“Christian Resolutions_2020, Part 23” by Romans
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We are continuing our Series on what I have come to call, “Christian Resolutions,” and an offshoot Study of their Foundation and Manifestation: The Fruit of the Spirit. We have already reviewed and examined Love, Joy and Peace in previous installments.
Before we begin, I would like to say that this particular study for me, in preparing this Discussion, has really been a rewarding one for me. There is nothing I enjoy quite so much as having my eyes opened on a subject that I thought I knew pretty well. As the Study took shape, things became clear to me that I had never previously considered. I hope it has the same effect on you.
Tonight, we will examine the 4th named Fruit of the Spirit: “Longsuffering.” As I often do, allow me to defer to the dictionary definition of longsuffering: “patiently enduring lasting offense or hardship.” Also tonight, I am going to use a source that I have not routinely consulted. That is a booklet I received several years ago on The Fruit of the Spirit from Dr. David Jeremiah. Perhaps some of you have heard of him and/or his “Turning Point” Radio Program. I found that his booklet provides some very good insights into the Fruit, “Longsuffering.”
He breaks down “longsuffering” into two basic areas: 1.) Longsuffering in the life of the individual believer; and 2.) Longsuffering as a attribute of God. On the human, or individual level, longsuffering speaks of a life which is both consistent, as well as controlled.
Dr. Jeremiah writes, “ A person who develops the quality of longsuffering or patience is a man or a woman who will first of all discover what it mean to be consistent in living. The thing we all lack is a consistent day-to-day existence before God...” “...One of the things which impedes our consistency more than anything else is the lack of patience...” “We react impatiently to things.”
Paul wrote in Colossians 1:9-11: “For this cause we also, since the day we heard it, do not cease to pray for you, and to desire that ye might be filled with the knowledge of his will in all wisdom and spiritual understanding; That ye might walk worthy of the Lord unto all pleasing, being fruitful in every good work, and increasing in the knowledge of God; Strengthened with all might, according to his glorious power, unto all patience and longsuffering with joyfulness...”
Alexander MacClaren writes of this: “Colossians 1:11: ‘All Power’: There is a wonderful rush and fervour in the prayers of Paul. No parts of his letters are so lofty, so impassioned, so full of his soul, as when he rises from speaking of God to men to speaking to God for men. We have him here setting forth his loving desires for the Colossian Christians in a prayer of remarkable fulness and sweep. Broadly taken, it is for their perfecting in religious and moral excellence, and it is very instructive to note the idea of what a good man is which is put forth here.
The main petition is for wisdom and spiritual understanding applied chiefly, as is to be carefully noted, to the knowledge of God’s will . The thought is that what it most imports us to know is the Will of God, a knowledge not of merely speculative points in the mysteries of the divine nature, but of that Will which it concerns us to know because it is our life to do it.
The next element in Paul’s desires, as set forth in the ideal here, is a worthy walk, a practical life, or course of conduct which is worthy of Jesus Christ, and in every respect pleases Him. The highest purpose of knowledge is a good life. The surest foundation for a good life is a full and clear knowledge of the Will of God.
Then follow a series of clauses which seem to expand the idea of the worthy walk and to be co-ordinate or perhaps slightly causal, and to express the continuous condition of the soul which is walking worthily. Let us endeavour to gather from these words some hints as to what it is God’s purpose that we should become.
I. The many-sided strength which may be ours. The form of the word ‘strengthened’ here would be more fully represented by ‘being strengthened,’ and suggests an unintermitted process of bestowal and reception of God’s might rendered necessary by our continuous human weakness, and by the tear and wear of life.
As in the physical life there must be constant renewal because there is constant waste, and as every bodily action involves destruction of tissue so that living is a continual dying, so is it in the mental and still more in the spiritual life. Just as there must be a perpetual oxygenation of blood in the lungs, so there must be an uninterrupted renewal of spiritual strength for the highest life.
It is demanded by the conditions of our human weakness. It is no less rendered necessary by the nature of the divine strength imparted, which is ever communicating itself, and like the ocean cannot but pour so much of its fulness as can be received into every creek and crack on its shore.
The Apostle not merely emphasises the continuousness of this communicated strength, but its many-sided variety, by designating it ‘all power.’ In this whole context that word ‘all’ seems to have a charm for him. We read in this prayer of ‘ all spiritual wisdom,’ of ‘walking worthily of the Lord unto all pleasing,’ of ‘fruit in every good work,’ and now of ‘ all power,’ and lastly of ‘ all patience and longsuffering.’
These are not instances of being obsessed with a word, but each of them has its own appropriate force, and here the comprehensive completeness of the strength available for our many-sided weakness is marvellously revealed. There is ‘infinite riches in a narrow room.’ All power means every kind of power, be it bodily or mental, for all variety of circumstances, and, Protean, to take the shape of all exigencies. Most of us are strong only at points, and weak in others.
