What Are Good Works
Tom Shrader continues a series on what it means to be saved for God, using Matthew 5:13-16 as an anchor to show that believers are called to be salt and light through visible good works. He walks through the deeds of the flesh and the fruit of the Spirit in Galatians 5, arguing that authentic good works flow from being led by the Spirit rather than from religious duty or self-effort. The teaching turns to 1 Corinthians 13 to define love as the essential motive behind Christian service, beginning with the quality of patience as an active, people-directed commitment rather than an abstract feeling.
“If you make the invisible God visible but do not speak the truth boldly, you're a coward. If you speak the truth boldly but do not make the invisible God visible, you're a hypocrite.”
— Tom Shrader
Series: You are Saved for God
Recorded: 2007 at East Valley Bible Church
Duration: 48 min
Themes: good works, salt and light, fruit of the spirit, love, patience, service, holy spirit, christian living, new believer, struggling with motivation, feeling like faith is duty, burned out on religion, volunteer, church member, young adult, searching for purpose
Scripture: Matthew 5:1, Matthew 5:13-16, Isaiah 6:1-8, John 9:5, John 13:34-35, Acts 2:37, Galatians 1:1, Galatians 1:6, Galatians 5:4, Galatians 5:16-17, Galatians 5:19-23, 1 Corinthians 13:1-7, 1 John 3:18
Theological Themes: sanctification, becoming holy, pneumatology, fruit of the spirit, soteriology, salvation, agape love, works and faith
Full Transcript
the light of the world. A city set on a hill cannot be hidden. And we talked about that. Light exposes what's in the dark. Light guides. Light is life-giving. And so as we are the light of the world, we are to expose what's in the dark, to guide people, to bring life.
Then He says in verse 15, no one lights a lamp and puts it under a basket, but on a lampstand, and it gives light to all who are in the house. The point being, don't hide it. Don't hide who you are. Don't hide what God has done in you. Let it be seen. Let it be visible. And then verse 16, the key verse: "Let your light shine before men in such a way that they see your good works and glorify your Father who is in heaven."
The Purpose of Good Works
So the question we are now turning to is this: what are good works? Because Jesus says let your light shine so that people see your good works. That's the mechanism. That's how the light shines — through good works. So we need to understand what good works are. And that is the focus of this part of our series.
Now, before we get into that, let me just remind you of something we established early on. We are not doing good works to be saved. We are not doing good works to earn God's favor. We are not doing good works to make up for past sins or to get into heaven. That's not what this is. We are saved by God, from God. That's settled. Now we are saved for God. And good works flow out of that. They are the natural outflow of a life that has been transformed.
The commentator's summary of Matthew 5:13-16 was this: those four verses summarize the function of believers in the world, and that function is influence. Whoever lives according to the Beatitudes is going to function in the world as salt and light. Christian character, consciously or unconsciously, affects the people around you, for better or for worse. We are not islands. We are not pulled inward. We are here to be influence.
Salt and Light in the World
So Jesus is teaching the Sermon on the Mount. He arrives, the disciples are there, He sits, He begins to teach, He shares the Beatitudes, and then in verse 13 He says, "You are the salt of the earth." We talked about what salt does. It creates thirst. It creates flavor. Someone has said that Christians have no business being boring. Our function is to add flavor and excitement to the world. There should be something in you that is attractive, something that is stimulating to the people around you, something that makes them want what you have.
Salt is also an irritant — salt in a wound. That is why we are here, in that old cliche, to comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable. We are here to provide a little irritation. But the primary characteristic in view here is likely that of a preservative. John MacArthur writes that Christians, as Temples of the Holy Spirit, represent God's presence in the earth. We are salt that prevents the entire earth from degenerating even faster than it already is. That is who we are. We are salt. We are influence.
Then Jesus says in verse 14, "You are the light of the world. A city set on a hill cannot be hidden." Light exposes what is in the dark. Light guides. Light is life-giving. So as we are the light of the world, we expose what is in the dark, we guide people, and we bring life. Verse 15 continues: no one lights a lamp and puts it under a basket, but on a lampstand, where it gives light to all who are in the house. The point is plain — don't hide it. Don't hide who you are. Don't hide what God has done in you. Let it be seen. Let it be visible.
Are We Ready for Service?
