The reason we must be patient with other Christians, according to Paul, is love. In 1 Thessalonians 5:14, he grounds his command to long-suffering in the terms of family affection, identifying the believers as “brothers and sisters.” In the church, we are not mere acquaintances, or even fellow members of the same club; we are family. In the church, Christ’s love for us compels us to love one another (John 13:34).

One by one, each of my children learned a catechism question that asks, “Have you a soul as well as a body?” And the answer, as it slowly and deliberately arose from tiny toddler lips, always tugged at my heart: “Yes, and my soul will never die.”

Though designed for children, this question and answer trained me as a parent. Whatever frustrations the child had caused me that day — spilled milk, broken toys, incessant questions, delayed naps — couldn’t continue to annoy me when I stopped to remember that the small person in front of me possessed an undying soul.

We become impatient with others when we fail to see that they have significant and lasting value. When they interrupt us, dawdle over their own responsibilities, or require more time and energy than we had planned to allow them, we start to consider them inconveniences. We become so focused on their behaviors in the moment that we don’t consider their value in eternity.

And when we fail to recognize other people as eternally important, we will not love them well. In Paul’s famous love chapter, he begins his list of love’s qualities with this simple declaration: “Love is patient” (1 Corinthians 13:4). In order to love someone, we must value that person’s undying soul more than we value our own temporary convenience.

God Is Patient

This, of course, is how God loves. In his second epistle, Peter writes,

Beloved . . . the Lord is not slow to fulfill his promise as some count slowness, but is patient toward you, not wishing that any should perish, but that all should reach repentance. (2 Peter 3:8–9)

It seems that some of the members of the first-century church were becoming impatient — with God. Why hadn’t Jesus returned? Why weren’t their persecutors being judged? Why weren’t God’s promises fulfilled immediately? Why was God being so slow? Because, Peter explained, God cares about souls. God knows, much more than we do, the horrors of hell. He knows the dreadful extent of his own wrath. And he wants people to be saved.

God, who could justly destroy the earth at any moment, has chosen to wait. He is “the Lord, the Lord, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness” (Exodus 34:6). He is not bothered by the passing of time — by the minutes and years and millennia that are ticking away — if it means that people will be eternally saved.

In his saving purposes for his elect people, God doesn’t measure time the way we do: “With the Lord one day is as a thousand years, and a thousand years is as one day” (2 Peter 3:8). Unlike us, God isn’t focused on the clock.

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