A while ago my church was doing a series on the fruit of the Spirit, listed in Galatians 5:22-23. I did the sermon on patience, and below are the notes for this. The audio can be found at my church’s website. In addition to reading the list of the fruit in Galatians, we also read James 5:7-11, upon which the sermon is based. My broader approach to patience is based off Aquinas’s discussion in ST II-II Q136.

Be patient, therefore, brothers, until the coming of the Lord. See how the farmer waits for the precious fruit of the earth, being patient about it, until it receives the early and the late rains. You also, be patient. Establish your hearts, for the coming of the Lord is at hand. Do not grumble against one another, brothers, so that you may not be judged; behold, the Judge is standing at the door. As an example of suffering and patience, brothers, take the prophets who spoke in the name of the Lord. Behold, we consider those blessed who remained steadfast. You have heard of the steadfastness of Job, and you have seen the purpose of the Lord, how the Lord is compassionate and merciful. (James 5:7-11)

Introduction

One of the clearest messages in Scripture is that the people of God need to be patient. As we just saw in Galatians, Paul lists patience alongside things like love, goodness, and joy — which seem like pretty good things for Christians to have. Scripture often tells us that God’s people need to have endurance, steadfastness, or perseverance. It tells us to not dwell in anger, and it tells us to forgive one another. And a large chunk of God’s interactions with us is through him promising something and us having to wait for it.

But why should we be patient? How does patience follow from the gospel? And what is patience, actually? These are the questions we want to try and grapple with tonight.

There’s what we might call the “lazy” answer to these questions which is easy but ultimately unhelpful. It goes something like this: nice people are patient, Christians are supposed to be nice people, and so Christians are supposed to be patient. I say this is unhelpful because it tells us nearly nothing about patience, and doesn’t help us understand how patience flows from the gospel. So, let’s put that to one side and start over afresh.

Patience in general

Let’s start by trying to understand patience in general. In our passage James illustrates patience with the example of the farmer. The farmer sows the seed so that the ground will produce food. But he knows that this will not happen immediately. He knows that in order for the plant to produce this food, it needs to take in a number of rounds of rain, and this takes time. So he waits calmly without giving up. He keeps his composure. So patience is about keeping composure.

But it’s not just this, is it? We don’t call people patient when they’re calm and life is easy. James knows this, since he goes on to talk about patience in the face of suffering. And we can see this if we think through the farmer example a bit more. Let’s say he planted the seeds and then forgot about them. Then one day he’s like, “Oh! Crops!” In this case he wouldn’t be showing patience: he would just be forgetful. On the other hand let’s say he needed food and this was his only way of getting it. Or perhaps he finds it difficult to wait through both autumn and spring rains to get these crops. It’s in these cases that he would be waiting patiently. So patience involves keeping composure in the face of difficulty, whether it be suffering, or stress, or weakness, or something else.

So far so good, but we’re still missing something: when we’re patient, what motivates our patience? The farmer doesn’t wait just because he likes waiting, and we don’t endure suffering because we enjoy suffering. More generally, we aren’t patient because we like going through difficult times. The farmer has an end in mind, he has a goal: he waits patiently for the rain because this is how he gets his crops to produce food. If he gives up waiting he gives up on this food.

And this principle scales up and down: if he only waits one day, he wouldn’t get much more than what he planted. If he waits through only the autumn rains he would see the plant’s stalk and leaves — and he’d be able to eat those, which would be good to some extent. But if he waits through both autumn and spring rains, then he gets to enjoy the what James calls the “valuable crop,” which would be a great good. His waiting pays off in that it enables he to take hold of the great good.

And this is true in general when it comes to patience: we keep our composure in the face of difficulty because we look forward to a great good that we can only get if we don’t give up. This is the last aspect of patience.

Patience is keeping composure in the face of difficulty for the sake of some great good.

We can see this definition work out everywhere in life, most clearly when we’re being impatient. When you’re driving to work and you get fed up because of the traffic, you are not keeping your composure in the face of that difficulty — you’re being impatient with the other drivers. When you start ignoring someone at church because they’re irritating and you’ve given up, you are not keeping your composure in the face of that difficulty — you’re being impatient with them. When you continually struggle to overcome a particular sin but it’s difficult and so you give up on it, you are not keeping your composure in the face of that difficulty — you’re being impatient with yourself.

Christian patience: the great good and source of difficulty

To understand Christian patience, then, we need to talk about the difficulties we face as Christians and the great good that helps us get through them. To start off we need to understand two things: (1) to be with God is the greatest anyone could ever hope for, but (2) our sin prevents us from being with him. So let’s unpack each of these.

