Be patient therefore, brethren, unto the coming of the Lord. Behold, the husbandman waiteth for the precious fruit of the earth, and hath long patience for it, until he receive the early and latter rain. Be ye also patient; stablish your hearts: for the coming of the Lord draweth nigh. Grudge not one against another, brethren, lest ye be condemned: behold, the judge standeth before the door. Take, my brethren, the prophets, who have spoken in the name of the Lord, for an example of suffering affliction, and of patience. Behold, we count them happy which endure. Ye have heard of the patience of Job, and have seen the end of the Lord; that the Lord is very pitiful, and of tender mercy.
— James 5:7-11
The young man saith unto him, All these things have I kept from my youth up: what lack I yet?
— Matthew 19:20
For in many things we offend all. If any man offend not in word, the same is a perfect man, and able also to bridle the whole body.
— James 3:2
Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect.
— Matthew 5:48
Wisdom is the principal thing; therefore get wisdom: and with all thy getting get understanding. Exalt her, and she shall promote thee: she shall bring thee to honour, when thou dost embrace her.
— Proverbs 4:7-8
Therefore being justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ: By whom also we have access by faith into this grace wherein we stand, and rejoice in hope of the glory of God. And not only so, but we glory in tribulations also: knowing that tribulation worketh patience; And patience, experience; and experience, hope: And hope maketh not ashamed; because the love of God is shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Ghost which is given unto us.
— Romans 5:1-5
What is the Perfect Work of Patience?, by Thomas Goodwin. The following contains Section Three of his work, “Patience and Its Perfect Work, Under Sudden and Sore Trials—Being an Exposition of James 1:1-5.
James, a servant of God and of the Lord Jesus Christ, to the twelve tribes which are scattered abroad, greeting. My brethren, count it all joy when ye fall into divers temptations; Knowing this, that the trying of your faith worketh patience. But let patience have her perfect work, that ye may be perfect and entire, wanting nothing. If any of you lack wisdom, let him ask of God, that giveth to all men liberally, and upbraideth not; and it shall be given him.
— James 1:1-5
3D GENERAL HEAD
What is the perfect work of patience
IN general, a thing then is perfect when all the parts that belong to it are finished. As then the creation of the world is said to be perfect when, as Gen. 2:1, 2,’The heavens and the earth were finished, and the host of them.’ So when all the whole of the work of patience in its several parts, &c., is accomplished, then patience hath its perfect work.
There are four branches of this head that complete it —
1. Its privative work.
2. Its positive acts.
3. Its positive fruits.
4. Its adjuncts of perfection.
All which go to make patience perfect. And the proofs thereof will confirm every tittle of the fore-part and body of that description I gave of patience.
First Branch.—Its privative work
I begin with its privative work. And that lies in this: when faith by patience doth mortify turbulent passions that still arise, and are opposites thereto. And as love, when perfect, casts out fear, 1 John 4:18, so then patience is perfect when it expels those contrary passions; or else likewise, too intense thoughts, or porings upon our misery and crosses, so as our minds are chained and tied to those objects, and taken off from all other. I take thoughts in, because Christ says, Luke 24:38,’Why do thoughts arise in your hearts? Why are you troubled?, For when troubles sink deep, they send thoughts up fast; as when weights are hung upon a clock or jack, they make the wheels run swiftly. And so inordinate affections cause an inordinacy of thoughts, and a fixing our minds to one thing; as upon what we have lost, or are like to suffer. Now perfect patience corrects and orders the extravagancies of all these, reduceth a man to possess his own soul; as Christ’s phrase is, in Luke 21:19,’In your patience possess ye your souls,’ and thereby to dwell in a man’s self; whereas the violence of such affections hurry us out of ourselves, and throw our souls out of doors, that we are not within, or ourselves.
To instance in some particular passions —
1. Inordinate grief. You know how Job’s patience is cried up, and that by our Apostle. For when he suffered the loss of all, both his children and estate, &c., yet he expressed no grief, no trouble at all, that we read of, upon the hearsay and tidings thereof; and sure if there had been any upon those occasions, the story would have told it, as it doth his other impatiences, which were upon other and higher pressures of another kind, afterwards. But all you read of him upon occasion of those outward losses in chap. 1 is all mere patience and submission to God. ‘The Lord,’ says he,’gave, and the Lord hath taken away,’—and it is the Lord who hath done both,—’and blessed be the name of the Lord’ for both. And ‘in all this charged not God foolishly,’ says the last verse.
