Sinclair Ferguson

Actually, you're not really a very patient person at all.

You're an impatient person whose patience level has never really been tested.

It's been tested now, and you've just failed the test.

And this leads to what I think is a very important thought, that patience can only develop through being in situations likely to create impatience in us.

So long as our patience is never tested, it never grows.

So when Paul says that the fruit of the Spirit is patience, it's not as though the Spirit gives us a permanent commodity.

It is that the Spirit works in us, transforming us, gradually, perhaps even gently and slowly but surely, bringing us into situations that might cause us to be impatient.

But as he works in our lives and we reflect on how wonderfully patient the Lord has been with us, we find that we are able to take the strain and patience begins to develop.

We won't be coming back to this until next week, which means there's a couple of days before then when your patience and perhaps my patience is going to be tested.

But let's pray together that by God's grace, it will also grow.

Paul says that the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.

Peace has been declared.

The battle is over.

The war is finished.

And of course, you remember how after the Old Testament sacrifices had been accepted, the high priest would come forth and lift up his hands and bless the people and say to them, the Lord bless you and keep you.

Not that Aaron has come forth to pronounce the benediction, but a greater than Aaron, our High Priest, the Lord Jesus Christ, has come forth from his death and resurrection, and his first word to us is, Shalom.

Don't you remember that when Jesus appeared to the disciples on the evening of his resurrection, that was actually the first word he said?

Peace.

And this is what the Apostle Paul is speaking about here.

It's the very same thing that the great early Christian theologian Augustine experienced, isn't it?