Now I want to go back to something from Isaiah 6, because it bears repeating. You are not really ready for service in the kingdom until you are saved by God, from God. That may sound like a no-brainer, but in the church world it is not. In our worship arts ministry here, most churches — and I think that word most is accurate — most churches have no problem hiring musicians who are not believers. They find someone who is an amazing musician or vocalist and say, we really need you, you are really good, come on up. That is not what we do here. The thinking is this: you are a leading worshiper. You cannot be a leading worshiper if you do not know who Christ is, if you have not been saved by God from God. It makes obvious sense, but I am telling you, that is not the norm.
So often when you see people who are tired of church work, burned out on religious activity, or have given up on organized religion altogether, it is frequently because they were never saved by God from God in the first place. They were down there trying to do church, trying to be religious, trying to save themselves, but running on their own power. And it only lasts as long as their own commitment holds. But in Isaiah 6, once I have been saved by God from God, now there is work to do. God asks, "Who should I send?" And Isaiah answers, "Here I am. Send me." That is the norm. That should be the shape of our lives now — a life of service. Just as Jesus did not come to be served but to serve, we come not to be served but to serve.
How Service Begins to Shape the Way We Think
Let me show you how this begins to affect the whole way you think. When you look around and you see the 10:30 service crowded, your mind should immediately go to this: I have flexibility. Why don't I go at 8:30, even if it is a little more inconvenient for me, and open up some chairs for the people God seems to be drawing at 10:30? And then, at the same time, you are reaching into your wallet to give money toward a bigger building. That is not a natural instinct. But that is how God begins to work in a life — He starts to reorient the way you think, the way you see every situation around you.
That is the life we are talking about. That is what it means to be saved for God. And it all comes back to the key verse of this entire series, Matthew 5:16: "Let your light shine before men in such a way that they see your good works and glorify your Father who is in heaven." The light shines through good works. So the question we are now going to spend time with is this: what are good works?
You Are the Light of the World
Jesus said in John chapter 9, verse 5, "As long as I am in the world, I am the light of the world." Now He is gone, and we are the light of the world. Light does several things: it reveals, it measures, and it gives life. Because we see through God's eyes rather than man's eyes, we as Christians are the only people in this world who can see things as they really are.
I was at a funeral on Thursday — a wonderful funeral for Mary Nieman. Some of you may know her and her husband John from Grace Community Church. Mary had cancer for about a year and a half, and she died what I can only describe as a wonderful death. Christmas Eve she went to church, then drove out to Community Church of Joy to look at the lights. Christmas Day she had a family breakfast, took a nap, went to see *Dreamgirls* with the family, came home not feeling well, went into hospice, and then died.
Scott Jones, the pastor at Grace Community Church, did the memorial service. If any of you are visiting from Grace, or have friends there, please pass the word that Scott did a wonderful job — let's edify and encourage him in that. Throughout the service, Scott said again and again that Mary is in heaven. And I found myself thinking about someone in that room hearing that without our grid, perhaps wondering: how does he know that?
The answer is this: because we are the light of the world, we take God's revealed Word and bring it to the people around us. God revealed Himself in His Word, He reveals Himself to us, and we in turn become that revelation to the world.
Being Noticeably Different
When you go into the office, the gym, the campus, the store, the golf course — wherever you regularly interact with people — those around you ought to be saying one thing: you're different. Let me ask something important: has an unbeliever said that to you recently? When is the last time one did? Because that should be a regular occurrence in your life.
If you are married, people should look at your marriage and ask, "How does that work? Why do you work so well together?" If you are dating, an unbeliever should be telling you that you are a different kind of date — that you have a different mindset, a different agenda. A boss should look at you and say there is something different about you as an employee. Not odd — different. There is a distinction.
Why are we different? Because we see things as they really are. We understand what is truly important and what truly matters. I watched a great deal of the Gerald Ford funeral that week, and they kept repeating the same thing: this was a good man, a decent man, a man with deep values. I thought to myself — we ought to be reminded of that every day, because it stands out when people see it. That is who we are. We are life-givers. We carry the message of life and hope to the world. It is the message of Jesus Christ.
G. Campbell Morgan summarizes these four verses this way: "The world needs salt because it is corrupt, and it needs light because it is dark. Jesus, looking over the multitudes of His day, saw the corruption, saw the disintegration of life at every point, its breakup. And because of His love for the multitudes, Jesus knew the thing they needed most was salt in order that the corruption should be arrested. And He saw them wrapped in gloom, sitting in darkness, groping in the mist and fog, and He knew that they needed — above everything else — life. They needed salt and light." So you go. You take that to the world. That is what you are.
