Fruit of the Spirit - Patience
How many of you could confidently raise your hand this morning and say, “I am a really patient person.” I’ll tell you what, this is one of those areas for me that I’ve really had to be intentional in my responses to people and situations in my life. What do we say to our kids when we want them to wait? Just have a little patience. “Patience is a virtue” has become a teaching point for many of us. But like the other attributes of the Fruit of the Spirit that we have explored, our definitions of these words become very shallow in our English definitions. When we get into the depth of meaning in Scripture, our understanding changes in light of who God is and how He has perfectly shown us patience.
The word patience is the Greek word “makrothumia,” which consists of 2 words: “makro,” meaning “long or distant,” and “thumos” which means “temper.” You’ve heard of someone having a short temper. Well this word means “long-temper.” it is defined as “a long holding out of the mind before it gives room for action or passion.”
According to one commentator, “It carries with it the ability to be wronged and not retaliate. It is the ability to hold one's feelings in restraint or bear up under the oversights and wrongs afflicted by others without retaliating. It is manifested by the quality of forbearance under provocation.” I love JI Packer’s definition: “the Christlike reaction to all that is maddening.” As with the other facets of the Fruit that we are digging into, there are multiple layers to this gift that is patience. We are going to look at it in 2 different ways this morning.
1. How we respond to people
2. How we respond to God
However, we must start by looking at how God is the perfection of patience towards us.
God’s Patience Towards Humanity
Another word for “patience” that we see in Scripture is “long-suffering.” Long-suffering carries with it the idea of our “patient reaction to people who mistreat us or provoke us.”
2 Peter 3:9, “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.”
Think about the story of the Prodigal Son. In that story, the younger of 2 sons comes to his father and demands his inheritance. Seeing that he wouldn’t get his inheritance until his father had died, he is in effect saying to his dad, “I wish you were dead.” The father gives it to him and LETS his son go off to live his life. The son squanders all of his money on sinful living, and ends up feeding off the scraps left behind by pigs. He eventually realizes how wrong he has been, and begins rehearsing the apology he is going to offer to his father. He is prepared to take on a position of one of the servants in his father’s household, because even that, he thinks, will be better than where he is right now. As the son comes around the corner to the house, the father sees him and lifts his tunic to run to embrace his son. The implication is the father had been waiting for his return. Suffering-long for the return of his son.
The son had deeply wounded the father, but the father let him go. The son squandered everything, but the father stayed home, surely praying for and aching for his son to return. And when he did, his father didn’t rebuke him, he didn’t punish him, he didn’t pour out his wrath on him. He embraced him and kissed his neck, not even letting his son apologize because he had already been forgiven.
We have wronged our Father in so many ways, but God is a God that is slow to anger, long-suffering for His people; quick to forgive and restore us when we have strayed.
Jesus gave us multiple examples of this as well. We see in 1 Peter that Jesus, “when he was reviled, he did not revile in return; when he suffered, he did not threaten, but continued entrusting himself to him who judges justly.” Jesus continues to patiently endure, trusting in the God who is faithful and good.
I am so thankful that we have a God who is characterized by His patience for us, His long-suffering for us. I’m so thankful that we have a God who doesn’t give up on us, who is patient with our shortcomings and wanderings. And because of the Holy Spirit that indwells us, we have the ability to respond in our lives in the same way to those who wrong us.
1. How We Respond to People
Read Colossians 3:12-13
We see here in this passage that we are called to respond to each other with patience, among other things, suffering-long with each other. Why? Because that’s how God dealt and deals with us.
It’s important to reiterate that we aren’t simply talking about waiting. There is an aspect of that, and we’ll talk about that in our next point. But it isn’t like, I am in the car waiting for my children to find their shoes or that one toy that they have to bring or else the world is going to end. It’s not patience in waiting that Paul is talking about. Remember the word patience means “long-tempered.”
Another translation of the word patience is forbearance. Forbearance, defined by one commentator as “the loving tolerance shown towards the weakness, failures, and sins of others against us, responding in compassion and mercy and not retaliating in judgment or vengeance, no matter how warranted that may be.”
The implication behind our encouraged response, then, is that we have been wronged, and we are in a critical moment of decision. Do I retaliate and seek vengeance against my brother? Or, do I forgive quickly as God has forgiven me.
Our natural human response when we have been wronged is to seek revenge in some way. Eye for an eye and tooth for a tooth. Road rage is probably the perfect example of this. You cut me off so I’m going to tailgate you. It’s like, the person driving was somehow attacking our character by merging in at the last second. I’m guilty of this attitude. But that’s our natural response.
