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JULY 1
GOD IS LONG-SUFFERING
“God, willing to shew wrath, and to make His power
known, inured with much long-suffering the vessels
of wrath fitted to destruction: that He might make
known the riches of His glory on the vessels of
mercy, which He afore prepared unto glory.” (Romans
9:22-23)
Peter also writes how “the long-suffering of God
waited in the days of Noah, while the ark was a
preparing, wherein few, that is, eight souls were
saved by water.” (1Pet. 3:20). What was the
condition of man in Noah’s day? “God saw that the
wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that
every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was
only evil continually.” (Gen. 6:5). Yet, in view of
such evil, God did not swiftly execute His wrath,
but He was long-suffering while Noah built the ark
to the saving of eight souls.
God would make known the riches of His glory through
vessels of mercy, but it appears to take a long time
to prepare such vessels, longer than it does to
bring forth vessels of wrath. Man, born in sin and
shapened in iniquity, has the root of the mystery of
iniquity working in him from the moment of his
natural birth, when he begins to breathe the
atmosphere of this world’s system. A baby can
manifest its own self-will the day it is born. But
to prepare a vessel of mercy takes the tender care
of God, as little by little He purges and purifies,
until the whole is conformed to His image. Therefore
HE ENDURES, He is patient, He continues a long time
while waiting for this spiritual maturity. Just like
He endured the whole wicked stream of humanity all
those years while Noah constructed an ark, so now He
waits for our perfection.
“Shall not God avenge His own elect, which cry day
and night unto Him, though He bear long (be
long-suffering) with them? I tell you that He will
avenge them speedily.” (Luke 18:7-8). What a
beautiful balance, long-suffering with His creation,
and yet when He does move, it shall be done
speedily. “Howbeit for this cause I obtained mercy,
that in me first Jesus Christ might shew forth all
long-suffering, for a pattern to them which should
hereafter believe on Him to life everlasting.” (1
Tim. 1:16).
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