“But the fruit of the Spirit is…longsuffering…”
The Spirit’s fruit is beautiful to the Father. As He sees more of the image of His beloved Son in redeemed sinners He can only be pleased. What greater gift can He give to redeemed men and women than this likeness? It is the character of the Lord Jesus. Like the other aspects of the fruit of the Spirit, this one called “longsuffering” in Galatians 5 is vivid in His life and it is proclaimed in God’s dealings throughout Scripture.
Note here the difference of meaning in the words translated “longsuffering” and “patience.” Longsuffering has to do with holding back punishment and with being merciful. Patience is related to hope and has to do with enduring trials or circumstances. It is not used of God, while longsuffering is.1
Paul highlights this difference when he prays that the believers in Colosse would be “Strengthened with all might, according to His glorious power, unto all patience and longsuffering with joyfulness” (Col. 1:11). Both are necessary for believers: patience as we deal with the circumstances of life and longsuffering as we deal with one another. The ways of God are the pattern.
God has been revealing His longsuffering nature since the fall in Eden. Adam and Eve knew it and their descendants did too until the flood, “when once the longsuffering of God waited in the days of Noah, while the ark was being prepared…” (1 Pet. 3:20, nkjv). The fact that God was willing to wait assumes some imminent judgment. During Noah’s day it was the flood. Many years later at Sinai it was God sending Israel into Canaan and not going with them (Ex. 33:1-3).
At this time of Israel’s first national embrace of idolatry, Moses interceded for the people and the Lord had mercy. He went with them and when He proclaimed His name to Moses there was no surprise, only awe. Moses had seen by God’s actions what He is like.
The Lord passed by before him, and proclaimed, “The Lord, the Lord God, merciful and gracious, longsuffering, and abundant in goodness and truth, keeping mercy for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, and that will by no means clear the guilty; visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children, and upon the children’s children, unto the third and to the fourth generation. And Moses made haste, and bowed his head toward the earth, and worshiped” (Ex. 34:6-8).
This would not be the last time God would have a reason to destroy His people. Israel knew Him to be longsuffering throughout her history, but God has dealt with other nations in this way. For example, Assyria knew Him to be such a God.
After Jonah preached (finally) to the people of Nineveh and God spared them, he revealed the reason why he had run from God’s command. It was not fear but knowledge. “And he prayed unto the Lord, and said, I pray Thee, O Lord, was not this my saying, when I was yet in my country? Therefore I fled before unto Tarshish: for I knew that Thou art a gracious God, and merciful, slow to anger, and of great kindness, and repentest Thee of the evil” (Jonah 4:2) Every sinner can be thankful that God is not like Jonah.
As with any good thing that the Spirit works out in our lives, we can look back and see it perfectly modeled in our Lord Jesus. With every sinner that He touched, with every disciple that knew just the wrong thing to say, He was longsuffering. He was with the leaders of Israel too. Though not every word was quiet and soothing, some were. He knew what was necessary in every situation. And He saw the results but only after great pain. Many of the sinners repented. His disciples went on to lay the foundation of the Church (Eph. 2:20), and “a great company of the priests were obedient to the faith” (Acts 6:7).
And though His sacrifice on Calvary was not the first display of God’s longsuffering, it was the greatest, for it was on that hill that God’s longsuffering would both cease— “…it pleased the Lord to bruise Him…” and have its culmination— “…and with His stripes we are healed” (Isa. 53:5, 10). The great judgment for sin, held back for so long, fell, not on the guilty but on the innocent. He gave His own Son the blow, so that He would bare “our sins in His own body on the tree” (1 Pet. 2:24). God in His longsuffering is still waiting, not now for the Redeemer to come for us, but for the lost to come to Him. This is why Peter urges us, as we wait for the Lord’s return, to “account that the longsuffering of our Lord is salvation” (2 Pet. 3:15).
In light of this, is having a longsuffering spirit toward each other so difficult? Yes, frankly, it is. Strife seems to come more naturally than peace. Those who are longsuffering can expect to be abused. “Charity suffereth long,” Paul writes, as much to say that love is proved in the long-term. In another place he writes: “Put on therefore, as the elect of God, holy and beloved, bowels of mercies, kindness, humbleness of mind, meekness, longsuffering; forbearing one another, and forgiving one another, if any man have a quarrel against any: even as Christ forgave you, so also do ye. And above all these things put on charity, which is the bond of perfectness” (Col. 3:12-14). To do anything less is to side with Jonah and with the ungrateful servant that the Lord spoke of in Matthew 18.
Both men quickly accepted the forgiveness offered to them—the one of a debt too large to pay, the other of rebellion and the consequent living death inside the great fish. But neither man saw the connection between what he had received and what he was expected to give. By the grace of God the same thing will not be true of us. As He is, so He would make us. As we have received, so we should give to others. Both of these men stand as warnings to any of us who are willing to receive from the Lord and forget His longsuffering toward us.
Let us follow the examples of Moses and of the Lord Jesus. Let us bow down in worship, then rise and be longsuffering towards all, each one knowing what the Lord forgave, what He still forgives, and what it all cost Him.
ENDNOTE:
1. Notes on Thessalonians by Hogg and Vine, pp. 183-184
Written by Josh Fitzhugh