The Fruit of the Spirit is Patience. Sermon by Pastor Andrew Marttinen April 27, 2024.
The Fruit of the Spirit—Patience
But the fruit of the spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and
self control. Against such things there is no law. Those who belong to Christ Jesus have
crucified the sinful nature with its passions and desires. Since we live by the Spirit, let us
keep in step with the Spirit (Gal. 5:22-25).
The fruit of the Spirit is a composite description of what the Christian lifestyle and character
traits are all about—an unbroken whole. We can’t pick only the fruit we like. They are not
scattered haphazardly on the ground. They are like an arched entrance door with 9 stones, all
leaning on each other, all dependent on the others. If we take one out everything falls. There is
also a relational aspect to all of the attitudes. Again, the fruits are not scattered willy-nilly on the
hilly. They depend on each other. They all come into our life when we accept Christ.
The first trait in this lineup is love. I mentioned that it is the head of all the other fruit. If love is at
the head, the lynchpin or door hinge of all the fruit is patience—because it describes how love
behaves. You can love someone and be impatient with them. In 1 Cor. 13 patience begins and
ends the set: 4 Love is patient and kind. Love is not jealous or boastful or proud 5 or rude. It does not
demand its own way. It is not irritable, and it keeps no record of being wronged. 6 It does not
rejoice about injustice but rejoices whenever the truth wins out. 7 Love never gives up, never
loses faith, is always hopeful, and endures through every circumstance. 1 Cor. 13:4-7
Notice that in 1 Cor. 13 patience comes before kindness. Kindness can be described as “Love in
Action.” To show how love behaves, you can’t love (as a verb) until you demonstrate patience.
In the older translations, we find the word used for patience is “longsuffering.” This accurately
describes how love behaves and is the best definition of patience. It means what it says. Love
suffers long. The Greek word for patience, makrothumia, as used in verse 26, is interesting in its
construction. The first half means “anger” and the other half means “long or slow.” So we have
the word meaning: “being able to handle one’s anger slowly.” Here is a major clue as to how
patience is to be applied to interpersonal relationships.
If the words that begin and end 1 Cor. 13 text sound familiar, patience and endurance these are
the exact words that John uses in Revelation to describe God’s Kingdom. “I, John, your brother
and partner in the tribulation and the kingdom and the patient endurance that are in Jesus, was
on the island called Patmos on account of the word of God and the testimony of Jesus (Rev.
1:9 ESV).” Notice the very next verse begins “I was in the Spirit on the Lord’s day and I heard…”
Now is the time in the sermon when I must confess that I am not an expert on the subject of
patience. I’m still learning. It’s still a process over which there is a lot of struggle going on. I
guess it can best be described as a churning going on inside. So if you understand this, perhaps we will be fellow learners, fellow travellers. All of us are still in search of more patience,
especially how to develop a harvest of fruit called patience. I’m hopeful the benefits of
developing patience are more than worth the process and pain.
Nobody enjoys the process of learning patience, because it generally involves a willingness to
quietly endure something unpleasant. Yet this is the very definition of patience: voluntarily (or
sometimes not voluntarily when I was young, dragged to church and made to listen to long-
winded preachers) choosing to carry a burden, even when that burden is cumbersome and
painful. The Greek word conveys this in its sense of “abiding under” something, implying
something unpleasant or unwelcome. (It doesn’t require patience, after all, to abide under the
cool shade of a banana tree by a beach on a tropical island). Choosing to abide under the
unpleasant condition also implies that one may well be there for quite a while–and this is the
gist of patience. Speaking of trees and long waits, have you learned of the Chinese bamboo
tree? The farmer plants the seed, waters and fertilizes it, but the first year nothing happens. The
second year the farmer waters and fertilizes it, and still nothing happens. No sign of life bursting
through the earth. The third and fourth year the plant gets water and fertilizer…and sometime
during the course of the fifth year, in a period of about six weeks, this bamboo tree grows to a
height of approximately 90 feet! The question is: Did it grow 90 feet in six weeks or did it grow
90 feet in five years? The obvious answer is that it took all of the five years because without the
nurture and care of the preceding period of time, there would be no tree. Now, another question:
When does a person develop patience? At the point of the new birth? How long does it take to
cultivate this fruit to maturity? What does it take to make the process happen?
Let’s dive into the practical matters of patience. First, it’s first and foremost an interpersonal
relationship issue. Patience is easy to develop if you're sitting all alone in your room. Two
people may be able to work at it so they are patient with each other in one-on-one encounters.
But there are so many people in our lives–parents, children, friends, bosses, caregivers, church
members, DMV personnel, politicians, other drivers on the road that want to block your
workspace, not to mention non-persons like weeds in the garden, critters on your deck,
intersection lights designed by people who took their childhood resentments and anger issues
into the sequence they programmed into them…the list is endless.
