Love is patient
by Jon Bloom
Jon Bloom
Ask the apostle Paul what the fruits of the
Spirit are, and the first thing he says is
love (Galatians 5:22). Paul would say love is
the greatest of the fruit of the Spirit, just
as he said love was the greatest gift of the
Spirit (1 Corinthians 13:13).
Then ask Paul what love is, and what does he
say first? “Love is patient” (1 Corinthians
13:4). Now, I don’t assume this necessarily
means Paul believed patience is the greatest
quality of love. But the fact that he mentions
it first in this beautiful description of
Christian love must give us pause.
Love Versus Endurance
What did Paul have in mind when he wrote,
“Love is patient”? The answer may not be as
obvious as it seems.
We use the term patience for a wide variety of
things: for instance, putting up with a
generally difficult person; not losing our
temper in rush hour traffic; financial
investing for the long term; not yelling at
our child who’s throwing his umpteenth tantrum
today or who’s left the milk on the counter
for the umpteenth time; working steadily
toward that degree; or not thinking (or
uttering) a profanity when the software
program stalls, requiring a hard shutdown and
losing our unsaved work.
But Paul had a specific meaning in mind when
he said this. The King James translation gives
us a little more linguistic help: “Charity
suffereth long.” Looking at the Greek word
Paul chose is even more helpful, a version of
the word makrothymia.
Sometimes English translators choose to
translate the Greek word hypomonē as
“patience” (e.g. Luke 8:15; Romans 2:7; 2
Corinthians 12:12; Revelation 2:3). But
hypomonē differs from makrothymia. Hypomonē
almost always refers to perseverance or
endurance in the face of difficult or painful
circumstances (think James 1:3). But
makrothymia almost always refers to a
forbearing, persevering, patient love toward a
person. It is a form of self-sacrificial love
we extend to someone else.
God’s Longsuffering Love
This word had powerful connotations for Paul.
As a Jew, he understood makrothymia —
“longsuffering love” — as one of God’s most
fundamental character traits. For when God
revealed his glory to Moses on the mountain,
he proclaimed,
“The Lord, the Lord, a God merciful and
gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in
steadfast love and faithfulness.” (Exodus
34:6)
This description of God is repeated over and
over in the Old Testament (e.g. Numbers 14:18;
Psalm 86:15; Joel 2:13; Jonah 4:2). And in the
Greek Old Testament (Septuagint), which Paul
knew like the back of his hand, the phrase
“slow to anger” is captured in one Greek word:
a version of makrothymia.
This word is powerful because it describes
God’s incredibly patient love toward sinners.
God was lovingly slow to anger with the
continual sin of the antediluvian peoples for
many centuries. He was lovingly slow to anger
with horrible and grotesque sins of the
Canaanite peoples for many centuries (Genesis
15:16). He was lovingly slow to anger with the
idolatrous rebellion of Israel during the
period of the judges, and then during the
period of the kings for many centuries. And he
has been lovingly slow to anger with the
wicked world for many centuries since Christ
came, “not wishing that any should perish, but
that all should reach repentance” (2 Peter
3:9).
That’s why Paul used makrothymia in sentences
like these:
Or do you presume on the riches of [God’s]
kindness and forbearance and patience, not
knowing that God’s kindness is meant to lead
you to repentance? (Romans 2:4)
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)
God, who is love (1 John 4:8), suffers long
with sinners. And that’s why those who are
born of God and know God also lovingly suffer
long with sinners.
Our Longsuffering Love
And so Paul and other New Testament writers
frequently use makrothymia, because:
We are to remember the kind of merciful,
gracious, longsuffering, slow-to-anger
patience God has shown to us in Christ. (1
Timothy 1:16)
Therefore, like God, we are to put on
“compassionate hearts, kindness, humility,
meekness, and patience (makrothymia), bearing
with one another and, if one has a complaint
against another, forgiving each other; as the
Lord has forgiven [us], so [we] also must
forgive.” (Colossians 3:12–13; Ephesians 4:2;
1 Thessalonians 5:14; 2 Timothy 4:2)
And when God orders our paths through pain and
difficulty, we are to also extend to him
longsuffering, slow-to-anger patience. This
isn’t because God wrongs us in ways that
require us to forgive him. Rather, we are to
recall his redemptive purposes with Abraham,
Job, the prophets, and others so that we, like
them, will patiently wait (makrothymia) on God
to obtain his promises, deliverances, and
vindication. (Hebrews 6:15; James 5:10–11)
This is why the first thing Paul said about
love in the great Love Chapter of the Bible is
that it is patient (1 Corinthians 13:4). He’s
not referring to patience with inconveniences
(those perhaps fit better under the “love is
not irritable” category, 1 Corinthians 13:5).
He’s not even referring to longsuffering
patience in the midst of affliction
(Revelation 14:12). He’s referring to patience
toward persons.
And this is a longsuffering patience. God is
calling you and me to love the people he has
placed in our lives, even though some of them
have done or are doing great evil. We are to
love them with makrothymia love —
longsuffering love.
Makrothymia love is not permissive; it doesn’t
tolerate sin, abuse, or injustice in the sense
of enabling those things. We are to confront
them. But we do so in the spirit of Exodus
34:6 and in the power of the Spirit of 1
Corinthians 13, remembering that love “bears
all things, believes all things, hopes all
things, endures all things” and that “love
never ends” (1 Corinthians 13:7–8).
A love that never ends is a love that suffers
long.
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