Author: Jeff Fritsche

The Aim: To consider together the Fruit of the Spirit of Patience 

Passage: John 8:12-59 

Study Questions:

1. Here are some options for considering what makes you impatient: (1) Have each person make a list of 3 things that make them impatient; (2) Divide the group into pairs and have each pair act out something that makes them impatient (impatient charades if you will).
2. How is God patient with us?
3. Look at Psalm 103:9-11, Rom 2:3-5, I Timothy 1:16 to discover God’s patience with us.
4. Read Matthew 18:21-35.
5. Who is patient in this story? Who is not? Why?
6. How do patience and forgiveness often go hand in hand?
7. Is there someone in your life that you have not forgiven or have not been patient with?
8. How will you apply this passage this week?

Optional Leaders’ Helps: 

Longsuffering/Patience is from makrothumia (μακροθυμια) which speaks of the steadfastness of the soul under provocation. It includes the idea of forbearance and patient endurance of wrong under ill-treatment, without anger or thought of revenge.^[1]  Biblical patience is a God-exercised, or God-given, restraint in face of opposition or oppression. It is not passivity. The initiative lies with God’s love, or the Christian’s, in meeting wrong in this way. In the OT, the concept is denoted by Hebrew ’ārēk, meaning ‘long’. God is said to be ‘long’ or ‘slow’ to anger ’erek ’appayim- (see Ex. 34:6; Nu. 14:18; Ne. 9:17; Pss. 86:15; 103:8; 145:8; Joel 2:13; Jon. 4:2). This idea is exactly represented in the Greek makrothymia, often translated  as ‘longsuffering’, and defined by Trench as ‘a long holding out of the mind’ before it gives room to anger.Such patience is characteristic of God’s dealings with sinful men, who are fully deserving of his wrath (Is. 48:9; Ho. 11:8). His protecting mark on the murderer Cain (Gn. 4:15), his providential rainbow sign to a world that had forfeited its existence (Gn. 9:11–17; 1 Pet. 3:20), his many restorations of disobedient Israel (Ho. 11:8–9), his sparing of Nineveh (Jonah), his repeated pleadings with Jerusalem (Mk. 12:1–11; Lk. 13:1–9,’ 34; Rom. 9:22), his deferment of Christ’s second coming (2 Pet. 3:9)—these are all expressions of his patience. Christians are to show a like character (Mt. 18:26, 29; 1 Cor. 13:4; Gal. 5:22; Eph. 4:2; 1 Thes. 5:14). In Proverbs the practical value of patience is stressed; it avoids strife, and promotes the wise ordering of human affairs especially where provocation is involved.The patience of God is a ‘purposeful concession of space and time’ (Barth). It is opportunity given for repentance (Rom. 2:4; 9:22; 2 Pet. 3:9). God’s forbearance has been a ‘truce with the sinner’ (Trench, on anochē, Rom. 2:4; 3:25), awaiting the final revelation and redemption in Christ (Acts 17:30). Prayer may prolong the opportunity for repentance (Gn. 18:22ff.; Ex. 32:30; 1 Jn. 5:16).The Christian’s patience in respect of persons (makrothymia) must be matched by an equal patience in respect of things (hypomons, that is, in face of the afflictions and trials of the present age (Rom. 5:3; 1 Cor. 13:7; Jas. 1:3; 5:7–11; Rev. 13:10). God is the God who gives such Christlike patience (Rom. 15:5; 2 Thes. 3:5), and Jesus is the great Exemplar of it (Heb. 3). He who thus endures to the end, by his patience will gain his soul (Mk. 13:13; Lk. 21:19; Rev. 3:10).^[2]

Other Passages: Psalm 23Psalm 37 

Optional: You may look at what the wisdom books have to say about patience and record what you discover: 

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