When dealing with patience, we all must acknowledge it is the little things that seem to drive us
to despair. The enemy of our souls doesn’t often concentrate on the big battles but continuously
pounds away at the little things. Because we are prepared to handle the big things, we fail to
recognize the continued erosion going on. I remember a story about the Greek hero Hercules
trying to complete one of his major tasks by taking on a seven or eight headed monster. He
faced this demonic creature head on but behind him there were small hard-shelled crab-like
monsters who constantly snapped at his heels. They seriously compromised his footwork. It
took more effort for him to stomp on them and crush their tough shells than it did to keep
lopping off the heads of the fire-breathing behemoth in front of him.
An unknown poet beautifully captured our threat and dilemma:
I thought, if defeat came at all,
It would be in a big, bold definite joust,
With a cause or a name, and it came.
I had not thought the daily skirmish
With a few details, worthwhile;
And so I tuned my back upon them
Year on year; until one day
A million minutiae blanketed together
Rose up and overwhelmed me.
So far, the development of patience seems hopeless. And it is–if we try to develop this fruit of
the Spirit in our own strength. Without the help of the Spirit at work within, achieving peace with
the idea of patience is a lost cause.
The Word of God is helpful in this case. When Paul writes about this, again the word “long-
suffering” is appropriate. It could best have been defined as “endurance” in all situations. And
we pray this in order that you may live a life worthy of the Lord and may please him in every way:
bearing fruit in every good work, growing in the knowledge of God, being strengthened with all
power according to his glorious might so that you may have great endurance and patience (Col.
1:10-11).
Phillips Brooks has captured the essence of Paul’s challenge to his readers with these words:
“Do not pray for easy lives; pray to be stronger men. Do not pray for tasks equal to your
powers; pray for powers equal to your tasks. Then the doing of your work shall be no miracle,
but you shall be a miracle. Every day you shall wonder at yourself, at the richness of life which
has come to you by the grace of God.”
This leads us to something even better in God’s word. For an example of the life of patience that
we can follow? Let’s skip all the others and go straight to Jesus. He is the ultimate example of
patience. He voluntarily chose to abide in human form, living in a fallen world of suffering, when
He could have chosen to remain in eternal glory. He chose to abide under the scoffings of
sinners, and He abode under the cutting lash of the scourge. In a sense, He even chose to abide
under the wrath and rejection of His Father, bearing the curse that should have been ours.
Some of the hardest life-lessons involve learning patience. To learn to wait while your child in
the high chair does everything with his food but eat it. To be willing to quietly sit and listen as a
long-winded friend bores you yet again with another of those endless, meandering, pointless
stories. To be ready to actively listen as your child talks in aggravatingly minute details about
everything that happened in her day. To sit for 15 minutes after the preacher, for the 3rd time,
promised to end his sermon. To be patient without interrupting. To be patient while standing in
the checkout line behind someone ordering lottery tickets and paying with dimes and quarters.
To not explode at the driver in a Kia or slow-moving half-ton truck in front of you. To be able to quiet the impulse to shout. To be able to curb anger when you are wronged. While living in
Brantford in 1855, between teaching jobs in London and Brantford, The song-writer Charles
Scriven penned such a simple line, “Oh what peace we often forfeit….” By living life in a hurried
frenzy, careening out of control and exhibiting anger at others, we live the opposite of the life
example Jesus Christ set before us. Oh, to be patient! What a tough lesson to learn because it’s
tested nearly every day by little as well as big things over which we have no control. Waiting is
not high on the list of things to do in our hurry-up world. Patience has never been a strength of
the human flesh but that doesn’t change a thing. The Bible is full of things to say about waiting.
Let’s take the time to sample around 15 of these gems of truth. No, just kidding. I will just quote
one: “Wait for the Lord; be strong and take heart and wait for the Lord” (Psalm 27:14)
Two last quotations to challenge you:
St. Francis de Sales said: Have patience with all things, but chiefly have patience with yourself.
Do not lose courage in considering your imperfections but instantly set about remedying
them…every day begin the task anew.
Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a huge crowd of witnesses to the life of faith, let
us strip off every weight that slows us down, especially the sin that so easily trips us up. And
let us run with endurance (KJV says patience) the race God has set before us. 2 We do this by
keeping our eyes on Jesus, the champion who initiates and perfects our faith. Because of the
joy awaiting him, he endured the cross, disregarding its shame. Now he is seated in the place
of honor beside God’s throne. 3 Think of all the hostility he endured from sinful people; then
you won’t become weary and give up. Heb. 12:1-3 NLT
The fruit of the Spirit is—Patience.