PATIENCE

PATIENCE

Monday, August 6, 2018

  This past week I was blessed observing someone that has grown tremendously in patience, which set me to again pondering the matter in my life and in others; growth, diminishment, or lack thereof. Patience should be desired. Growing in can be quite uncomfortable in that tribulations’ exercise places us in the for-or-against decision making mode; deciding for impatience being the immediately easier default route but expensive in the long run. To start this round of consideration I begin with sharing file from International Standard Bible Encyclopedia. And yes it will require patience to do this study and apply it.

EBB4

Patience (from ISBE)

pā´shens (ὑπομονή, hupomonḗ, μακροθυμία, makrothumía): “Patience” implies suffering, enduring or waiting, as a determination of the will and not simply under necessity. As such it is an essential Christian virtue to the exercise of which there are many exhortations. We need to “wait patiently” for God, to endure uncomplainingly the various forms of sufferings, wrongs and evils that we meet with, and to bear patiently injustices which we cannot remedy and provocations we cannot remove.

The word “patience” does not occur in the Old Testament, but we have “patiently” in Psa_40:1 as the translation of ḳāwāh, “to wait,” “to expect,” which word frequently expresses the idea, especially that of waiting on God; in Psa_37:7, “patiently” (“wait patiently”) is the translation of ḥul, one of the meanings of which is “to wait” or “to hope for” or “to expect” (of Job_35:14); “patient” occurs (Ecc_7:8) as the translation of 'erekh rūaḥ, “long of spirit,” and (Job_6:11) “that I should be patient” (ha'ărīkh nephesh). Compare “impatient” (Job_21:4).

“Patience” occurs frequently in the Apocrypha, especially in Ecclesiasticus, e.g. 2:14; 16:13; 17:24; 41:2 (hupomonē); 5:11 (makrothumia); 29:8 (makrothuméō, the Revised Version (British and American) “long suffering”); in The Wisdom of Solomon 2:19, the Greek word is anexikakía.

In the New Testament hupomonē carries in it the ideas of endurance, continuance (Luk_8:15; Luk_21:19; Rom_5:3, Rom_5:4, the American Standard Revised Version “stedfastness”; Rom_8:25, etc.).

In all places the American Revised Version margin has “stedfastness,” except Jam_5:11, where it has “endurance”; makrothumia is translated “patience” (Heb_6:12; Jam_5:10); makrothumeō, “to bear long” (Mat_18:26, Mat_18:29; Jam_5:7; See LONGSUFFERING); the same verb is translated “be patient” (1Th_5:14, the Revised Version (British and American) “longsuffering”; Jam_5:7, Jam_5:8, the King James Version and the Revised Version (British and American) “patient”); makrothúmōs, “patiently” (Act_26:3); hupoménō (1Pe_2:20); anexíkakos is translated “patient” (2Ti_2:4, the Revised Version (British and American), the King James Version margin, “forbearing”); epieikḗs, “gentle” (1Ti_3:3, the Revised Version (British and American) “gentle”); hupomenō (Rom_12:12, “patient in tribulation”). For “the patient waiting for Christ” (2Th_3:5), the Revised Version (British and American) has “the patience of Christ.”

Patience is often hard to gain and to maintain, but, in Rom_15:5, God is called “the God of patience” (the American Revised Version margin “stedfastness”) as being able to grant that grace to those who look to Him and depend on Him for it. It is in reliance on God and acceptance of His will, with trust in His goodness, wisdom and faithfulness, that we are enabled to endure and to hope stedfastly.