God longsuffers

Jesus also told again and again of God's patience.

The parable of the lost son is my favourite example. The father in that story, who waits and waits for his Son to return from emptying the family accounts on wine, women and song - he is like God in his patience. It is a great image: that Father, with every right to be angry, with every right to give up his son for lost, instead waits, looking towards the horizon for any sign that his son might be returning.

It would have cost the Father to wait. Waiting isn't an easy thing to do - we know it. It involves frustration and longing. It is inconvenient. It involves holding back on your justified anger and resentment. Another word for it might be 'longsuffering'. In fact, the word 'patience' itself contains within it the idea of suffering or enduring, rather than acting.

Jesus was in fact the embodiment of God's patience - his longsuffering - with human beings. No wonder he taught about it - he also demonstrated it. In Jesus we see not only the seriousness of our rebellion against God but also the delay of God's just wrath against us. We see the slowness of God to destroy us, because he has enabled this path for us to escape. We see how much it cost him, too - that Jesus would suffer and die.