Chapter 22
Chapter
XXII
The
Longsuffering of God
The most stupendous and overwhelming subject for human study is the Godhead. The
contemplation of the Divine perfections will warm the very cockles of the heart,
provided, of course, that we are His children, born of His Spirit. God is a
perfectly balanced person. All His attributes work harmoniously to the praise of
His glory. Every man of us by reason of sin is in some measure unbalanced. The
prodigal is typical of all of us
by nature, and he had to come to himself before he
would say, “I
will arise and go to my father,” (Luke 15:18). Sin
is a form of insanity; in conversion we get a sound mind.
“Then they went out to
see what was done; and came to Jesus, and found the man, out of whom the devils
were departed, sitting at the feet of Jesus, clothed, and in his right mind: and
they were afraid,” (Luke 8:35).
All of God’s attributes are perfectly blended and
go to make Him the great and glorious Being He is and ever shall be. God is so
great that we can study only one perfection or attribute at a time.
God cannot be found by
searching. You may sail the unclouded sky and soar to the greatest heights and
yet not find God: “It is he that sitteth upon the circle of the earth, and the
inhabitants thereof are as grasshoppers; that stretcheth out the heavens as a
curtain, and spreadeth them out as a tent to dwell in,” (Isa. 40:22). You may
sail upon all the seas and circle the globe without finding Him. You may study
bugs and flowers and still be ignorant of the God who made them. You may take
samples of His works into the laboratory and study them without coming to know
Him, Whom to know is life eternal. God cannot be discovered by the physical
senses.
All of God’s works give witness to His existence, but they have nothing to say
about His character or moral perfections. His works tell us that He is, but do
not tell us what He is. God, in His character, can only be found where
He has revealed Himself, and this is in His word,
the Bible. “The
heavens declare the glory of God; and the firmament sheweth his handywork,” (Ps.
19:1),
but they give no testimony about Him as moral Lawgiver. In the study of what the
Bible has to say about God, we find that the attribute of patience or
longsuffering belongs to His very nature.
“But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness,
goodness, faith,” (Gal. 5:22).
God
Revealed Himself to Moses
When God gave Moses the tables of the law the second time, He came down and
stood with him on the mount and proclaimed His Name, that is, He described His
character in moral government. And this is what God said to Moses: “And
the LORD passed by before him, and proclaimed, The LORD, The LORD God, merciful
and gracious, longsuffering, and abundant in goodness and truth,”
(Ex. 34:6). God did not reveal Himself in any physical features, but in His
perfections as a Spirit. And when Israel sinned by murmuring against God, and
God threatened to exterminate them, and offered to make of Moses a greater
nation; Moses, the typical mediator, pleaded the character of God as revealed to
him on the mount. And this is what Moses said to God: “And
now, I beseech thee, let the power of my Lord be great, according as thou hast
spoken, saying.
The LORD is
longsuffering, and of great mercy, forgiving iniquity and transgression, and by
no means clearing the guilty, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the
children unto the third and fourth generation,” (Num.
14:17,18). God as a moral Governor is patient or longsuffering.
“Long of
Nose”
The longsuffering of God is a quality in the Divine nature that makes Him slow
in dealing with His enemies. God does not fly into a rage at the least
provocation. The Hebrew word, which is sometimes translated “longsuffering,” and
sometimes “Blow of anger,” literally means “long of nose,” (or “breathing”).
Anger is indicated by rapid and violent breathing through the nostrils, and the
opposite is longsuffering or slow of anger. A snorting, charging bull is an
emblem of passionate anger. But God is not like a bull or prancing horse, eager
to go, in the work of judgment. God is in no hurry to punish His foes. He is not
like a cruel, nervous dictator, in a hurry to have his enemies shot at dawn. God
is patient with rebels, and this patience belongs to His nature. A general or
universal atonement is not necessary to account for the long delay in the
punishment of a wicked and rebellious. The devil, as well as man, has defied God
for ages and is still at large, not because Christ died for him, but because God
is patient. God is
waiting to judge, not until His patience runs out, but for the human cup of
iniquity to fill. The time of judgment is left to His sovereign will and does
not depend upon any degree of His patience.