2. Envy and passionate anger. (1.) Envy, which is apt to rise when others have no such afflictions or losses. As that such and such a one, and of my rank, should escape with his goods, &c., when the loss falls heavy on me, saith the sad heart. This secretly regrets. Good people are greatly apt to this. ‘The spirit that is in us’—in us saints—’lusteth to envy.’ But God in the end ‘gives more grace;’ that is, when men are humbled, as there it is said, and broken, which is usually when they have been exercised with great sufferings. The different condition of the holy apostles and some other Christians in those primitive times, gives demonstration of such a patience in this case. There were no men so eminent for sufferings and patience, next the Lord Christ, as the apostles were, who yet viewing other Christians, (as take the Corinthians, 1 Cor. 4:8, 9,) how they were full, &c.,’Now ye are full, now ye are rich, ye have reigned as kings without us.’ It was a city very rich, and the Christians in it had a fulness of outward things when he wrote this; they were full and rich. But as for us, says he,’God hath set forth us apostles last, as it were appointed to death,’ &c. ‘Ye are honourable, but we are despised; we both hunger, and thirst, and are naked, and are buffeted, and have no certain dwelling place; and labour, working with our hands: being reviled, we bless; being persecuted, we suffer it; being defamed, we entreat: we are made as the filth of the world, and are the offscouring of all things unto this day.’ And yet he did not at all envy this their fulness in the least. No, he wisheth them all true prosperity: ‘Would to God ye did reign,’ ver. 8, that is, in true and spiritual respects; he wisheth them all good rather, in all inward enjoyments of God and Christ, together with their outward riches, &c. Now what was it that had so much rooted up envy, &c., in him and the other his fellow-apostles? It was his sufferings and wants, and their being made spectacles to angels and men, as there. This had wrought his and their spirits to this. In the Old Testament, Joshua, though he proved a man of a choice spirit, yet when he was young in years, and but a young beginner in grace, envy rose up in him, for his good master, Moses’ sake. Eldad and Medad prophesy, says he, Num. 11:29; ‘but Moses said to him, Enviest thou for my sake?’ and so reproved him; and thereupon expresseth his own heart thus: ‘Would God that all the Lord’s people were prophets; and that the Lord would put his Spirit upon them!’ Now, whence arose this blessed disposition of heart, thus free from envy in him? In the very next chapter you meet with another instance, which gives a true account both of his not envying others, as also in bearing the envy of others against himself, sharpened with the highest provocations unto anger, (which was the 2d,) it being as unkindly as unreasonable. It was the envy of his own only brother and sister, for this, that God had chosen him to utter his mind by unto his people, and reveal himself so as never to any man, as God’s testimony of him is in that 12th chapter. Whereupon they had said, ver. 2,’Hath the Lord indeed spoken only by Moses? hath he not spoken also by us?’ Thereupon follows the account, or bottom disposition of spirit, which made him bear both this and the former, ver. 3,’Now the man Moses was very meek, above all the men which were upon the face of the earth.’ And so, good man, he would himself have passed this by, and have taken no notice at all of this affront; but that God, it is there said, heard it, as noting that he would not put it up so for Moses’ sake. Now what was it had tamed and made Moses thus meek and calm and passive? Certainly his great afflictions. And his faith, having been exercised thereby, had wrought patience in him: Heb. 11:24, 25,’By faith he chose rather to suffer affliction,’ &c.; and accordingly had lived forty years a mean shepherd, a servile life, an exile, a banished man from Pharaoh’s court, honours, and pleasures of it, as an underling, in hardship and durance. And it was a sudden trial, for he fled for his life at an hour’s warning, as well as a sore and long trial of forty years; and these sufferings, as great as any man’s in that age, made him meek,’very meek,’ which word the Dutch Annotators render ‘patient.’ The Hebrew word hath affinity with afflictions, saith Ainsworth, which had taught him patience, as sufferings did Christ, whose type he was, Heb. 5:8. These had subdued anger and envy in him unto this so high a degree, and patience had its perfect work. For otherwise we find he could be angry at times, Exod. 11:8, 16:20, 32:19; Lev. 10:16; Num. 16:15, 31:14, 20:10, 11; as Ainsworth hath collected them.
Jesus Christ hath taught us a lesson against this envy, Matt. 20:15,’Shall I not do what I will with mine own?’ Are not all things mine? And wilt thou envy that I have taken them from thee, and not done so from another? ‘Shall thine eye be evil, because I am good?’ Shall a man be sick that another is in health?
