Summary
Patience with Others
Patience toward other people does not begin as a technique for managing irritation. It begins with identity. In Colossians 3:12, Paul addresses Christians as "God's chosen ones, holy and beloved." Before he commands anything, he names a reality. We were chosen in Christ before the foundation of the world Ephesians 1:4; we are holy because the righteous garment of Christ has been given to us in the great exchange Luther described, our sin laid on Him and His righteousness clothing us in Baptism; we are beloved because, as 1 John 4:10 says, He first loved us and sent His Son as the atoning sacrifice. Our identity is not our occupation, role, or accomplishments. It is what God declares us to be.
From that reality flows the exhortation: "Put on then... compassion, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience." Compassion is mercy and sympathy expressed; kindness is a loving disposition toward others; humility counts the other as more important than self; meekness is not weakness but controlled strength—the picture of someone strong enough to carry a heavy stone yet able to set it gently on a glass table. Patience belongs in this wardrobe of the baptized.
The Hebrew Scriptures picture God's patience vividly. He is "slow to anger" (Psalm 103:8; Joel 2:13; Psalm 86:15)—literally, "long of nostrils." Anger vents through the nose; the longer the nostril, the longer the venting takes. The Greek word in Colossians, makrothumia, carries the same idea: makro (long) and thumos (hot anger). To be patient is to be long before becoming angry. We learn what patience is by looking at God Himself, who is long-suffering toward us.
But how do we live this out when someone keeps pushing our buttons, when situations drag on, when promised calls never come? Colossians 3:13 supplies the next move: "bearing with one another, and, if one has a complaint against another, forgiving each other." To bear with does not mean refusing to address what needs to be addressed, nor suffering in silence. It means continually living with the awareness that there is only one perfect One, and we are not Him—and neither is the person across from us. Putting up with one another is the daily practice of imperfect people who know it.
The engine that makes this possible is forgiveness. Forgiveness is not condoning, not forgetting (only God casts our sins as far as the east is from the west), and not always the same as reconciliation. Forgiveness is showing the other person grace—undeserved love—by letting go, sending away what was said, what was done, what should have been done but wasn't. And because we are sinners dealing with sinners, this is something we will keep doing, sending the same offense away again and again. The standard and the source are given in the same verse: "as the Lord has forgiven you, so you also must forgive."
Notice finally that makrothumia appears again in Galatians 5:22 as a fruit of the Spirit. Patience is not something we grit our teeth to manufacture. It is God's gift, grown in us by the Spirit who dwells in the baptized. He who has named us chosen, holy, and beloved is the same One who clothes us for the very situations and people that test us. For more on this, see "Patience with Others".
Video citations
- "Patience with Others" 12-11-22 — Would you open your Bibles please with me to Colossians the 3rd chapter? If you're using a few additions, Colossians is in the New Testament, page 178, Colossians the 3rd chapter for our study…