Now listen, there are certainly extreme situations that we can’t overlook, like a crime being committed, abuse of some kind, those situations where we must fight back and get the authorities involved, absolutely. But for a majority of the situations in which someone wrongs us, the proper response is to suffer-long, to be long-tempered. And when it’s just eating at us, like, justice must be served, here’s what we need to understand.
Listen to what Paul says in Romans 12:17-19: “Repay no one evil for evil, but give thought to do what is honorable in the sight of all. If possible, so far as it depends on you, live peaceably with all. Beloved, never avenge yourselves, but leave it to the wrath of God, for it is written, “Vengeance is mine, I will repay, says the Lord.”
When we feel like serving up a hot plate of revenge, Paul says no, no, no, vengeance belongs to the Lord. And then Paul takes it a step further: “To the contrary, “if your enemy is hungry, feed him; if he is thirsty, give him something to drink; for by so doing you will heap burning coals on his head.” Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.”
This just sounds crazy to us! This is not natural! But this, this is what is meant by patience towards others. Patience is forbearance, long-suffering, long-tempered.
2. How We Respond to God
There’s often a big difference between our timing and God’s timing, isn’t there? We want relief from a certain situation, but the Lord has a purpose for the difficulties and so He allows us to stay there for a time. Or maybe we long for something in our lives, and we want it yesterday, but God has us wait until we are really ready for it.
When Jade and I started dating, I was 26 years old. The first time I saw her, I knew she was the one. For real, there was something deep down that I just couldn’t shake, like, this one was different. And all that was well and good until a few months later, she broke up with me. And I was in disbelief. She was the one! But it wasn’t the right time. I had just started my job as a Youth Pastor, and she had just recently started her job in NC, and the Lord knew that we weren’t quite ready yet. Fast Forward about 9 months, and Jade slides into my DMs begging to have me back. JK, but we did start talking again, got engaged 6 months later and then got married. The point is this. Sometimes we think we know what is best for us and when. Truth of the matter is that the Lord knows far better than we do, and sometimes God’s best for us requires us to wait on His timing.
And we have so many promises in Scripture as it relates to our waiting…
Isaiah 40:31
Those who wait on the Lord will renew their strength. When we are weak and broken down, we sit in the presence of the Lord and let Him work on our spirits. We abide in Him and let His strength renew us.
Psalm 40:1-3
When we are in the midst of a really difficult situation, we wait on the Lord and He provides rescue. When we wait on the Lord and He proves faithful it causes us to praise Him. We are refreshed by His compassion and care for us. And when we walk through difficult seasons, during our waiting the Lord is working on us, and He will use what we are going through to help others. We will proclaim the goodness of God and it will cause other people to turn to Him as well. There is so much power in the waiting.
So we wait for the Lord, and in our patient enduring He is doing a work in us so that He will be able to do a work through us. Sometimes it feels like God doesn’t hear us. Sometimes it feels like He doesn’t care. Why does God seem silent when I feel like I need Him most?
Romans 8:28 tells us that “we know that for those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose.” In the seasons of waiting God is at work in us. Maybe He’s teaching us to trust Him more when things are out of our control. Maybe He’s preparing us for something. Maybe He wants to use the difficulty in your life that you had to wade through. And it isn’t just us who are waiting. All of creation is groaning for our eternal redemption with the Father. We are all presently waiting for paradise.
Romans 8:22-25 - “We know that the whole creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time. Not only so, but we ourselves, who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for our adoption to sonship, the redemption of our bodies. For in this hope we were saved. But hope that is seen is no hope at all. Who hopes for what they already have? But if we hope for what we do not yet have, we wait for it patiently.”
Application
Maybe you find yourself in the midst of a battle right now, a battle to suffer-long because of how someone has been mistreating you. Maybe you have been contemplating how you are going to get someone back for the wrongs they have inflicted on you.
Maybe you are in the midst of a season in which God has seemed a bit silent, like the thing that you are waiting to happen is not happening. Maybe you have been waiting for a long time for the Lord to come through.
And while these are really difficult things for us to deal with, we have the ability because of the Holy Spirit to exercise patience. We have the ability to hand over the wounds inflicted by others to the judgment of the Lord. We have the ability to rest in the presence of the Lord in the seasons of waiting. Remember, we are fused together to Jesus, drawing life from Him as a branch from a vine. So as we are waiting for the Lord, we are able to grow in faith and confidence in who the Lord is.
