We can all use more patience. The call to be patient meets us in a number of places, in different shapes and sizes. You probably need patience to continue reading this blog post to its end! Patience is needed in every relationship for different reasons. It is needed in waiting for things hoped for. Whether that be for a desired job, to find out if we have qualified for this or that, or if the offer on that house we love and want so much is accepted. We are called to be patient through hardship, to be longsuffering and to endure for what we hope for, that the end of suffering will bring peace and joy. That is the primary use of patience in the Bible and the New Testament. It is the primary use but the call to be patient through suffering seems to always be focused on a hope not earthly and temporal, but on an eternal hope when salvation is complete, and all things are made new.
I want to show you what God calls us to patience in and how that reaches always to our relationship with Him. It doesn’t matter if that is when we are late for something and the driver in front of us is going 5 miles per hour under the speed limit, when someone in church rubs us the wrong way, or when endurance for salvation is called for. Ultimately, every situation leads to the latter because without sanctification no one will see the Lord (Heb. 12:14). Patience and the growing in it is the fruit of a heart that sees past what is directly in front of us and instead believes in the unseen that is the promises of God. Patience is the fruit of a heart believing those promises will be seen. Patience is the fruit of a heart that holds those promises as foremost and believes the temporal naggings, the slow driver making us late and the sometimes irritating relationship, are in the hands of God working to shape us into conformity with Jesus Christ.
Personally, I am not nearly patient enough. But I know what God is doing in me through my trials big and small. I can see and have seen how life’s circumstances are shaping me for the better. I have an extremely difficult time being patient in the moment of trial and seeing with my heart what my eyes can’t see. I imagine many of us can say the same thing but if our heart is for Christ, God is shaping us for the better. If you are like me, you are so impatient you even want conformity to Christ to be immediate! The reality, though, is that conformity to Christ teaches patience because being conformed into His image is a slow, lifelong process. There are many deficiencies in our character unknown until God brings them out through trial. And so, we must be patient in learning patience, even.
I am sure there are more, but in Scripture I see four predominant areas speaking about patience. First, we should have patience in all things by entrusting our lives to God. Second, we should have patience towards each other, in our relationships, to make for peace. Third, God has repeatedly and constantly been patient with us. He has been our perfect example as He is in all things. Lastly, we need patience to inherit our final salvation.
Entrusting Our Lives to God
Jesus has been not only an example of God’s patience towards us, but He has been too a perfect example of patience towards God. Consider 1 Peter 2:20-23 where Peter makes clear that Jesus is our example to follow. Notice in verse 23 the source of His patience. “For what credit is there if, when you sin and are harshly treated, you endure it with patience? But if when you do what is right and suffer for it you patiently endure it, this finds favor with God. For you have been called for this purpose, since Christ also suffered for you, leaving you an example for you to follow in His steps, who committed no sin, nor was any deceit found in His mouth; and while being reviled, He did not revile in return; while suffering, He uttered no threats, but kept entrusting Himself to Him who judges righteously” (1 Pet. 2:20-23). He, “Kept entrusting Himself to Him who judges righteously.”
In the face of being unjustly and harshly treated, which has to be an understatement, Jesus could have said, “Enough of this, let me call down my army” (Mat. 26:53; Jn. 18:36). He could have given up the fight. He could have retaliated. Instead, He entrusted everything to God. Jesus demonstrated, “Let not my will but Yours be done” (Lk. 22:42; Mat. 6:10), and, “Never take your own revenge, beloved, but leave room for the wrath of God, for it is written, ‘Vengeance is Mine, I will repay,’ says the Lord” (Rom. 12:19).
Beyond this, God makes clear to us to be anxious for nothing (Phil. 4:6-7; Lk. 12:22-31). His reasoning is that we can entrust our lives to Him because we can trust Him. He does all things to make certain our salvation and that we are cared for because we are loved by Him. Though, the focus of our hearts, as mentioned earlier and is what God calls us to, is that our sight would be focused first on His kingdom (Lk. 12:31), on the unseen rather than what is experienced, here.
