Outside the Camp

This month the Spir­i­tual qual­ity that we will con­sider is patience. The Greek word for patience is makrothymia and it lit­er­ally means “long­ness of spirit”. This qual­ity encom­passes being slow to anger and pur­pose­ful endurance and for­bear­ance while suf­fer­ing. A per­son who is patient can be con­sid­ered as being stead­fast — reli­able, faith­ful, and true to the end.

Almighty God is the ulti­mate exam­ple of patience and for­bear­ance. The Old Tes­ta­ment scrip­tures con­tin­u­ally refer to God as one who is “slow to anger”. (Exo­dus 34:6; Joel 2:13) Paul refers to Him as the “God of endurance” (Romans 15:5)

From the time of the fall of Adam for­ward mankind was under a death sen­tence. Yet the patience of God was made man­i­fest by his redemp­tive plan for human­ity. Peter encour­ages us to “regard the patience of our Lord as sal­va­tion” (2 Peter 3:15) God is not quick to anger to destroy any­one but allows time for repen­tance. (2 Peter 3:9,10) Sim­i­larly Paul writes, “Or do you have con­tempt for the wealth of his kind­ness, for­bear­ance, and patience, and yet do not know that God’s kind­ness leads you to repen­tance?” (Romans 2:4)

As Chris­tians we need to be con­form­ing our­selves to the Word of God, the teach­ings of Jesus. Thus we are not allowed to defend our­selves as Jesus com­mands, “Do not resist an evil per­son” (Matthew 5:39) When con­fronted with adver­sar­ial indi­vid­u­als the nat­ural, fleshly reac­tion is self-defense. Even if we are not prone to phys­i­cal vio­lence our ten­dency may be to ver­bally stand up for our­selves. It is at times like this that we need to seek the spirit and man­i­fest super­nat­ural patience. James encour­ages us, “My brethren, take the prophets, who spoke in the name of the Lord, as an exam­ple of suf­fer­ing and patience.” (James 5:10)

The biggest oppor­tu­nity to show patience is in the face of suf­fer­ing, adver­sity and per­se­cu­tion. In this, Jesus is such an amaz­ing exam­ple of patient endurance. He embod­ied patience under severe tri­als. In prophet­i­cally writ­ing about him the prophet Isa­iah said, “He was oppressed and He was afflicted, Yet He opened not His mouth; He was led as a lamb to the slaugh­ter, and as a sheep before its shear­ers is silent, So He opened not His mouth.” (Isa 53:7)

From a fleshly per­spec­tive such a seem­ingly com­pla­cent atti­tude may be viewed as a sign of weak­ness but accord­ing to God’s word it is actu­ally greater than phys­i­cal strength. “Bet­ter a patient man than a war­rior, a man who con­trols his tem­per than one who takes a city.” (Proverbs 16:32, NIV) Jesus proved this to be true. When he was cru­ci­fied in weak­ness he tri­umphed over the enemy. Of him it is said, “Dis­arm­ing the rulers and author­i­ties, he made a pub­lic dis­grace of them, tri­umph­ing over them by the cross.” (Col 2:15)

Patience is an iden­ti­fy­ing mark of Chris­tians as God’s ser­vants. (2 Cor 6:4–6) As the “elect of God” we are required to clothe our­selves with patience. (Col 3:12) Patient endurance is a vital com­po­nent of our sal­va­tion. (Mat 24:13) When we expe­ri­ence suf­fer­ing we can rejoice know­ing that our suf­fer­ing, pro­duces endurance along with char­ac­ter and hope. (Romans 5:3,4) The author of the epis­tle to the Hebrews encour­ages them to endure in the faith while suf­fer­ing instead of shrink­ing back. It is through such faith­ful patience that we pre­serve our souls. (Hebrews 10:32–39) In Rev­e­la­tion Jesus him­self com­mends his con­gre­ga­tion for their “stead­fast endurance” (Rev 2:2,19) This patience is not some­thing that comes nat­u­rally from within the fallen flesh but rather it is a gift from God for it is he who is able to “direct [our] hearts … toward the endurance of Christ.” (2 Thess 3:5)

Patience does not just come into play when deal­ing with those that we might con­sider as ene­mies but also with our brother and sis­ters in Christ. Within the con­gre­ga­tion patience is required in our “putting up with one another.” (Eph 4:2) We all are works in progress and at dif­fer­ent points in our spir­i­tual walk and within the Chris­t­ian fam­ily there are both mature and young. So again we are urged by Paul, “be patient toward all.” (1 Th 5:14) Because God is patient with us we are required to be patient with one another. (Romans 15:5)

In deal­ing with his dis­ci­ples, whom he con­sid­ered as friends, Jesus man­i­fested such patience. His apos­tles were often slow to under­stand the lessons that Jesus was try­ing to impart and they were quick to break into squab­bles and argu­ments. The Lord patiently dealt with them and the out­come was pos­i­tive. These ones became good exam­ples in imi­ta­tion of Jesus and the foun­da­tion of his con­gre­ga­tion. (Eph 2:20)

A key ele­ment then in patience is hope. Whether we are endur­ing on behalf of friends or foes we do so with the hope of a change in the sit­u­a­tion. And this hope is not just for our per­sonal relief. Just as God is patient with us in hope that we will change our hope is that even an enemy will turn around and seek repen­tance. We also hope in our own sal­va­tion that is promised to those who endure to the end.