What does it mean that God is patient?

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Scripture reveals God's patience — or "longsuffering" as it is often rendered — as one of the most striking attributes of His character. It is not mere tolerance or passivity; it is a deliberate, active restraint rooted in His goodness, with the purpose of bringing sinners to repentance and salvation. ## The Meaning of "Longsuffering" The New Testament uses two distinct Greek words often translated "patience," and the distinction is illuminating. Morrish's Bible Dictionary draws it out carefully: μακροθυμία, if a trait of grace in the saint, is most fully an attribute of God. The distinction has been put thus by Archbishop Trench: "μακροθυμία will be found to express patience in respect of persons, ὑπομονή in respect of things;" and scriptural usage, it is believed, confirms this. From Ex. 34:6 μακρόθυμος is constantly used of God in the LXX... Expressing then 'a long holding out of the mind before it gives room to action or passion,' it is applied to God, in His forbearance towards those who provoke Him. The other word, ὑπομονή, refers to patient endurance under trial — and this is "never applied to God directly, because there could be no such testing or pressure in regard to Him." God's patience is not endurance under hardship; it is His steadfast restraint toward persons who deserve judgment. A third related word, ἀνοχή ("forbearance"), appears in Romans 2:4 and 3:25. Morrish explains its force: As a substantive it has a little more defined sense, being according to classic usage an armistice or suspension of hostilities, and hence of a temporary character. Its fitness will then be seen in Rom. 3:25-26 to express the difference between the 'passing-over' of sins in the forbearance (ἀνοχή) of God before the cross, and the 'justification' of the believer as the result of its finished work. God's forbearance before the cross was a "suspension of hostilities" — He passed over sins, not because He overlooked them, but because He had the cross in view all along. ## God's Patience Gives Space for Repentance The great purpose behind God's longsuffering is repentance. Hamilton Smith, commenting on Romans 2:4-5, writes: God invariably gives space for repentance before He executes judgment. The execution of the judgment of God will most surely come, though, in the goodness of God, it may be long delayed. In His goodness God forbears to judge and suffers long with evil. It was so in the days of Noah, when God lingered for one hundred and twenty years before executing the judgment of the flood: it was so in the history of Israel, with whose evil ways God bore long before destroying Jerusalem and scattering the nation. It is so to-day when God in grace lingers over this judgment doomed world. How then does man treat this longsuffering of God? Alas! men despise the riches of His goodness. Because of this "forbearance" men think that God will never judge: because of His "longsuffering" men think that God is indifferent to evil. Thus men despise the goodness of God, not seeing that the reason God "forbears" and "suffers long" is to give men space for repentance. This is the tragic irony of God's patience: men mistake it for indifference. Because judgment does not fall immediately, they conclude that God does not care about evil — when in reality, the delay is the very expression of His care for sinners. ## Patience Traced Through History J. N. Darby traces this thread of divine patience running through the entire history of man's dealings with God: God knew well what he was. Every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually. But we are prone enough to entertain a good opinion of ourselves for it to be salutary for us to make trial of what we are, that the conscience, convinced of sin, may be willing to profit by pure grace and the goodness of God. So, during centuries, God left man without checks to the inclinations of his own heart. After centuries of patience, the flood came — but even then, God preserved Noah's family. And after the flood: The patience of God, however, still showed itself in sending prophets to put Israel in remembrance of the requirements of the law, and of the goodness of God, proclaiming with increasing light the accomplishment of the promise of the Messiah. Israel despised their warnings and their testimony. At each stage — from the days before the flood, through the giving of the law, through the prophets — God's patience held back judgment while His goodness continued to appeal to the conscience. Darby also addresses Romans 9, where God's patience is connected with His sovereignty: What if He bears, with great longsuffering, with vessels fitted for destruction, as He did with Pharaoh; as He did with the Amorites and Canaanites; and prepared, as He had to do, if He would have any, vessels of mercy for glory? God's longsuffering here is not passive resignation but sovereign purpose: He bears with those fitted for destruction in order to accomplish His greater design of mercy for those He has prepared for glory. ## "The Longsuffering of Our Lord Is Salvation" Peter takes up this theme directly in his second epistle. Hamilton Smith comments on 2 Peter 3:9: It is not that the Lord is slack in the fulfilment of His promise, but that He is longsuffering, "not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance". In His grace God gives space for repentance before the judgment falls; in his unbelief man takes occasion by the delay to deny that judgment will ever come. F. B. Hole draws out what this means practically for believers: We shall account that the present longsuffering of our Lord is salvation, consequently we shall not chafe under the waiting time it imposes upon us. We shall know that every day of waiting and perhaps suffering which is entailed for us means the salvation of multitudes. And not only this — for the "accounting" will not stop with a mere mental recognition of the fact but express itself in action — we shall bend our energies to the setting before men of that which is ordained for their salvation, until the Lord comes. Every day that the Lord delays His return is a day of longsuffering — and therefore a day of salvation for someone. ## Paul: The Pattern of God's Longsuffering In 1 Timothy 1:16, Paul presents his own conversion as the supreme illustration of divine patience. F. B. Hole comments: The astonishing mercy extended to Paul was not shown him for his sake alone but that there might be set forth the extent of divine longsuffering. His was a pattern case showing the full extent of the Lord's dealings in mercy, lifting him from the depths of verse 13 to the heights of verse 12. If God could save the chief of sinners — a blasphemer, a persecutor, an insolent man — then His longsuffering knows no limit. Paul's conversion is the permanent proof that God's patience is not exhausted by the worst of sinners. ## Synthesis God's patience is not passivity, weakness, or indifference to sin. It is the deliberate holding back of righteous judgment by a God who is "not willing that any should perish." It has a clear purpose — repentance — and a definite limit: the day of judgment will come. The Bible traces this longsuffering from the 120 years before the flood, through the centuries of Israel's rebellion, to the present age in which the gospel goes out to the world. At every stage, men have mistaken God's patience for permission to continue in sin. But the very delay that scoffers use to deny the coming judgment is itself the proof of a heart of mercy — "the longsuffering of our Lord is salvation." And the conversion of Saul of Tarsus stands as the permanent pattern showing that divine patience can reach anyone, however far gone.