What Does the Bible Say About Patience?

Patience is highly valued in the Bible — a fruit of the Spirit, a mark of love, and a quality grown through the very trials that test it. Here's what Scripture teaches about patience.

A mark of love

Patience heads the Bible's great description of love: 'Charity suffereth long, and is kind.' To love people is, in large part, to be patient with them — bearing with their faults, forgiving their offences, and not being easily provoked. Patience and love go hand in hand.

Let patience finish its work

Patience is often grown through trials: 'let patience have her perfect work, that ye may be perfect and entire, wanting nothing.' Rather than resenting what tests our patience, we can let it develop a maturity we couldn't gain in comfort. The waiting itself is the classroom.

Don't grow weary

When doing good feels slow and unrewarded, the Bible encourages perseverance: 'let us not be weary in well doing: for in due season we shall reap, if we faint not.' The harvest comes in due time; patience keeps going until it does.

Patient with God's timing

Much impatience is really a struggle to trust God's timing. Scripture calls us to wait on the Lord, believing he is at work even in delay, and that he is never late. Patience grows as we trust that God's timing, though rarely ours, is always good.

The Bible teaches that patience is a mark of love and a fruit of the Spirit, grown through trials, expressed in not growing weary of doing good, and rooted in trusting God's timing. In a hurried, easily frustrated world, patience is a beautiful and countercultural quality. It won't come overnight, but as we lean on the Spirit and trust God's good timing, patience will steadily grow in us.