God is the greatest good

I say God is good, but on the face of it referring God “a good” — or even “a great good” — can actually be slightly misleading, because he’s not just some good thing among the other good things we are familiar in everyday life. Good ice-cream, good paintings, good dogs, and good people are each is good and desirable, but only in a limited and qualified way. God, on the other hand, is good in an unlimited way. When I’m eating a good ice-cream, part of my desire is satisfied, but some part is left unsatisfied, since an ice-cream is not a painting, or a dog, or a good time with friends, or anything else I could want. This is because the ice-cream is limited — it’s just ice-cream. It would be different, though, if I could somehow experience God, since he is unlimited. There would be no part of me left unsatisfied. CS Lewis summarized this when he said,

He who has God and everything else has no more than he who has God only. (CS Lewis, The Weight of Glory)

Now, God is so good, so holy, and so beautiful that no-one can experience him all at once, at least not in this life. When we see goodness and beauty the various things throughout creation — when we see impressive animals, incredible plants, beautiful landscapes and valleys, when we amazed by the vastness of space, and when we’re occasionally pleased with ourselves — all we’re doing is looking through windows into this or that aspect of God’s infinite glory. And even then, these windows can be difficult to see through because of things like disease, and decay, and cruelty, and death. We never get to experience God’s glory all at once, but only bit-by-bit.

This idea that God’s beauty and goodness and holiness are expressed bit-by-bit throughout creation is spoken about in different ways in Scripture. So for example, David says, “The heavens declare the glory of God” (Ps 19:1), and the angels sang to Isaiah, “Holy, holy, holy is the Lord Almighty; the whole earth is full of his glory!” (Is 6:3).

Wouldn’t it be cool, though, if instead of having God’s beauty just a little bit at a time, we somehow were able to have all of it at once? It would be like all the good times in life now, minus all the bad, but scaled up infinitely. We know it would be awesome, but don’t know exactly what that would be like, since we’ve never experienced anything like it before. We don’t get it, we can’t at the moment. As finite creatures with finite experience of reality, we have no way of picturing the true awesomeness of an infinite God. And that’s actually where the problem starts.

Sin prevents us from accessing God

You see, we’re so familiar with the finite things here in our everyday life and so unfamiliar with the infiniteness of God, that we find it easy to replace the one for the other — to focus on limited goodness rather than unlimited goodness.

Sometimes you’ll hear sin being spoken about in terms of “giving into desire,” as if the one who has the strongest desire is the one most likely sin. But in some sense it’s because our desires aren’t strong enough that we give up wanting to be with God and settle the lesser things we’re familiar. Again, CS Lewis summarizes this well when he says,

It would seem that Our Lord finds our desires not too strong, but too weak. We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased. (CS Lewis, The Weight of Glory)

This giving up of God for some finite good is at the heart of we call sin. And sin always spirals into more sin. The more we choose finite goods over God, the more used it we become. It becomes easier to do again next time, and harder and harder to choose God. Sins we might’ve at one point thought unimaginable now become plausible, or even desirable. And so we spiral further and further away from God, alienating ourselves from him, and cutting ourselves off from ever seeing him face-to-face. This infinite goodness that is beyond our wildest dreams is now beyond our reach.

Again, the idea that our sin prevents us from accessing God is spoken about in different ways in Scripture. With Moses, for example, God said, “you cannot see my face, for no one may see me and live.” (Ex 33:20) And as Isaiah cried out when he saw God, “Woe is me! I am ruined! For I am a man of unclean lips… and my eyes have seen the King, the Lord Almighty.” (Is 6:5)

Christian patience: the gospel

It’s against this backdrop of us being cut off from infinite joy that the gospel shows us what Christian patience is all about. Because of Jesus the possibility of being with God in all his glory is once again brought within reach, so that anyone who wants it can have it. So, the greatest possible good we could hope for returns as something we can look forward to.

But we don’t get all of it right now, and this is where the difficulty comes in. When we turn to God our sin no longer alienates us from him, for sure, but we’re still people who find it easy to sin. As Paul says in his letter to the Romans,

So I find this law at work: Although I want to do good, evil is right there with me. For in my inner being I delight in God’s law; but I see another law at work in me, waging war against the law of my mind and making me a prisoner of the law of sin… What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death? (Rom 7:21-24)

As we are now, we’re caught in what we might call “the twilight of sin,” the time between when Christ first came — when he fixed our relationship with God — and when he will return again — when he will fix us and we will get to be with God. And it’s this second day — which James refers to as “the coming of the Lord” (Jas 5:7a, 8c) — that we are to look forward to.

