The 'Pragmatism' of Patience
You’ve probably heard at one point or another that “Patience is a virtue.”
The Oxford Dictionary defines ‘patience’ as “the capacity to accept or tolerate delay, trouble, or suffering without getting angry or upset.”It’s been said that “Patience is the best remedy for every trouble…Patience is bitter, but the fruit is sweet…so, work hard, and be patient.” It’s a resilient determination. It’s a resolute focus on the future. Soren Kierkegaard went as far as to say that, because one cannot reap immediately where one has sown, “Patience is necessary.”
In other words, good things come to those who wait, and patience is how you win the waiting game.
All those definitions of ‘patience’ have one thing in common: they define ‘patience’ as something you exercise for your own sake.
You need patience when you’re slowly working your way up the corporate ladder.
You need patience when you’re inching your way through rush hour traffic.
You need patience if you’re looking to invest money.
You need patience if you’re renovating a house or rebuilding a car. You need patience if you’re working with difficult people.
You might even need patience to listen to your pastor’s sermon.
Even within relationships with other people, we widely practice patience for our our own personal pragmatism; we understand patience to be something we practice purely for our own long term benefit.
But then we arrive at the pages of God’s Word – and the definition that Scripture gives of ‘patience’ isn’t as one-dimensional as the definition we typically hear. The Bible doesn’t simply speak of patience as a moral virtue; no, true patience is a fruit of the Holy Spirit – something that is both sourced and strengthened by God himself. True patience is something God must generate and cultivate within us by his Word. And that God-cultivated patience isn’t superlatively exercised for self-seeking interests or for the sake of bettering one’s bottom line. True patience isn’t ultimately practiced for your benefit; it’s a gift that is given to others for their sake.
After all, just as love isn’t self-seeking or self-serving, “Love is patient” (1 Corinthians 13:4).
Why Were They Out to Get Jesus?
The patience of love is laid beautifully before us in the story Jesus shares in Matthew 21. It was the Tuesday of Holy Week – just a few days before Jesus would be arrested and put to death. And contrary from what we’d expect, on that Tuesday, we find Jesus spending time dialoguing with the very people plotting his demise.
In response to the Pharisees and Jewish Elders challenging Jesus’ authority, Jesus responds to them with three parables – each dealing with the reality of Jesus’ divine authority as the Son of God, and the consequences should anyone reject him.
Jesus kicks off this second parable with an allusion to Isaiah 5, where God says through Isaiah, “I will sing for the one I love, a song about his vineyard: My loved one had a vineyard on a fertile hillside. 2 He dug it up and cleared it of stones and planted it with the choicest vines. He built a watchtower in it and cut out a winepress as well.” So, when Jesus’ paints the picture of a landowner “who planted a vineyard. He put a wall around it, dug a winepress in it and built a watchtower,” these religious leaders caught the reference.
They knew, by that connection, that the vineyard in Jesus’ story represented the people of Israel. They knew the master of this beloved vineyard was God. They knew the servants the master sends to collect his fruit at harvest time were God’s prophets. And by the end of the parable, these leaders knew exactly who they were in this story. They were the wicked tenants.
By the end of this parable, Jesus would tell them “the kingdom of God will be taken away from [them] and given to others who will produce its fruit.” The tax collectors, prostitutes, and even Gentiles who trust in Jesus as their Savior from sin and death - they will enter into a right relationship with God ahead of these high priests, elders, and ‘experts’ of the law – and these religious leaders, by virtue of their rejection and unbelief, would not.
Can you see how this parable got under their skin?
This parable gives us a window into the hearts of these religious leaders. We can see their empty, self-righteous religiosity for what it’s worth. We can hear their unbelieving hearts brimming with hate and burning to bring Jesus down. We can almost hear their blood boil and curdle as Jesus calls them the tenants in the story – but by the end of the parable, they would paraphrase themselves: “Come, let’s kill the son and take his inheritance.” By the end of the week, they would live up to how they’re portrayed in this story. They would throw the Son out of Jerusalem and nail him to a tree.
Why Be Patient With Them?
There’s a part of us that wants to intervene in this episode, isn’t there? Were we witnessing this encounter firsthand, we’d try to counsel Jesus like we would our best friend who is seemingly stuck in a toxic, abusive, one-sided relationship. We’d counsel Jesus to cut ties and bail and take his love somewhere else where it won’t go unrequited. We’d question the sensibility of a God who patiently and persistently pursues those with a track record of persecuting his prophets. We’d try and talk Jesus out of engaging with people who are clearly hell-bent to bring him down.
“Jesus, what are you doing? Why are you investing in them? Why are you putting yourself in harm’s way? Don’t you know they’re out to get you? Why waste minutes of your last earthly moments on your enemies? What advantage is there in recklessly reaching out to the likes of these religious leaders when they’re not going to listen? They’re just going to reject you anyway! They’re hell-bent on murdering you! Wouldn’t your time be better invested in someone else? Wouldn’t it be more beneficial or advantageous for you to invest in someone else? Like your disciples? People who have been faithfully following you for years? People who actually listen to what you say and obey it? People who not only listen to your word (and so deceive themselves) but do what it says? What benefit is it to you to love these self-righteous, Word-scorning, murderous hypocrites when you could be investing that time and attention in someone like me?”
