Model of Patience

“But let patience have its perfect work, that you may be perfect and complete, lacking nothing.” James 1:4

One of the best-known idioms in the English language shows up consistently in the day’s news: “the patience of Job.” People are said to exhibit the patience of Job when undergoing various circumstances or in their daily vocations. But truth be told, Job was not a very patient man. Until the end of the book, Job was on an impatient mission to prove he wasn’t the cause of his own suffering. So if Job is not a good example of patience, who is? Working backward from Galatians 5:22—“But the fruit of the Spirit is . . . long suffering [that is, patience]”—we arrive at Christ. The fruit of the Spirit represents the Spirit’s manifestations of the life of Christ in us—so Christ must have been the personification of the fruit of the Spirit, including patience. But what about when Christ drove the merchants out of the temple with a whip, turning over their tables of money and cages of animals? Was that patience? For a Christian, patience is willful and cheerful submission to the will and timing of God in one’s life. Patience is not always meek and quiet—but it is God-centered, which makes it a measure by which to evaluate whether we are patient or not.

“Cheerful patience is a holy art and skill, which a man learns from God.” Thomas Manton