In all human experience there is a vulnerable spot on the heel. The most glorious image, though it has a head of gold, ends in feet, ‘part of iron and part of clay.’ And if this ideal of many-sided power stands in contrast with the limitations of human strength, how does it rebuke and condemn the very partial manifestations of a very narrow and one-sided power which we who profess to have received it set forth!
We have access to a source which can fill our whole nature, can flower into all gracious forms, can cope with all our exigencies, and make us all-round men, complete in Jesus Christ, and, having this, what do we make of it, what do we show for it? Does not God say to us, ‘Ye are not straitened in me, ye are straitened in yourselves; I beseech you be ye enlarged.’ The conditions on our part requisite for possessing ‘all might’ are plain enough. The earlier portion of the prayer plainly points to them.
The knowledge of God’s Will and the ‘walk worthy of the Lord’ are the means whereby the power which is ever eager to make its dwelling in us, can reach its end. If we keep the channel unchoked, no doubt ‘the river of the water of life which proceedeth from the throne of God and the Lamb’ will rejoice to fill it to the brim with its flashing waters. If we do not wrench away ourselves from contact with Him, He will ‘strengthen us with all might.’ If we keep near Him we may have calm confidence that power will be ours that shall equal our need and outstrip our desires.
II. The great purpose of this strength. ‘Patience and longsuffering with joyfulness’ seems at first but a poor result of such a force, but it comes from a heart that was under no illusions as to the facts of human life, and it finds a response in us all. It may be difficult to discriminate ‘patience’ from ‘longsuffering,’ but the general notion here is that one of the highest uses for which divine strength is given to us, is to make us able to meet the antagonism of evil without its shaking our souls.
He who patiently endures without despondency or the desire to ‘recompense evil for evil,’ and to whom by faith even ‘the night is light about him,’ is far on the way to perfection. God is always near us, but never nearer than when our hearts are heavy and our way rough and dark. Our sorrows make rents through which His strength flows. It is a law of the Divine dealings that His strength is ‘made perfect in weakness.’ God leads us in to a darkened room to show us His wonders.
That strength is to be manifested by us in ‘patience and longsuffering,’ both of which are to have blended with them a real though apparently antagonistic joy. True and profound grief is not opposed to such patience, but the excess of it, the hopeless and hysterical outbursts certainly are. God’s strength is given that we may bear ours calmly, and upright like these fair forms that hold up the heavy architecture as if it were a feather, or like women with water-jars on their heads, which only make their carriage more graceful and their step more firm.
How different the patience which God gives by His own imparted strength, from the sullen submission or hysterical abandonment to sorrow, or the angry rebellion characterising Godless grief! Many of us think that we can get on very well in prosperity and fine weather without Him.
We had better ask ourselves what we are going to do when the storm comes, which comes to all some time or other. The word here rendered ‘patience’ is more properly ‘perseverance.’ It is not merely a passive but an active virtue.
We do not receive that great gift of divine strength to bear only, but also to work, and such work is one of the best ways of bearing and one of the best helps to doing so. So in our sorrows and trials let us feel that God’s strength is not all given us to be expended in our own consolation, but also to be used in our plain duties. These remain as imperative though our hearts are beating like hammers, and there is no more unwise and cowardly surrender to trouble than to fling away our tools and fold our hands idly on our laps.
But Paul lays a harder duty on us even in promising a great gift to us, when he puts before us an ideal of joy mingling with patience and longsuffering. The command would be an impossible one if there were not the assurance that we should be ‘strengthened with all might.’ We plainly need an infusion of diviner strength than our own, if that strange marriage of joy and sorrow should take place, and they should at once occupy our hearts.
Yet if His strength be ours we shall be strong to submit and acquiesce, strong to look deep enough to see His will as the foundation of all and as ever busy for our good, strong to hope, strong to discern the love at work, strong to trust the Father even when He chastens. And all this will make it possible to have the paradox practically realised in our own experience, ‘As sorrowful yet always rejoicing.’
One has seen potassium burning underwater. Our joy may burn under waves of sorrow. Let us bring our weakness to Jesus Christ and grasp Him as did the sinking Peter. He will breathe His own grace into us, and speak to our feeble and perchance sorrowful hearts, as He had done long before Paul’s words to the Colossians, ‘My grace is sufficient for thee, and my strength is made perfect in weakness.’”
In his book, Dr. Jeremiah comments on this opening in these words: “I believe that's what Paul was talking about (reacting to things impatiently)...” “Paul was saying, 'I want you to know patience is not a grim, bleak acceptance of a situation, but it is that which radiates joy.”
Let me ask you all: Which people in the Bible come to mind when you think of someone having the quality of patience or longsuffering?