Matthew 5:16 — The Verse That Started This Series
Verse 16 is the passage that launched this entire series. Last summer I was reading through it, going through some old notes I had made years ago — notes in my own handwriting that I had no memory of writing — and I began working through them from a different angle. Here it is: Matthew 5:16, "Let your light shine before men in such a way that they may see your good works and glorify your Father in heaven."
A couple of weeks ago I challenged you to write this verse on a card and keep it with you. On the other side of the card, or somewhere in a notebook — however you choose to do it — I asked you to begin making observations about this verse.
Making the Invisible God Visible
What does God begin to show you? What are the things that pop off the page at you? That is a wonderful way to take verses like these, which really lend themselves pretty easily to this, and start to let God begin to teach you and think about it. Let me show you how I would approach something like this — and this is not in-depth, this is very quick.
I would take verse 16 and read it: "Let your light shine before men in such a way that they may see your good works, and glorify your Father in heaven." When I look at it, the verse kind of breaks into two parts. Part one: "Let your light shine before men in such a way that they may see your good works." Part two: then they will glorify your Father in heaven.
As I begin to look at this, what I see is a command — let your light shine, do this, let this light shine. It means that your good works are to be seen. There is something visibly, distinctly different about you. My life is to be visibly different in every way we have talked about, and it should stand out in a world that is truly lost.
Most of the people I know are becoming more and more pessimistic about the world. They are saying the world is getting darker and darker. But here is the good news: the darker it is, the less light it takes to make a difference. If I had a cigarette lighter right now and lit it in this bright room, it would have almost no effect. But if we took the lights down and I lit it, it would have a significant impact all around.
Action and Reaction
That first part of the verse tells me something is happening — there is action. There are these things called good works, and people are supposed to see them, which means I have to have unbelievers engaged in my life. They have to be there. If I am going to be salt and light, there has to be contact. For them to see my good works and glorify my Father who is in heaven, there has to be proximity, and for there to be proximity, there has to be some level of relationship — whether through work, school, neighborhood, a club, a homeowner's association, or wherever.
The second part of the verse tells me there is a reaction. The action is displaying these good works; the reaction is that they glorify the Father who is in heaven. I spent a good deal of time just thinking about that — and thinking itself is something we do not value much anymore.
Let me prove it. Go to the office tomorrow, get in a little early, sit down in your office or your cube, get comfortable, do not turn on any music, get something to drink, and just start thinking. What is going to happen is this: somebody is going to walk by and ask what you are doing. "Thinking." And they are going to run off and say, "You are not going to believe this — he's down there thinking." Pretty soon the boss is going to hear about it, come down, and say, "Hey, we don't pay you to think." It is a very rare thing.
Two Things That Cannot Be Separated
So I spent a great deal of time thinking about this verse, and then I referred back to something we had considered before: God has called us to be salt and light in this world, and it is a two-step process. We make the invisible God visible, and then we speak the truth boldly. Do you see that connection?
We make the invisible God visible — let them see your good works. Then we speak the truth boldly. There is no way they are going to know to glorify your Father in heaven unless you tell them; they are not going to figure that out naturally. And these two things are inseparable. You cannot separate them without serious problems.
If you make the invisible God visible but do not speak the truth boldly, you are a coward. If you speak the truth boldly but do not make the invisible God visible, you are a hypocrite. Neither one is good. What God is saying to us through His Word is that there is something different and unique about you. You are salt in the earth and light in the world; you are here to influence, and you do it through good works. You want people to see those good works and then glorify your Father in heaven.
You Are, Not You Do
When I hear "good works," I think about spiritual disciplines — things like fasting, studying God's Word, praying, serving, giving, worship, and fellowship. You might also add solitude and silence, evangelism, and similar practices. That is the list most people would build. And when I hear "good works," my instinct is to think about doing. Action. Good works — do. Do what? Just do something. That is the most natural reaction in the world. Peter preaches a powerful sermon in Acts chapter 2, and it says in verse 37 that the people are pierced to their heart, and the first thing they say is, "What should we do?" That is my natural answer too.
Here is the problem. I want to get there, but I want us to go a little slower. Two weeks ago I pointed out a real key in verse 13 and 14 — the first two words. Look at them again: "You are." Three observations.
First, if we were to read it the way it was written, it would read like this: *you* are the salt of the earth. The emphasis is on the *you*. Second, that "you" is plural. Jesus saw the crowds, went up on the mountain, sat down, His disciples came to Him, He opened His mouth and began to teach them — a plural setting. I think it is very fair to apply this corporately, to East Valley Bible Church. East Valley Bible Church should be salt and light. There should be something different when you walk on this campus, something that says this is unlike anything else.