“Be patient therefore,
brethren, unto the coming of the Lord. Behold, the husbandman waiteth for the
precious fruit of the earth, and hath long patience for it, until he receive the
early and latter rain,” (
Power of
Self Control
Longsuffering may be defined as God’s power of self control. This is what Moses
meant when he said,
“And now, I beseech thee, let the power of my Lord be great, according as thou
hast spoken, saying, The LORD is longsuffering, and of great mercy, forgiving
iniquity and transgression, and by no means clearing the guilty, visiting the
iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation,”
(Num. 14:17,18).
God’s great power is not only seen in His control
over His creatures, but over Himself as well. God is not quick tempered; He does
not lose His head and fly off the handle. He has perfect poise and balance. He
knows nothing of impatience. His justice, to be sure, is inexorable, but He does
not have to be in a hurry to judge His enemies. He waits in perfect patience to
vindicate His honor and satisfy His justice. Arthur W. Pink says “Divine
patience is that power of control which God exercises over Himself, causing Him
to bear with the wicked and forebear so long in punishing them.” And Charnock,
one of the noblest of the Puritans said:
Men that are great in
the world are quick in passions and are not so ready to forgive an injury, or
bear with an offender, as one of the meaner rank. It is want of power over that
man’s self that makes him do unbecoming things upon provocation. A prince that
can bridle his passions is a king over himself as well as over his subjects. God
is slow to anger because great in power. He has no less power over Himself than
over His creatures.
Illustrations
There are many
illustrations of Divine patience in Bible history as well as in events of
general observation. God’s patience has been signally exhibited through the long
centuries of human and satanic rebellion.
1. The time of Noah was a period of Divine longsuffering.
“Which sometime
were disobedient, when once the longsuffering of God waited in the days of Noah,
while the ark was a preparing,
wherein few, that is, eight souls were saved by water,”
(1 Pet. 3:20). Those were wicked days, but God was slow to punish. Even after He
announced His purpose to destroy the world, He waited one hundred and twenty
years before sending the flood.
“And the LORD said, My
spirit shall not always strive with man, for that he also is flesh: yet his days
shall be an hundred and twenty years,” (Gen. 6:3).
Those were days when sexual immorality ran riot; days when Divine warning was
ignored; days of fun poking at God’s preacher of righteousness;
“The earth also was
corrupt before God, and the earth was filled with violence,” (Gen.
6:11), yet God waited to punish because He is a patient God.
2. The whole of the Old Testament dispensation was an era of Divine forbearance.
“Whom God hath
set forth to be a propitiation through faith in his blood, to declare his
righteousness for the remission of sins that are past, through the forbearance
of God,” (Rom. 3:25). We learn that the sins of
that dispensation were remitted through the forbearance of God.
The sins of the Old Testament believers were passed
over until Christ should come and make atonement.
“For the life of the
flesh is in the blood: and I have given it to you upon the altar to make an
atonement for your souls: for it is the blood that maketh an atonement for the
soul,” (Lev. 17:11). God did not punish them for
their sins because He was waiting to punish them in the person of His Son. Their
sins were remitted before they were paid for. It was like this: Christ, in
eternity past, became the Surety for those given to Him by the Father in the
everlasting covenant, agreeing to assume human nature, pay their debts and thus
make satisfaction for their sins to Divine justice. This was announced
immediately after the fall: “And
I will put enmity between thee and the woman, and between thy seed and her seed;
it shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise his heel,”
(Gen. 3:15), but it was four thousand years to the fulness of time, when Christ,
the Surety of the better covenant, should come to obtain redemption of
transgressions that were under the first covenant: “And
for this cause he is the mediator of the new testament, that by means of death,
for the redemption of the transgressions that were under the first testament,
they which are called might receive the promise of eternal inheritance,”
(Heb. 9:15). And all this time was one of patience or forbearance. God did not
stir up His wrath and execute judgment upon sinners because He had reserved it
for His Son, their Surety. And while waiting for the Surety to come and make
satisfaction for sins, He appointed animal sacrifices, which could not satisfy
justice and take away sin.
“For it is not possible that the blood of bulls and of goats should take away
sins,” (Heb. 10:4).
3. God’s dealing with Pharaoh is another instance of His longsuffering.
Paul defends God from criticism in His dealing with Pharaoh, by saying, “What
if God, willing to shew his wrath, and to make his power known, endured with
much longsuffering the vessels of wrath fitted to destruction,”
(Rom. 9:22). The will of God referred to here is His will of purpose. God’s will
of purpose, concerning vessels of wrath, is to display His wrath and power in
their judgment, but in longsuffering He endures or tolerates them until by their
sins they are fitted to destruction.