It’s because we’re in this twilight that we need to show patience. Right now we are weak and still find it so easy to choose lesser goods over God. But, if we keep our composure, if we endure through these difficulties, then one day we will get to be with him.

Christian patience: our weakness

Now, maybe there’s a particular sin you’re struggling with at the moment, and which you keep lapsing back into. In this case, there are two ways to give up. Either (1) you’ll find a way to justify or ignore the sin, by convincing yourself it’s not really that bad or (2) you’ll distance yourself from God because you’ve failed him. In a way, these two responses are opposites of one another: the one says your failure is so big that God won’t want anything to do with you, and the other tries to underplay the failure so that it’s not really a failure in the end.

But please don’t give up! I know it’s difficult, but remember that this life and this difficulty are temporary, and that one day this burden will be lifted from you. Recognize sin as the failure it is, and remember that God’s love is big enough to overcome it! Hate your sin, and keep your eyes facing forward to the day it will be gone. As Paul reminds us, “He who calls you is faithful; he will surely do it.” (1 Thess 5:24) So be patient with yourself.

Christian patience: their weakness

But maybe it’s not your sin that you’re struggling with. As a community of people each weakened by sin in different ways, it’s inevitable that we’re going to fail each other sometimes. And as James says, we’ll be tempted to give up on one another, to grumble against each other. Either we’ll get angry at each other, or we’ll try avoid each other, or something in between, but it always results in more disunity than when we started.

When you’re tempted to give up on a fellow brother or sister the key thing to remember is this: the day that you look forward to — when your sin is removed and you are with God — is the same day that their sin is removed and they are with God. In other words, the day we long for is the day that we are all together in perfect unity. Now, if the day I look forward more than anything else involves me being with you in perfect unity, how could I not endure your failures now, and how could I not work for unity between us? Of course this doesn’t mean we shouldn’t correct each other, or rebuke each another, or things like that; what it means is that when we do these things that we should do them patiently.

Christian patience: the synthesis

Ultimately, if we are able to acknowledge our own sin without giving up on ourselves and if as a community we are able to bear with one another’s sins, then we will have created an environment in which we can help each other in our weakness. In the end this is part of the reason why God let’s us face these difficulties in the first place. As James says earlier in his letter,

Consider it pure joy, my brothers and sisters, whenever you face trials of many kinds, because you know that the testing of your faith produces perseverance. And let perseverance finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything. (Jas 1:2-4)

Christian patience: some perspective

As I close I want to ask a more general question. So far I’ve been speaking about how the gospel relates to patience in the Christian life: patience with ourselves in our struggle against sin, and patience with our fellow Christians in their struggles against sin. I focused on the Christian life because this is what the New Testament focuses on. But what about the everyday stuff, like when I get angry in traffic on my way to work, or when I get fed up with my parents or my children?

I think the gospel has something to say about these too, but with a difference. When it comes to our struggle with sin, we should never give up, because an infinite God is always worth enduring through a finite difficulty. But in everyday life many of the goods we look forward to are finite, and so giving up can sometimes be the right thing to do. For example, if at work we come up with a plan to meet a certain goal, but halfway through we realize it’s not worth it, then the right thing to do is to give up and try something else. So, however the gospel applies in these cases, it cannot be in the same way as it applies to the struggle with sin.

So, how does is apply? The thought that I keep coming back to is this: on a normal day small things like stubbing my toe easily irritate me. But if I was fighting in a war and I stubbed my toe, I doubt it would irritate me at all!

The point is that it’s all about perspective: we’re more prone to get impatient in cases we think are more important. But when we have an eye on the bigger picture, the struggles that once seemed so big tend to fall away.

This is where the gospel comes in: it says that the everyday things we see and do are not the whole story. That behind the scenes there’s a war going, between eternal life with God and eternal death without him. And that each of us are soldiers — of a kind — in this war. As Pauls says in his letter to the Ephesians,

Finally, be strong in the Lord and in the strength of his might. Put on the whole armor of God, that you may be able to stand against the schemes of the devil. For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers over this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places. Therefore take up the whole armor of God, that you may be able to withstand in the evil day, and having done all, to stand firm. (Eph 6:10-13)

We would do well to remember all of this on our way to work tomorrow; when a driver in front of us forgets to indicate and we’re tempted to be impatient.