Love Is Patient

The 15 descriptions of love in I Corinthians 13:4-7 show us that love is never passive. You can never claim love for anything or anyone without a demonstration of it. This the most complete description of love in the Bible. 

John MacArthur writes on these verses that “Paul shines through a prism and we see 15 of its colors and hues, the spectrum of love. Each ray gives a fact, a property, of agape love. Unlike most English translations, which include several adjectives, the Greek forms of all those properties are verbs. They do not focus on what love is so much as on what loves does and does not do. Agape love is active, not abstract or passive. It does not simply feel patient, it practices patience. It does not simply have kind feelings, it does kind things. It does not simply recognize the truth, it rejoices in the truth.” (commentary on I Corinthians, pg. 337)   

Let’s consider the first description of love, and in subsequent weeks on Wednesdays, on this blog, we will consider the other 14.  

Love is patient. Love is longsuffering. Love is being able to hold out for a long time about someone or something. Patience might demonstrate itself in a person who has the ability to be wronged over and over again and never retaliate. It is a quality of self-restraint which does not hastily retaliate in the face of provoking situations. John Chrysostom, the Archbishop of Constantinople from the 4^th century, said that patience “is a word which is used of the man who is wronged and who has it easily in his power to avenge himself but will never do it. It is someone who can be provoked by an angrier person and still maintain their long fuse (Prov 14:29).

Patience has a way of possessing and governing us in more ways than we realize. In Proverbs 16:32, we read, “Better a patient person than a warrior,one with self-control than one who takes a city.”

We have positive examples in the Bible of patience. All of our prophets are examples of patience who preached and preached and warned and warned and did so with the duration of their lives with very little fruit (Jas 5:10). Stephen and Jesus are examples of patience who minutes before he died asked for God to forgive those who were about to kill him (Luke 23:34; Acts 7:59-60). Paul was an example of patience who endured beatings, imprisonments, and all sorts of persecution without calling down God’s fire from heaven – in fact he preached to those who hated him and did so patiently (I Cor 4:11-13). God Himself is always the supreme example of all things loving. Moses describes Him as “… merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness,⁷ keeping steadfast love for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, …” (Exod 34:6-7).

God’s patience cannot run out; nor should ours. The people with the most patience are those that have the highest view of the patience of God. We ought to be able to be long-lasting in our endurance of other’s faults and sins. We ought to able to live with much grace and we are to be patient with all (I Thess 5:15).

Love is patient.