The Person of Christ
By Jerry Batson, Th.D.
Special to The Alabama Baptist
In Mark 4:41 the question that arose among the disciples when Jesus had stilled the storm on the sea was “What manner of man is this?” Although dealing with a totally different context, that is the question being addressed by Theology 101 in this series of studies about the Person of Christ.
The series will continue to look at Christ as He was in the flesh. To this point, we have looked upon Him as a person of humility and meekness, one who was compassionate and caring, as well as being faithful and true. This week we behold Him as a person who was patient and longsuffering.
The Bible speaks to us of the “Divine longsuffering” that waited in the days of Noah (1 Pet. 3:20), when “the Lord saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every intent of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually” (Gen. 6:5).
Human sinfulness
The Lord’s patience and longsuffering with human sinfulness is not a matter of His indifference or indulgence, but a matter of mercy in that He “is not willing that any should perish but that all should come to repentance” (2 Pet. 3:9). God’s patience with human frailty and failings found expression also in His Son.
As God came in the flesh, Christ embodied the same divine qualities expressed as patience and longsuffering. In the opening verses of Revelation, reference is made to the “patience of Jesus Christ” (1:9). What follows in Chapters 2 and 3 is the inspired witness to His patience with seven imperfect churches. Rather than indulging and overlooking the imperfections, Christ’s patience was with view to exhorting them to repentance. He is still longsuffering toward imperfect churches.
One evidence of Christ’s patience and longsuffering was His relationship with His earliest followers. For example Christ expressed exasperation mingled with loving concern in His gentle rebuke to Cleopas and his companion from Emmaus, saying to them, “O foolish ones and slow of heart to believe in all that the prophets have spoken, ought not the Christ to have suffered these things and to enter into His glory?”
Saving mission
The patient Christ then carefully began with Moses and all the prophets, “expounding to them in all the Scriptures the things concerning Himself” (Luke 24:25–27). Just as they proved to be slow of heart in their dullness “to get the message” about His saving mission in the world, so we often demonstrate similar slowness in grasping and living out the message of the gospel. And equally so, our Lord is patient with our slowness to grasp His truth and order our lives according to it.
Since God’s master plan calls for all believers to be conformed to the image of Christ, we are called to demonstrate patience and longsuffering.
It is no surprise to find in the apostolic prayer in Colossians 1:9–11 the plea that those in Colossae, as well as the rest of us, might “be filled with the knowledge of His will in all wisdom and spiritual understanding” so that we might “walk worthy of the Lord, fully pleasing Him, being fruitful in every good work and increasing in the knowledge of God; strengthened with all might, according to His glorious power, for all patience and longsuffering with joy.”
“Patience and longsuffering with joy” contribute to Christlikeness in all God’s children. The exaltation of love in 1 Corinthians 13 reminds us that “love suffers long” (v. 4).
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