I got an email this week from someone who said, "I know you're really busy, I heard about your wife, I'm sure you don't have time to respond — give this to somebody else on the staff." Those are the ones I respond to. They said they were new to the church, hadn't been around for a while, didn't want a dead, dry church, and were concerned about their kids — a sixth-grader and a second-grader. I emailed back and said the kids will be thrilled, and I think you'll find it very different. You should sense that just walking on campus. Every day is somebody's first day, and they should see a difference.
Third, and most importantly, "you are" is not a command. Do not read it as a command. He is saying this is what you are, not what you do. You are the salt of the earth. You are the light of the world. You may be lousy salt, you may be terrible light, but that is what you are. He is saying this is about being, not about doing.
Being Before Doing
After about a month of thinking through this passage, I kept wanting to get to the doing, but He keeps saying you have to be first. So I want to talk more about motive, more about the heart condition, more about the person you really are — before we get to evangelism and the practical expressions of good works.
Turn right from Matthew's gospel, through the other gospels, through Acts and Romans and 1 and 2 Corinthians, and stop at the book of Galatians. Paul is writing to this body of believers in the region of Galatia. He opens in verse 1 of chapter 1 identifying himself as an apostle — not to pull rank, but to signal that some teaching needs to be done. Then in verse 6 he says something striking.
"I am amazed at you." If that were all you read, you might be encouraged — but that is not what he means. He continues: *I am amazed that you so quickly are deserting Him who called you by the grace of God for a different gospel.* I'm amazed that you can hear about, experience, and see the grace of God and so quickly turn away to a different gospel. The gospel they were turning to was a gospel of works — not free grace alone, but a gospel that said you must do this, and this, and this. Now, will there be life change and good works? Absolutely. But they are a result of something. They do not result in my salvation.
Look at chapter 5, verse 4. It is the same thought. Paul has said he is amazed that they walked away from this gospel — it hurts him, it is disappointing. Now he says: *You have been severed from Christ, you who are seeking to be justified by the law; you have fallen* —
Walking by the Spirit
Paul's concern is that the Galatians had turned away from grace and were seeking to please God on their own. If you looked at them from the outside, you might even get excited about what they were doing. The Judaizers had come and told them that if they wanted to be Christians, they needed to be Jews as well. So men in their mid-to-late twenties and thirties were getting circumcised — that is a tough sell. Yet despite all that visible activity and apparent commitment, Paul is saying there is a serious problem: they had given up grace.
This is where Paul lands in verse 16: "But I say to you, walk by the Spirit." Said another way, be led by the Spirit. The word "walk" is in the present tense, speaking of a continuous, regular, ongoing, habitual way of life. Walk this way — and you will not carry out the desires of the flesh. By "flesh," Paul does not merely mean the physical body. He means everything that comes with the old self: the mind, the heart, the desires, the emotions — all of it saying, "I want my thing, not Your thing."
The Struggle Between Flesh and Spirit
The Spirit and the flesh are in opposition to one another. Look at verse 17 — they are set against each other. This is the struggle Paul describes when he says he does not do the things he wants to do, and does the things he does not want to do. That struggle should resonate with you. How often have you said, "I know I should, but I don't"? That tension exists because the Spirit of God is in you if you are a Christian, and yet there is the world around you with all its desires, and they are at war with one another.
Think about a song like "You're All I Need." It would be wonderful to sing that with full conviction, but there is an honesty required — there are moments, more than we might like, where we find ourselves feeling like we need things other than God. The desire is to walk in the Spirit, to be led by the Spirit. That is the goal Paul is pointing toward.
The Deeds of the Flesh
When Paul writes about walking in the Spirit in Galatians 5, many people immediately jump to verse 22 and the fruit of the Spirit. But before he gets there, he gives us the fruit of the flesh. "Now the deeds of the flesh are evident" — you cannot miss them, they are obvious.
The first category concerns the area of sexuality. Immorality — *pornea* in Greek — refers to illicit sexual activity. This covers a broad range of things. If you are married and having sex with anyone other than your spouse, that is sin. If you are single and having sex at all, that is sin. Some people who are older and married may find that obvious, but for those who are single and trying to figure out where the boundaries are, here is a straightforward way to think about it: anything you would do with your brother or sister, or your mother and father, is permissible with others you are not married to. Everything beyond that is off limits. Homosexuality, bestiality — all of these are included in the same category of perversions of what God designed.
