSUFFERING, the same Hebrew word but in English carries different connotations. Patience seems more like waiting with understanding, or able to calm quarrels and persuade kings, much like a farmer waiting for his crop to ripen, or like a parent with a growing child.
Our God is like that. The OT says, “The Lord, is merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness.”
The NT describes His longsuffering with verses like, “The Lord is not slow to fulfill his promise as some count slowness, but is patient toward you, not wishing that any should perish, but that all should reach repentance” and “I received mercy for this reason, that in me, as the foremost, Jesus Christ might display his perfect patience as an example to those who were to believe in him for eternal life.”
This word is also translated as longsuffering, which is also patience, but suggests that when someone is patiently holding on to a reaction rather than expressing it, they are feeling some pain or suffering in regard to whatever is happening. It is like tolerating verbal abuse from someone you respect, or waiting for deliverance from extreme illness. Longsuffering describes God as He watches His children sin and waits for their repentance, feeling pain not for Himself but for us because sin is blocking His blessings in our lives. But His patience is not about being stoic and without feeling:
“The Lord is merciful and gracious, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love. He will not always chide, nor will he keep his anger forever. He does not deal with us according to our sins, nor repay us according to our iniquities.” (Psalm 103:8–10)
“What if God, desiring to show his wrath and to make known his power, has endured with much patience vessels of wrath prepared for destruction . . . .” (Romans 9:22)
When God tells me to be patient, He could mean that same kind of longsuffering. The OT prophets had to endure the disobedience of God’s people. James 5:10 says, “As an example of suffering and patience, brothers, take the prophets who spoke in the name of the Lord.”
This longsuffering is a fruit of the Spirit. That is, if I am filled with God’s Spirit, I will be patient, which could include a long time of enduring something unpleasant, not out of a stoic endurance but because of love . . .
“But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness . . . .” (Galatians 5:22)
“Love is patient and kind; love does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant . . . .” (1 Corinthians 13:4)
Some say patience is a virtue, yet patience begins with and requires a focus on others who need help, not on any ‘feel good’ that longsuffering might give me. 1 Thessalonians 5:14 says: “And we urge you, brothers, admonish the idle, encourage the fainthearted, help the weak, be patient with them all.”
GAZE INTO HIS GLORY. Whatever it is called, patience and longsuffering are attitudes I cannot attain without the Lord. Colossians 1:11 calls me to be “strengthened with all power, according to his glorious might, for all endurance and patience with joy” and Romans 12:12 says I need to “Rejoice in hope, be (longsuffering) in tribulation, be constant in prayer.”
James calls it the virtue of completeness and because of that, adds, “Be patient, therefore, brothers, until the coming of the Lord. See how the farmer waits for the precious fruit of the earth, being patient about it, until it receives the early and the late rains. You also, be patient. Establish your hearts, for the coming of the Lord is at hand.” (James 5:7–8) The OT offers further motivation in Proverbs 19:11 by saying, “Good sense makes one slow to anger, and it is his glory to overlook an offense.” I have no claim to glory unless it is to trust the Lord of glory with anything that tempts me to be impatient.
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