Our fruit of the day is patience. So, bear with me.
Lord God, may Your Word pass from the ear to the heart, from
the heart to the lip, and from the lip to the life that, as You have promised,
Your Word may achieve the purpose for which You send it; through Jesus Christ,
our Lord. Amen.
Text – Matthew 18: 21-35
21Then Peter came to Jesus and asked, “Lord, how many times
shall I forgive my brother or sister who sins against me? Up to seven times?”
22Jesus answered, “I tell you, not seven times, but
seventy-seven times.
23 “Therefore, the kingdom of heaven is like a king who
wanted to settle accounts with his servants. 24 As he began the settlement, a
man who owed him ten thousand bags of gold was brought to him. 25 Since he was
not able to pay, the master ordered that he and his wife and his children and
all that he had be sold to repay the debt.
26 “At this the servant fell on his knees before him. ‘Be
patient with me,’ he begged, ‘and I will pay back everything.’ 27 The servant’s
master took pity on him, canceled the debt and let him go.
28 “But when that servant went out, he found one of his
fellow servants who owed him a hundred silver coins. He grabbed him and began
to choke him. ‘Pay back what you owe me!’ he demanded.
29 “His fellow servant fell to his knees and begged him, ‘Be
patient with me, and I will pay it back.’
30 “But he refused. Instead, he went off and had the man
thrown into prison until he could pay the debt. 31 When the other servants saw
what had happened, they were outraged and went and told their master everything
that had happened.
32 “Then the master called the servant in. ‘You wicked
servant,’ he said, ‘I canceled all that debt of yours because you begged me to.
33 Shouldn’t you have had mercy on your fellow servant just as I had on you?’
34 In anger his master handed him over to the jailers to be tortured, until he
should pay back all he owed.
35 “This is how my heavenly Father will treat each of you
unless you forgive your brother or sister from your heart.”
I chose this passage to talk about patience because the
patience Paul speaks of in Galatians 5 has little to do with sitting in traffic
or waiting in line at the check-out, for your favorite team to win a
championship or your in-laws to change their opinions or tastes. The patience
of Paul has more to do with living in community with other Christians and how forgiven
sinners must learn how to emulate God’s mercy.
As staff, we have been viewing and discussing a video series
entitled “The Significance of Values in Shaping Culture.” The speaker states,
“Healthy cultures never happen by accident. They are created. … And the number
one force that shapes your culture is your values.”
Patience is one of the values that should shape our culture.
Along with the love, joy, peace and the other fruits, patience is one of the
values that shaped the diverse population of the early church.[i]
When you think of the social barriers that should have divided people in
Galatia or Corinth or Rome or Jerusalem, what unified them was Christ. They
were all forgiven sinners through the grace of Christ and they could live
together. However, to do so meant that they had to practice living the fruit of
the Spirit.
Because it is so easy to fall out of relationship even with
people we like, the Holy Spirit is necessary to keep us together. In order to
practice long-suffering forgiveness or to be patient with one another, we
cannot rely simply upon our frail humanity. We dispose ourselves to God and let
His grace lead us in order to live by the Spirit (5:16).
You know, Paul’s writing of the fruit of the spirit comes to
us from Galatians – the letter we have been hearing on Sundays. Paul combats
the false teaching of the preachers from Jerusalem. They insisted that Christians
follow the Torah, Jewish customs and religious feasts as part of God’s plan of
salvation. The Law has its purpose, but Christians are to live according to the
Spirit. Christians are to take on the approach of Jesus to the Law, which was a
reversal of how the religious authorities approached it.
To freely receive God’s mercy – the Gospel – requires a total
response of the whole person, that is, loving God with one’s heart, mind and
soul, and one’s neighbor as oneself. As one who has received God’s mercy, I am
called to demonstrate my grasp of that gift by extending it to others – to be
merciful as my heavenly Father is merciful.
Extending mercy or patience toward a fellow believer means
that I live each moment in the Spirit, which is not always easy given my fallen
nature. Moreover, because God calls all to Himself through Christ, as
believers, we are to spread the Gospel to those who have not yet accepted
Christ. When they reject the Gospel for the moment, we ask God for patience –
that we may endure this long-suffering until they do accept the Good News of
salvation through Christ. Therefore, patience is more an act of the Spirit
living in me than me doing anything. … However, that does not release me from
taking personal responsibility to practice patience or any Christian virtue
that enhances our experience of living in community with fellow Christians.
Derek Jeter practices the double play 10,000 times every spring
until he can do it naturally. Practicing patience or any fruit of the spirit
until I can do it naturally and as gracefully as Derek Jeter is not a work on
my part to achieve salvation or even satisfaction. It is my response to a
loving and merciful God who showed the depth of his love by taking all the sins
of the world to the cross and redeemed us. I cannot duplicate Christ’s loving act
of salvation, but I can conform to the Gospel and live according to the Spirit.
May the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, keep
your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus (Phil 4:7).
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