The God of Patience and Comfort

"For whatsoever things were written before were written for our learning, that we through patience and comfort of the Scriptures might have hope. Now may the God of patience and consolation grant you to be like-minded one toward another according to Christ Jesus."  Romans 15:4-5

The Letter to the church at Rome is Paul's theological magnum opus.  The letter to the Romans is Paul'systematic elucidation of the doctrine of the Faith.  Paul's dynamic encounter with the Iesous on the road to Damascus was the decisive event of his profound and meaningful life.

After Paul's life-altering encounter with the resurrected Iesous he knew that the key to life was not a something, but a someone.  The Iesous claimed Paul as his own, and Paul claimed he Iesous as his own. The reciprocal relationship that Paul had with the Iesous completely changed his way of being.

Paul was no longer the isolated ego seeking to find his own way through myopic philosophical or mystical beliefs.  Paul's life had been made radically new in quality through the power that claimed him completely.  Again, encounter with the Iesous was merely the starting place in the new life that Paul received.  An interpenetration occurs when one genuinely appropriates the living Iesous.

Paul's deep appreciation of the Iesous was received through the deep investigation of the Scriptures (Graphe, in Greek).  Paul was highly trained in the Hebrew, Aramaic, and Koine Greek or the Greek of the common people or marketplace of his day.  He also knew the teachings of the rabbis and the philosophers of his time too.  He was therefore well-equipped as a theologian to teach the Faith to other saints.

Paul faced many challenges as a teacher of the Faith.  His was not an easy life, but his was an effective life.  He wrote that all believers have the mind of Iesous.  God gave Paul the power to experience great difficulties  through the sufficiency of Grace.  God taught Paul dependency on him through suffering.  Suffering has a way of getting our attention like nothing else.

We do not like the milieu of suffering.  We seek to find the quickest way out from under the heavy hand of suffering.  For the believer, however, there is another view of suffering.  When suffering originates from the hand of God it is designed to teach us, but not to ruin us.

Paul uses the word patience in our verse, but in the Greek the word patience means to remain under trial or circumstances, stay under, and do not seek to remove one's self.  It is also a quality that does not surrender to the suffering.  It is the word hupomone.  Hupomone is prescriptive for us.  We must learn to let patience have its perfect work.  That is, let the experience of the divinely ordained trail complete the process of teaching us why it is in our life.  Learn from it, and then move on in life.

The Graphe is our source material for learning about the God of patience and comfort.  We must constantly feed on the Bread of Life.  We must have a healthy diet of 'eating' the Word of God as Ezekiel was instructed.  Remember that Ezra first availed himself of the life changing source material of the Word of God. He had to edify himself before he could ministry to others.  This truth has not changed.  Too many believers are shadowy thin creatures today because of a scant diet of the Word of God.

Amen.

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