The point is to say, “Lord, I will be patient behind this slow driver making me late because even in this small matter, I will entrust my life to you, that you see and are working towards what I cannot see and understand in this moment.” And, “Lord, I see in your word what you have spoken to me. Help me not to impatiently run to my own desires and to what I think is best. Give me patience to see the fruit of obedience to your word and call. I entrust my life to you.” The point is to find patience in every situation because we know with certainty, through faith, that without God we would be running out of time. Without God, these irritations would actually be robbing us of something. Without God, I need this or that to be happy. Without God, this unjust suffering is taking something from me, my life, my desires, my dreams. With God, not without, the opposite is always true.
Patience with Each Other
“So, as those who have been chosen of God, holy and beloved, put on a heart of compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience; bearing with one another, and forgiving each other, whoever has a complaint against anyone; just as the Lord forgave you, so also should you. Beyond all these things put on love, which is the perfect bond of unity” (Col. 3:12-14).
Patience is a drop in the bucket in those three verses in Colossians, but I start this section with them because patience, along with the other exhortations, there, work together to fill the same overarching message. That is, Christians should be a people antithetical to animosity towards each other. Instead, we should be a people characterized by peace and love towards one another.
Being called to patience towards one another assumes there are times impatience is a possibility, assuming further there might be some sort of friction, something irritating or trying between people in the church. Therefore, to be patient with one another speaks to the truth that we should look beyond the trial to a desire for peace and love. It sounds much like what has already been said about patience, that it involves looking to what is not yet seen, to what is hoped for and believed in.
I connect that idea of patience being for the sake of peace and love towards one another, then, to another passage. Titus 3:1-7 exhorts many things in a few verses just like the Colossians passage, commanding us to, “Be peaceable, gentle, showing every consideration for all men. For we also once were foolish ourselves, disobedient, deceived, enslaved to various lusts and pleasures, spending our life in malice and envy, hateful, hating one another. But when the kindness of God our Savior and His love for mankind appeared, He saved us, not on the basis of deeds which we have done in righteousness, but according to His mercy, by the washing of regeneration and renewing by the Holy Spirit” (Titus 3:2-5). This time, the exhortation is to be these things towards all men, not only towards the church. But I want to focus on Paul’s reasoning for being peaceable. Amongst other reasons, it is because, “We also were once foolish” (v.3).
In chapter two of Paul’s letter to the Ephesians, he uses the same point (vv.1-3) to build towards what is the unity of God’s church, the, “Dwelling of God in the Spirit” (v.22). Christians, then, should have patience towards one another, realizing our own weaknesses and helplessness, rescued only by the grace of God in Jesus Christ, to strive for peace, unity, and love as God’s people. We should have patience towards each other because just as the Lord was and is merciful towards us, we should be towards each other.
I can’t leave out the relevance and parallel to Jesus’ story of the unforgiving servant we read about in Matthew 18:21-35. There, Jesus likens the kingdom of heaven to a slave who owed his king much. The slave begged his king to have patience with him (v.26) and the king did beyond that, he forgave him the debt entirely. Shortly afterwards, the slave found a fellow slave who owed him little. When that fellow slave begged him for patience the same way he begged the king, “He was unwilling and went and threw him in prison until he should pay back what was owed” (v.30). When the king found out about this, he took the unforgiving slave and, “Handed him over to the torturers until he should repay all that was owed him” (v.34).
Jesus said, finally, “My heavenly Father will also do the same to you, if each of you does not forgive his brother from your heart” (v.35). This passage is primarily about forgiveness, but see that patience was the thing asked for by both slaves. Tying this thought with the previous paragraphs, I pray we would be a patient people towards one another, longing for peace and love, realizing where we have been foolish ourselves and have received great, out of this world mercy by our heavenly Father. God has been patient with each of us, “Not wishing for any to perish but for all to come to repentance” (2 Pet. 3:9).
That is where we leave off, here, and will pick up in part 2 on God’s demonstrated patience for our salvation, followed by our need to be patient through life’s trials to inherit that salvation.
-Pastor Ben