Job is usually the first place answer to this question. His response to all that had befallen him, all the calamity, the loss of all ten of his children, the bodily affliction and then the personal repudiation by his so-called friends was to say: “When He has tested me, I shall come forth as gold” (Job :2310).
Notice the similarity to Job's response in the New Testament. We read in 1 Peter 1:7: “...That the trial of your faith, being much more precious than of gold that perisheth, though it be tried with fire, might be found unto praise and honour and glory at the appearing of Jesus Christ.”
The Life Application Bible tells us, "As gold is heated, impurities float to the top and can be skimmed off. Steel is tempered or strengthened by heating it in fire. Likewise, our trials, struggles, and persecutions refine and strengthen our faith, making us useful to God."
Matthew Henry writes of this: “Worldly possessions are uncertain and soon pass away, like the flowers and plants of the field. That must be of the greatest worth, which is laid up in the highest and best place, in heaven. Happy are those whose hearts the Holy Spirit sets on this inheritance. God not only gives his people grace, but preserves them unto glory.
Every believer has always something wherein he may greatly rejoice; it should show itself in the countenance and conduct.
The Lord does not willingly afflict, yet his wise love often appoints sharp trials, to show his people their hearts, and to do them good at the latter end. Gold does not increase by trial in the fire, it becomes less; but faith is made firm, and multiplied, by troubles and afflictions. Gold must perish at last, and can only purchase perishing things, while the trial of faith will be found to praise, and honour, and glory.
Let this reconcile us to present afflictions. Seek then to believe Christ's excellence in himself, and his love to us; this will kindle such a fire in the heart as will make it rise up in a sacrifice of love to him. And the glory of God and our own happiness are so united, that if we sincerely seek the one now, we shall attain the other when the soul shall no more be subject to evil. The certainty of this hope is as if believers had already received it.”
When we are faced with a sore trial, a personal setback or loss, an illness or other sore trial, there is no better advice that I can give in such a situation than the words we find in Psalms 27:7-14: “Hear, O LORD, when I cry with my voice: have mercy also upon me, and answer me. When thou saidst, Seek ye my face; my heart said unto thee, Thy face, LORD, will I seek. Hide not thy face far from me; put not thy servant away in anger: thou hast been my help; leave me not, neither forsake me, O God of my salvation. When my father and my mother forsake me, then the LORD will take me up.
Teach me thy way, O LORD, and lead me in a plain path, because of mine enemies. Deliver me not over unto the will of mine enemies: for false witnesses are risen up against me, and such as breathe out cruelty. I had fainted, unless I had believed to see the goodness of the LORD in the land of the living. Wait on the LORD: be of good courage, and he shall strengthen thine heart: wait, I say, on the LORD.”
The Life Application Bible adds, "David knew from experience what it meant to wait for the Lord. He had been anointed king at age 16 but didn’t become king until he was 30. During the interim, he was chased through the wilderness by jealous King Saul. David had to wait on God for the fulfillment of his promise to reign. Later, after becoming king, he was chased by his rebellious son, Absalom.
Waiting for God is not easy. Often it seems that he isn’t answering our prayers or doesn’t understand the urgency of our situation. That kind of thinking implies that God is not in control or is not fair. But God is worth waiting for: He can see can around those blind corners; He knows the end from the beginning (Isaiah 46:10).
We read in Lamentations 3:24-26: “The LORD is my portion, saith my soul; therefore will I hope in him. The LORD is good unto them that wait for him, to the soul that seeketh him. It is good that a man should both hope and quietly wait for the salvation of the LORD.”
Matthew Henry writes, “Wherever the believer is, he can find a way to the throne of grace by prayer. God calls us by his Spirit, by his word, by his worship, and by special providences, merciful and afflicting. When we are foolishly making court to lying vanities, God is, in love to us, calling us to seek our own mercies in him. The call is general, "Seek ye my face;" but we must apply it to ourselves, "I will seek it." The word does us no good, when we do not ourselves accept the exhortation: a gracious heart readily answers to the call of a gracious God, being made willing in the day of his power.
The psalmist requests the favour of the Lord; the continuance of his presence with him; the benefit of Divine guidance, and the benefit of Divine protection. God's time to help those that trust in him, is, when all other helpers fail. He is a surer and better Friend than earthly parents are, or can be. What was the belief which supported the psalmist? That he should see the goodness of the Lord.
There is nothing like the believing hope of eternal life, the foresights of that glory, and foretastes of those pleasures, to keep us from fainting under all calamities. In the mean time he should be strengthened to bear up under his burdens. Let us look unto the suffering Saviour, and pray in faith, not to be delivered into the hands of our enemies. Let us encourage each other to wait on the Lord, with patient expectation, and fervent prayer.”
