Love is… patient and kind.
1 Corinthians 13:4
Patience is the fruit of faith and hope, rooted in love. Kindnesses are acts displayed while we are being patient.
We try to operate in the love of God by our own efforts and human reasoning and thus end up equating Gods love to man’s. We are to first understand the unlimited and ceaseless love that is God and allow that to permeate our very inner most being.
Paul wrote to Titus about the appearing of the goodness and loving kindness of God our Saviour. ‘He saved us not because of any works on our part, but because of His own great mercy; by the washing of the new birth and renewal by the Holy Spirit which he poured out on us RICHLY through Jesus Christ our Saviour’. This is true because God who is love, is patient and kind to all.
If, and He has, God has so freely given His son to us, how will He not with Him, freely gives us all things? The answer, of course, is He has, and He does and He will continue to do so because God, who is love, is patient and kind to all.
As we grow in our understanding and receptivity of the love God holds for us, we begin to understand that God is patient and kind with us and then as we receive that into our lives, we become carriers of a grace that extends beyond our human limitations.
William Barclay notes on ‘patience’ indicate this wordn is always about longsuffering with people, our interaction with people, not our circumstances. Patience exercised in our circumstances is a different Greek word.
‘Kind(ness)’ is a word filled with such richness and when combined with ‘patience’ you end up seeing the goodness and kindness of God expressed in and through all His acts from Old to New Testament, fulfilled in and through His greatest act of love, the giving of His son. It is this very love that instills within each of us a faith towards God and a hope for our future.
Helps Word Study on kind:
5543/xrēstos ("usefully-kind") relates to what is suitable as the situation truly demands.This kindness really works because it is never morally regrettable. It adapts service to the real need and hence is "thoroughly useful" (TDNT) – "agreeable because well-fitted" ("working in the yoke with Jesus," cf. Mt 11:30)
Note: The Greek NT has many words which are only fully translated in a hyphenated phrase. 5543 (xrēstos) for example means "kind-and-good" ("usefully kind"). On the spiritual plane, 5543/xrēstós ("suitable, usefully kind") describes what God defines is kind and therefore eternally useful! "We have no adjective in English that conveys this blend of being kind and good at the same time" (M. Vincent).
As Paul writes, Now abides faith hope and love, these three, but the greatest of these is love…we begin to understand the foundational need and purpose of abiding in His love. Without an understanding and trust in the goodness and kindness that is displayed from God’s love, we have no strength for faith, which gives substance to our hope. Both faith and hope are rooted in love. His love for us, and consequently our ability to love others, enables us also to exercise faith and hope towards them.
Since is the goodness of God that leads us to repentance so God is longsuffering with each of us, unwilling for any to perish; it literally means God is willing to work with us for as long as it takes to bring us into the right place of life with Him.
How can we display the same acts of kindness and patience towards others unless we first find our roots growing deeply into the very heart of God, for us? Paul wrote this love that God is and holds, believes the best, hopes the best and endures all things; bringing us right to the reality that faith, hope and love are eternal truths.
May we find our roots deeply entwined within His heart, bearing fruits of goodness and kindness, as we mark our every act and word with patience.