“How often do men wonder
that God endures so much sin as appears in the world. Why does not God
immediately cut off transgressors? Why does He not make an end of them at once?
The answer is, He endures them for His own glory, and in their condemnation He
will be glorified. To short sighted mortals, it would appear preferable if God
would cut off in childhood all whom He foresaw would continue in wickedness. But
God endures them to old age, and to the utmost bounds of wickedness for the
glory of His own name,” (Robert Haldane).
4. God’s dealing with Paul illustrates His longsuffering towards “vessels of
mercy.”
“And that he
might make known the riches of his glory on the vessels of mercy, which he had
afore prepared unto glory,” (Rom. 9:23). We will
let him tell it: “Howbeit
for this
cause I obtained mercy, that in me first Jesus Christ might shew forth all
longsuffering, for a pattern to them which should hereafter believe on him to
life everlasting,” (1 Tim. 1:16).
Of
all the unbelieving Jews, the conversion of Saul of
Tarsus seemed the most unlikely, “Who
was before a blasphemer, and a persecutor, and injurious: but I obtained mercy,
because I did it ignorantly in unbelief,” (1 Tim.
1:13). But in the purpose of God he was a vessel of mercy afore prepared unto
glory, and in dealing with him God gives a pattern of His longsuffering.
And Peter has these same vessels of mercy in view when he explains the long
delay of our Lord’s return. “The
Lord is not slack concerning his promise, as some men count slackness; but is
longsuffering to us-ward, not willing that any should perish, but that all
should come to repentance,” (2 Pet. 3:9). Most
certainly the reference is to His will of purpose that none of those denominated
“us” should perish. The “us” of the text are the same as the “beloved” of verse
one, and are distinguished from the “scoffers” of verse three. And verse fifteen
lends weight to this interpretation:
“And account that the
longsuffering of our Lord is salvation.” God’s
longsuffering issues in the salvation of the vessels of mercy. It is like this:
We who are now saved were by nature children of wrath, even as others, and
needed to repent. If Christ had returned before we repented we would have
perished. When He returns, the day of salvation will be over and judgment will
begin; and if He had come five, ten, or twenty years ago many of those now saved
would have perished in their sins, and God’s will would have been thwarted.
God’s
Patience is Greatly Abused
The exercise of this attribute leads men to sin more boldly. “Because
sentence against an evil work is not executed speedily, therefore the heart of
the sons of men is fully set in them to do evil,”
(Eccl. 8:11). Men confound the patience of God with their belief in His
non-existence. Because they sin and get by with it for a time, they conclude
there is no moral Lawgiver to Whom they must give account. A farmer thought he
had proven there is no God. He selected a certain piece of ground on his farm
for an experiment. He broke the ground on Sunday, he planted the seed on Sunday,
he did all the cultivating on Sunday, and on the first Sunday in October he
reaped a larger harvest than on any other part of the farm. He wrote to his
newspaper editor the results of his experiment, scoffing at the idea of any God.
The editor replied briefly but to the point in these words: “May I remind you
that God does not settle His accounts on the first Sunday in October.”
Bob Ingersol thought he had demonstrated there is no God when he challenged Him
and gave Him five minutes by the watch to strike him dead. When a great preacher
in
If
the believer does not understand this attribute of longsuffering, he will
fretfully wonder why God does not crush His enemies and put an end to so much
wickedness. Blessed be His Name! He will, but in longsuffering waits for His
purposes to ripen. And while He waits some are fitting themselves to
destruction, and some are being fashioned by His grace to be vessels of glory.
“Cast not away
therefore your confidence, which hath great recompence of reward. For ye have
need of patience, that, after ye have done the will of God, ye might receive the
promise. For yet a little while, and he that shall come will come, and will not
tarry,” (Heb.10:35-37).
“But without faith it
is impossible to please him: for he that cometh to God must believe that he is,
and that he is a rewarder of them that diligently seek him,” (Heb.
11:6). In much humility and gratitude may both writer and reader say with the
poet:
“Lord, we have long abused Thy love,
Too long indulged in sin,
Our aching hearts e’en bleed to see
What rebels we have been.”
