When Paul described the fruit of the Spirit, he listed the fourth component as “longsuffering.” A lot of English translations use the word patience instead, but the Greek word Paul used conveys something deeper than that. HELPS Word-Studies describes it as the opposite of being short-tempered—“long-tempered,” if we had such a word.
There’s some level of nuance here—longsuffering isn’t just the ability to wait things out without ever getting angry. HELPS describes it as divinely regulated patience that results in “waiting sufficient time before expressing anger” and avoiding “the premature use of force (retribution) that rises out of improper anger.”
In other words, longsuffering doesn’t mean we never get angry. Longsuffering means we get angry at the right time, in the right way, for the right reasons—which is every bit as difficult as it sounds.
(Interestingly, there are two Greek words commonly translated as “patience” in the New Testament—makrothumia and hupomone. The word Paul used here, makrothumia, generally refers to patience with people, while hupomone generally refers to patience with situations and trials.)
Think back to the last time you got angry. What was the reason? Did something set you off unexpectedly, or was your anger a measured response directed toward something that truly deserved it? Longsuffering is the difference between anger as a knee-jerk response and anger as an intentional decision with a specific purpose.
So what does that look like in action?
It can be hard to understand the anger of a loving God. Anger and love can seem almost incompatible—but as we explore longsuffering, we’ll see that the two actually go hand-in-hand.
God revealed Himself to Moses as “the LORD, the LORD God, merciful and gracious, longsuffering, and abounding in goodness and truth, keeping mercy for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, by no means clearing the guilty, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children and the children’s children to the third and the fourth generation” (Exodus 34:6-7).
David knew God as “good, and ready to forgive, and abundant in mercy to all those who call upon You … a God full of compassion, and gracious, longsuffering and abundant in mercy and truth” (Psalm 86:5, 15).
God is ready to forgive. He wants to forgive. He wants a relationship with all of us—it’s why He created us. And that’s why He’s patient with us. That’s why He shows us longsuffering when we fall short of His perfect standards. He wants us to repent. He wants to help us get back on track and into a right relationship with Him.
But His standards aren’t arbitrary. They exist for a reason. They exist to show us the boundaries between good and evil, right and wrong (Deuteronomy 30:15). When we ignore those standards and refuse to obey God, we heap misery on ourselves and those around us. And eventually, that road will lead us to the edge of God’s longsuffering.
Paul asked the Romans, “Do you despise the riches of His goodness, forbearance, and longsuffering, not knowing that the goodness of God leads you to repentance? But in accordance with your hardness and your impenitent heart you are treasuring up for yourself wrath in the day of wrath and revelation of the righteous judgment of God, who ‘will render to each one according to his deeds’” (Romans 2:4-6).
What we’re seeing here are two sides of the same coin. Even though He sees our sins as the abominable choices that they are, God is patient and leads us to repentance. “You have burdened Me with your sins,” He told Israel. “You have wearied Me with your iniquities” (Isaiah 43:24). And yet in spite of that, He reminded them, “I, even I, am He who blots out your transgressions for My own sake; and I will not remember your sins” (Isaiah 43:25).
God stands ready to forgive—but He won’t endure evil forever. For those who refuse to repent and change, there is coming a “day of wrath and revelation of the righteous judgment of God.” And that raises an important question:
How long does longsuffering suffer?
The answer is, “As long as it needs to.” That’s not the same as “forever,” even though it can feel like that in practice.
In the Old Testament, the section of the Bible where many accuse God of being rash and impatient, we actually see Him displaying quite a lot of longsuffering.
It’s true that God eventually sent His own people into captivity, but before that, He spent decades, even centuries, pleading with the nation of Israel to forsake their pagan ways and return to Him. Through Jeremiah, He said, “I have sent to you all My servants the prophets, rising early and sending them, saying, ‘Oh, do not do this abominable thing that I hate!’ But they did not listen or incline their ear” (Jeremiah 44:4-5).
God was patient. He gave His people opportunity after opportunity to change their ways, but they refused: “As for the word that you have spoken to us in the name of the LORD, we will not listen to you!” (verse 16). There was no changing their minds, no reasoning with them at all. Instead, they “built the high places of Baal, to burn their sons with fire for burnt offerings to Baal, which I did not command or speak, nor did it come into My mind” (Jeremiah 19:5).
They were burning their own children as human sacrifices to gods that didn’t exist. They were committing every sort of immorality, over and over again. Eventually, God stopped pleading. Because of their sins, God withdrew His protection and sent other nations to conquer His people.
But even then, God wasn’t finished. He had a plan. Centuries later, Paul asked, “Has God cast away His people? Certainly not!” (Romans 11:1). He explained that God still plans to work with Israel (most of whom “were blinded” to the truth, verse 7) and that one day “all Israel will be saved” (verse 26).
It doesn’t end with a single nation, though. God’s ultimate plan is to work with all people from every era of human history. There are billions upon billions of people, living and dead, who have yet to truly know the God of the Bible—but that doesn’t mean God has cast them away either. They will all have the opportunity to learn God’s way and join His family, because “the Lord … is longsuffering toward us, not willing that any should perish but that all should come to repentance” (2 Peter 3:9).
Not that everyone will come to repentance. Even with their eyes fully opened to the truths of the Bible and God’s existence, some people will refuse to repent. The Bible is clear that only “those who do His commandments” will be given “the right to the tree of life” (Revelation 22:14).
Eventually, we’ll reach the cut-off point, where God will completely and irrevocably destroy all those who insist on disregarding His laws. He won’t do this in some kind of emotional rage, but simply because additional longsuffering would change nothing.
God is patient for a purpose. He wants all of us to be part of His family, and He’s willing to wait as long as it takes to give each of us the best possible opportunity to succeed. That doesn’t mean He’ll wait forever or turn a blind eye to sin, but it does mean He’s willing to wait much, much longer than any of us deserve.
And that’s our template. God isn’t eager to give up on anyone—and we shouldn’t be either. His patience with us—His longsuffering—is tied to His desire to see us repent and overcome our sins and become His sons and daughters. He doesn’t give up on us just because we have a setback or an off day, and even though He holds us to His standards, He’s overjoyed to see us repent and return to Him after we’ve wandered off the beaten path (Isaiah 1:16-20).
If God can have that kind of longsuffering with us, then the least we can do is learn to extend similar patience to others. It doesn’t mean we make excuses or exceptions for wrong behavior—in fact, Christ’s own example shows us that there are acceptable times and ways to express anger at sin (Mark 11:15-17). But it does mean we should learn to be “long-tempered.” It means learning to not fly off the handle when something gets under our skin. It means learning to give others the opportunity to change and correct their mistakes, just like God does for us. It means learning to take a deep breath and look at the bigger picture when we’d rather just lash out.
And here’s the bigger picture:
The whole human race was created with the potential to become children of God. It’s why any of us exist, and it’s the goalpost God is moving us toward, slowly but surely. It’s a plan that’s been in motion for millennia, because God decided it was worth waiting for. More to the point, He decided that we were all worth waiting for.
We begin to truly grow in longsuffering once we start agreeing with that assessment.