Impurity is a medical term referring to an oozing wound — a dirty, unclean condition. Sensuality refers to any kind of excess or unrestrained sexual indulgence: the "if it feels good, do it" mentality that is so visible in the culture around us.
Idolatry, Sorcery, and Relational Sin
Paul then couples together idolatry and sorcery, grouping them as part of the same religious category. Idolatry is anything that takes God's place in your life and relationship with Him. Sorcery comes from the Greek word from which we get the English words "pharmacy" and "pharmaceutical." It refers to mind-altering drugs that were deeply embedded in the religious practices of that culture.
From there, Paul moves to a cluster of attitudes and relational sins, all listed in the plural, indicating their widespread and varied expression. Enmity, jealousy, anger, and outbursts of anger — those sudden, unrestrained explosions of rage, sometimes provoked, sometimes with little or no provocation. Then come disputes, dissension, factions, and envy: ongoing hostilities that simply cannot be resolved. To put it in terms people across different generations might recognize — the Hatfields and the McCoys, the Crips and the Bloods, Rosie O'Donnell and Donald Trump. Whatever the pairing, the point is the same: an entrenched conflict that just will not get fixed.
The Fruit of the Spirit
If you are sitting here today saying you want to be led by the Spirit and not by the flesh, yet you find in yourself immorality, impurity, sensuality, idolatry, sorcery, enmity, strife, jealousy, outbursts of anger, disputes, dissension, faction, envy, drunkenness, and carousing, Paul is saying you are being led by the flesh, not by the Spirit. That should stir something inside of you, because most of us get mad, get jealous, and get envious. So the natural question is: does this mean Christians never sin in these areas?
Look at verse 19 and the key word there: *practice*. It is the same idea of a continual, habitual action. If this describes your life — if you asked five people who knew you to describe how you are living and this would be the general tone of their answer — then what Paul is saying is that at that point you are not being led by the Spirit. You are walking in the flesh. You are living like every other pagan in the world.
Verse 22 is where we are trying to get: "But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control." So if you say you want to demonstrate good works, the first question is: what is the motive behind it? If you want to be led by God, to walk with Him, to live — in Paul's language — in a manner worthy of your calling, then these nine things should be present in your life. Before we talk about the *doing* part, we need to talk about the *being* part.
One Fruit, Nine Qualities
What is interesting about verse 22 is that it says "the fruit of the Spirit *is*" and then lists nine things. Grammatically, we would expect it to say "the fruits of the Spirit *are* these nine things." God is concerned about being absolutely correct — there is no error or mistake in His Word — so what is He telling us?
I think He is saying one of two things, and they are almost the same. Either the fruit of the Spirit is these nine things clustered together, like a bunch of grapes. When you grab hold of the fruit of the Spirit, you get all nine things at once. You cannot say, "I have the Spirit in my life — I've got patience, kindness, and faithfulness," and leave it there. It is not a smorgasbord. Or, the second way of reading it — which is essentially the same — is that the fruit of the Spirit is love, and all the other words then define what love really is. They all go together, and I am comfortable with either reading.
Paul also seems to move through three relational dimensions. Love, joy, and peace speak to your mindset toward God. Patience, kindness, and goodness speak to your relationship with others. Faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control speak to your general conduct. With that framework in mind, I want to work through each one of these qualities.
Beginning with Love
If I told you I wanted to talk about love and asked where to turn in Scripture, most of you would say 1 Corinthians 13. Go left through 2 Corinthians and you arrive at 1 Corinthians, chapter 13. There Paul addresses the supremacy of love in the first three verses, a definition of love in verses 4 through 7, and the permanence of love in the remainder of the chapter. Before we go further, we need to make sure we understand what the Bible says about love.
First, love is not optional. In John chapter 13, verse 34, Jesus said, "A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another, even as I have loved you, that you also love one another." Verse 35: "By this all men will know that you are My disciples." This is John 13, the last night Jesus spent with His disciples, right before He moves into chapters 14 through 17 where He speaks to them about His departure. On that final evening, He tells them that the world will know they are His disciples by the love they have for one another.
So love is not optional — it is mandatory. It ought to be part of every Christian's life. It is something supernatural, generated by the Spirit and not by our own effort, and it is essential to service. Love becomes the motive for service. Do I periodically serve out of duty? Yes. But because I love God, I want to manifest that love, which means there will be times I do things I do not particularly want to do. Love is what drives me there. That is where we will pick up as we move into a definition of what love actually is.