Did you catch what we’re really asking of God here? We’re asking God to operate purely on a pragmatic model of patience – where he exclusively invests in those who benefit him – people with undivided hearts who love the LORD and listen to him only.
But is that the kind of patience we’re really want God to show us?
In Matthew 5, Jesus exhorts Christians to employ their words with integrity, that our ‘yes’ be ‘yes’ and our ‘no’ be ‘no’; and yet, we bend the truth all the time for our own benefit; the same tongue that gives praise to God spews lies, gossip, and slander.
Jesus also says in Matthew 5, “Anyone who looks at [someone who is not your spouse] lustfully has already committed adultery with [them] in [their] heart.” Does our search history suggest we take these words seriously? Passages like these reveal that sexual activity outside of the God’s good paradigm of marriage is sin, but is there a part of us that thinks, “God doesn’t really expect people to refrain from sex until marriage, does he?”
Jesus says that hatred is tantamount to murder in the eyes of God, and yet, we harbor hatred all the time.
Or how about in Psalm 146:3, which says, “Do not put your trust in princes, in human beings who cannot save.” And yet, every fourth November, how quickly we turn sinful mortals into religiousized, Messianic figures, and it’s on their words – not God’s -that we meditate day and night.
You see, there’s a pharisee that exists in our hearts, too – a pharisee that would condemn these religious leaders for scorning the very word of God, and we’d exonerate ourselves when we do the exact same thing.
Suddenly, it doesn’t sound so ‘beneficial’ for us were God to be patient on the basis of pragmatism. It’s asking God to substitute his kingdom of grace for a kingdom of merit.
I can, like the Pharisees, appeal to bloodlines or family trees. I can appeal to my social standing – my societal privilege – or lack of it. I can, like the Pharisees, appeal to my ethnic background. I can appeal to how long I’ve been a Christian, how well I know my Bible, or how much I’ve placed in the offering plate. I can appeal to how good a person I think I am. But if entry into God’s kingdom was contingent on who I am or what I’ve done, I would never enter it. Because we’re sinners. Our guilt, shame, regret, our major and minor mistakes before God, our failure to give God all that he is due, these sins would have barred us from entering God’s heavenly vineyard – and outside the vineyard, there is only death. Notice how it isn’t the servants who ultimately stand empty-handed before the master: it’s the tenants. And outside of faith in Christ – who he is, and what he has done – we would stand empty-handed before God, too. We’d be wretches deserving of only a wretched end, estranged from God and his goodness forever.
So, why would God “recklessly” invest so much time and attention in his enemies? Why would God be patient with the likes of them?
For the same reason he is patient with you.
Why do you invest so much in those who scorn your love? Because you still love them – and you love them in spite of them. Think of all that you’ve patiently endured from people because you love them!
How much greater the love your God has for you!
Why God’s Patient With Us
Your Heavenly Father is portrayed in this parable as one who is persistently pursuing the lost – including those who would hatefully reject him, calling out to them again, and again, and again through His Word – reaching out to the lost sheep of Israel until he could rightly say “What more could have been done for my vineyard than I have done for it?” Your God is not just persistent: he’s patient.
With you.
With me.
And yes, even with those who reject him.
God doesn’t delight in the death of the wicked. God doesn’t want anyone – absolutely anyone to be estranged from him forever, but that all who are lost hear his gospel call, believe and turn to him and live, as he truly wants all people to be saved. God doesn’t compromise the serious urgency of his message, but nor does he compromise his patience as he, through his Means of Grace, pursues people in love.
But your God is seen elsewhere in this parable. If God the Father is the “recklessly” patient landowner, then who is the landowner’s “reckless” son? The son is the Son: Jesus, God the Son. Your God would love you so much he would willingly enter this broken, messed up world intentionally to die for broken, messed up people – even for those who would reject him, hate him, despise him, and murder him.
You see, that the Son of God would die was no accident. This was the LORD’s doing, and it is marvelous in our eyes! This was all part of your God’s gracious plan to save you – that Jesus, God the Son, would live a perfect life in your place and die on a cross outside the vineyard of Jerusalem for your sins. That same Jesus would burst forth from the grave on the third day – proving not only those who stood opposed to Christ had failed, but proof that Jesus had conquered sin, death, and hell itself. God the Holy Spirit sought you through the waters of baptism and clothed you with Christ’s righteousness. He sought you through His Word and created faith in your heart.
You have been washed clean by the blood of Jesus. You have been clothed with Christ’s perfect obedience. You were once not a people, but now, in Christ, you are the people of God. We, in Christ, are those recipients of the vineyard at the end of the parable! We, in Christ, are the heirs of God’s Kingdom. You, in Christ, have been made a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation – God’s special, precious inheritance! We are passively on the receiving end of God’s grace!
Of what benefit is it to God for him to be patient?
You.
You are the reason he is patient. More precisely, his faithful love for you is the reason he is patient. His unwillingness for anyone to perish, and his desire that all turn to him in repentance and faith.
God’s love may look impractical and reckless to us, but that’s because his love is both unfailing and unearned. Your God desired to call you his child. So, he endured hell for you. He, in love, sought you.
That’s how committed and dedicated he is to you.
He loves you with a patient love.