Patience and longsuffering is a slightly different kind of Fruit from the other Fruit of the Spirit in that this one has both a inward and outward benefit. When we demonstrate patience and kindness over a long period of time, to a person who continues to wear us down through either deliberately malicious or even well-intentioned grief, we demonstrate the attributes of God that we so often invoke in our relationship with Him.”
Dr. Jeremiah writes that it is a matter of control. He says in his booklet, The Fruit of the Spirit, “When you walk under the control of the Spirit, the quality of longsuffering develops within you. A longsuffering person is a person under control. A person whose temper is on a hair trigger constantly destroys friendships and fellowships... but a person who has temper under control cements fellowship and refuses to allow strife.”
Notice Paul's words in Ephesians 4:1-3: “I therefore, the prisoner of the Lord, beseech you that ye walk worthy of the vocation wherewith ye are called. With all lowliness and meekness, with longsuffering, forbearing one another in love; Endeavouring to keep the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace.” In his first epistle to Timothy, Paul names various problems that disrupt a congregation: namely, “perverse disputings, and many foolish and hurtful lusts, which drown men in destruction and perdition.”
We read from the Ellicott's Commentary for English Readers, “With all lowliness and meekness, with longsuffering, where the same three qualities are dwelt upon, but there introduced by “compassion and kindness.” They seem to correspond almost exactly to the first, third, and fifth beatitudes of the Sermon on the Mount, in which the principle of love is wrought out in various forms (as in the other beatitudes the principle of righteousness): “Blessed are the poor in spirit;” “Blessed are the meek;” “Blessed are the merciful.”
“Longsuffering” is the manifestation of such meekness, with something of especial effort and struggle, in the bearing of injury. Forbearing one another in love —The word rendered “endeavouring” is, in the original, a word expressing “earnestness” of thought and exertion to secure a thing not lightly obtained. It shows that St. Paul here passes from the negative aspects of love, summed up in forbearance, to the more positive and energetic enthusiasm for unity and peace. Love is in both aspects, the “uniting bond” of peace.
Paul writes in the parallel passage of Colossians 3:14, “And above all these things put on charity, which is the bond of perfectness.” Charity, here, is put on over all else, and is the uniting “bond of perfectness.” In the celebrated thirteenth chapter of the First Epistle to the Corinthians, charity is made to include “long-suffering” and “kindness,” and all forms of humility and gentleness. But, if it be real, it must necessarily pass into active energy; if it is to win the final beatitude of “blessing to the peacemakers,” it must “labour for peace,” and “follow after the things which make for peace.”
The Life Application Bible says, "God has chosen us to be Christ’s representatives on earth. In light of this truth, Paul challenges us to live lives worthy of the calling we have received—the awesome privilege of being called Christ’s very own. This includes being humble, gentle, patient, understanding, and peaceful. People are watching your life. Can they see Christ in you? How well are you doing as his representative?"
Paul writes in 1 Timothy 6:11: "But thou, O man of God, flee these things; and follow after righteousness, godliness, faith, love, patience, meekness.”
The Life Application Bible makes an interesting point about this verse, and several verses we read earlier about waiting for God to act in any given situation and/or trial we may be facing. But we are not supposed to shift into neutral while we are waiting. Consider its recommendation:
"Paul uses active and forceful verbs to describe the Christian life: run, pursue, fight, hold tightly.
Some think Christianity is a passive religion that advocates waiting for God to act. On the contrary, we must have an active faith, obeying God with courage and doing what we know is right. Is it time for action on your part? Don’t wait — get going!"
Longsuffering certainly goes hand-in-hand with forgiveness. Jesus taught us, when asking the Father for forgiveness, to “Forgive us our debts AS we forgive our debtors” (Matthew 6:12).
Notice how Jesus phrased this petition: Forgive us our debts AS we forgive our debtors...” and not because we forgive. We need to soberly examine ourselves on this as well. We need to come to terms with what we are asking the Father to do when He forgives us. If He forgives us AS we forgive, will our sins be forgiven or not? But... I digress. That is another subject for another time.
Finally, consider this Beatitude in Matthew 5:7 that is also interwoven with Longsuffering: “Blessed are the merciful: for they shall obtain mercy.” By showing patience, and the closely-related characteristic of mercy, we are showing God that when we ask Him for mercy when we fail, we are doing so from the perspective of one who also is patient and merciful and longsuffering in our interpersonal relationships.
When we demonstrate patience and kindness over a prolonged period of time, to a person who continues to wear us down, we demonstrate the attributes of God that we so often invoke in our relationship with Him. And in so doing, both we and the person are benefited. The person does not become the recipient of what we may believe to be a deserved outburst from us, and we maintain the calm and peaceful spirit that should characterize us as followers of Christ.
This concludes this evening's Discussion, “Christian Resolutions_2020, Part 23.”
This Discussion was originally presented “live” on June 10th, 2020.
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