Love Is Active, Not Abstract
I Googled it, and in approximately .2 seconds I got 17,215,250 entries. One of these is just a website, lovingyou.com, where apparently anyone can write in and talk about love or romance. Here are some of the observations posted there: "When it rains, look for the rainbow." "To see unconditional love, look in the eyes of a child." "Love is like a rose — the special ones grow in winter." I have not got the foggiest idea what that could mean.
"If I love you this much, I'm not the one for you, then the one for you will be everything I am and everything I'm not." If you love someone, you should just say it loudly right when you feel it, or the moment will pass by — which would be the very definition of emotion and infatuation, not love. "Love is like a rhino — it's short-sighted and hasty. If it cannot find its way, it will make a way." And then, written exactly as it appears: "Hate is the only love that has missed its way." This stuff is just absolutely stupid.
Here is one more: "For a while I thought I would never love or hate anyone, but I've come to realize I love and hated the same person." Now that's the Internet. Let's get a little more sophisticated.
What Webster Says About Love
Webster identifies roughly five senses of the word love. It is a tender affection for a person — "I love you." It is a strong liking or interest for something — "I love pizza." It is an object of affection, whether a person or a thing — "I love baseball," "I love Bill" (though you have to qualify that last one; I have a manly love for Bill). Webster then designates two further categories: God's tender regard and concern for mankind, and mankind's devotion to or desire for God — His love for me, my love for Him.
We can mess around with Webster and we can Google love on the Internet, but here God defines love. That is what we are going to spend our time on.
Paul's Fifteen Characteristics of Love
We are in verses 4, 5, 6, and 7. Paul is going to list fifteen characteristics of love. Seven of them are stated in a positive sense, and eight of them are stated in a negative sense. Here is the text as written:
"Love is patient. Love is kind. Love is not jealous. Love does not brag and is not arrogant. It does not act unbecomingly. It does not seek its own. It is not provoked, does not take into account a wrong suffered. Does not rejoice in unrighteousness, but rejoices with the truth. It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, and endures all things."
When I get a list like that, I immediately break it into two categories — what love is, and what love is not. Positively, love is patient and kind; it rejoices with truth; it bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, and endures all things. On the negative side, love is not jealous; it does not brag; it is not arrogant; it does not act unbecomingly; it does not seek its own; it is not provoked; it does not take into account a wrong suffered; and it does not rejoice in unrighteousness.
The Motive Behind the Doing
Now here is the question: do you have love? The whole objective here is not to jump straight to behavior — to whether you are having your quiet time, whether you are studying your Bible, whether you are memorizing Scripture, whether you are sharing your faith. We are going to get there, and you need to be doing those things. But the prior question is motive — why? Because if I am doing all those things and I do not have love, I am a clanging cymbal making a lot of racket, but it is not the real deal. The real deal has love with it.
Love Is Patient With People
So here is what Paul says first: love is patient. It is active. It is not abstract. First John chapter 3, verse 18 says, "Little children, let us not love with word or with tongue, but in deed and in action."
The Greek word translated "patient" here always describes patience with people, not with circumstances. When it says love is patient, it does not mean the patience required when you are sitting behind someone who will not turn right on red. Love is patient with people. Love understands that relationships have inconvenience built into them, and it accepts a level of that inconvenience. It accepts the fact that it will be taken advantage of. That is what Paul is calling us to — not some whimsical notion that love is like a rose that blooms in winter, but the concrete reality that love is patient with people.
This cuts both ways, but let's stay on one side of it. Love is patient with the other person. That is not natural. And we are going to say this over and over again: God is love, so the clearest illustration for each one of these characteristics is going to be found in God Himself.
The other night I was flipping channels and Cool Hand Luke was on. I hadn't seen that movie in a long time, and there is this scene where Paul Newman's character, Luke, is out there working on the chain gang —
God's Long-Suffering Patience
There is a scene worth remembering — Luke standing out in the rain, lightning flashing all around him, shovel in hand, looking up and shouting, "Come on and get me. If you're up there, come and get me." Everyone is yelling for him to come inside. Nothing happens. That is God's long-suffering on display, because what would have been very effective at that moment would have been an immediate response — and it probably would have changed the whole environment on the chain gang as well.
That is the kind of patience we are called to imitate. None of this is natural. We don't naturally think this way, behave this way, or act this way. If God does not do this work in our lives, it simply is not going to happen.
So the prayer is fitting: Father, help us. You provide us an example because You are patient with us. We pray that in Christ's name, Amen.