#12.

It is in Fellowship that We are Able to Fully Manifest the Fruit of Patience

1 Thessalonians 5:14 We urge you, brethren, admonish the unruly, encourage the fainthearted, help the weak, be patient with everyone. Paul describes true love for us in a most wonderful way in 1 Corinthians 13, and love is top of the list of the fruits of the Spirit in Galatians 5:22. The other fruits are grounded in, and flow from love. But when Paul wants to describe what love is like, the first thing he says is that "love is patient" (1 Corinthians 13:4), and the fourth of the fruits of the Spirit in Galatians 5:22is "patience". So as we grow in likeness to Christ, as we become more obedient to His commands and therefore are growing in love, it is inevitable that we will grow in patience too. Paul exhorts us in our text to be patient with everyone. Patience in the believer takes a variety of forms. It may be enduring persecution, or waiting calmly and in peaceful surrender for the promises of God to be fulfilled. It may be the patience that Lot showed as he was tormented by the wickedness around him in Sodom. It may be the patience that enables us to deal gently with babes in Christ whose zeal is not always governed by adequate knowledge or wisdom. In this patience, as in all the fruits we are considering at present, Christ is our supreme Example. Who was ever patient like Him? Who put up with the suffering that He did, with the temptation that He experienced, with the mocking and the affliction? He was patient with His disciples in their slowness of heart to believe. Indeed, His love for them is evident in His endless patience with them. Truly, He was a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief. Yet He bore patiently with all these trials and sufferings. Our fellowship with Christ means our co-sharing in Him, in His life, and it means His life being manifested in ours. Therefore, if we belong to Christ we will have His patience at work within us to one degree or another. The fellowship true believers have with one another stems from the fact that they are joined with Christ in this way. How, then, could true fellowship be devoid of this fruit of patience? But how could patience be expressed in fellowship if we lived as separate and isolated entities, largely insulated from one another? Believers can sometimes be a cause of irritation to one another, even of exasperation. Sometimes we can provoke each other, afflict each other. Let's be grateful that at such times we have an opportunity to be like our Master, and to demonstrate true love in being patient with our brothers and sisters, which is an outworking of our true fellowship with Him and with them!

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