3. Inordinate fears. When too much trouble comes upon us, we use to fear too much at the present; and are apt to project a thousand things for the future, as that poverty and beggary will follow. Many such fears lay hold upon us, because we see God’s anger hath begun, and we know not the worst, nor when or where it will end. But, saith Christ, Rev. 2:10,’Fear none of those things that thou shalt suffer: be thou faithful unto death, and I will give thee a crown of life.’ Faith and faithfulness unto God, or constancy in enduring unto death, he here opposeth to fear; and faith works patience, and patience eats out fear. Fortitude and courage differ from patience in this, that a stout courage in a man of a great spirit will indeed overcome fear, if so be he sees any hope of evading, and so will rouse a man’s spirit up to resistance and defence. But patience, though it sees no hope as to this life, yea, nothing but present death before it, it will yet strengthen the heart to bear it, and make a man faithful unto death, and constant, without prevailing fears, even unto death.
4. Murmuring against God. Patience works out that. As in Job, the devil projected his blaspheming: ‘He will blaspheme thee to thy face.’ He made sure account of it, and would needs turn prophet, and prophesy what Job would do, and that before God. But the devil was befooled, and proved a lying prophet. Job, instead of blaspheming God, blesseth God. ‘In all this Job charged not God foolishly.’ I may say of it, as in the Revelation twice it is said of the saints, Here was the patience of Job. And it was that patient frame of spirit that God had wrought in him, which the Scripture so extols, that enabled him hereunto.
5. Faith by patience mortifies inordinate cares. Against the times of those great distresses that were to come upon the Jewish nation, and among them upon the Christian Jews in that nation, before the destruction of Jerusalem, which would try every vein in their hearts, Christ gives two special exhortations, besides divers others, Luke 21. The first,’In your patience’—that is, that patience which is truly Christian and properly yours—’possess your own souls,’ ver. 19. The second,’Take heed to yourselves, lest at any time your hearts be overcharged with the cares of this life’—μέριμναι. Cares do, as the word imports, distract the soul, scatter it into wild thoughts and wandering anxieties. But patience, which Christ first exhorts to, calls all in, and orders all to keep home, and not to stir out of doors abroad; composeth all, so as a man possesseth his own soul. In Phil. 4:6, 7,’Be careful for nothing; but in everything by prayer and supplication, with thanksgiving, let your requests be made known unto God; and the peace of God,’ &c. I instance likewise for this in the difference of the two grounds in the parable of the sower, Luke 8:14, 15. Of the thorny ground it is said, that ‘the word was choked by the cares of the world;’ but of the good ground oppositely, that it ‘brings forth fruit with patience.’ Patience is contrary unto cares, as well as unto unquietness, or to other inordinate affections.
This for patience, its privative work.
Second Branch of the 3d General Head.—Its positive acts
I come, secondly, to positive acts and workings of patience, which are many. To begin with the lowest, and so rise to the higher —
1. Patience includes and comprehends an act of waiting upon God, and his good pleasure. Waiting is an act of faith continued or lengthened out; and where faith would of itself be short-winded, patience ekes it out. The daughter helps the mother, with an expectation of a happy issue. You find waiting involved in patience as an eminent act thereof, James 5:7,’Be patient therefore, brethren, unto the coming of the Lord. Behold, the husbandman waiteth for the precious fruit of the earth, and hath long patience for it, until he receive the early and latter rain.’ Look, how and in what manner the husbandman waits, so he sets out and exhorts a Christian patient man should do. Mic. 7:7,’Therefore I will look unto the Lord; I will wait for the God of my salvation: my God will hear me,’ &c., ‘until he plead my cause, and execute judgment for me,’ &c., ver. 9.
2. It is a waiting with quietness. And that is patience’ work too. Patience is not an enduring simply by force, which we call patience perforce, but with quietness. In Lam. 3, the church, in her doleful condition, expresseth the actings and workings of her own soul; although she speaks in the third person, which is usual in the Scripture, yet she means herself: ver. 26,’It is good that a man should both hope and quietly wait for the salvation of the Lord.’ This was uttered when she was under the yoke, and so was a fruit of patience. Ver. 27,’It is good for a man that he bear the yoke in his youth.’ It is the nature of faith to quiet the heart in God;— Fides habet vim quietativam. Isa. 26:3,’Thou wilt keep him in perfect peace, whose mind is stayed on thee; because he trusteth in thee.’ And, chap. 30:15,’In quietness and confidence shall be your strength.’ And when faith hath wrought patience, it quiets the heart much more. Patience speaks quietness in the very sound of it; and the reason is because it hath a strength accompanies it, Col. 1:11,’Strengthened with all might, unto all patience and long-suffering.’ And thence so far forth as faith and patience do strengthen the heart, so far we are able to bear, and that with quietness. ‘Let not your hearts be troubled,’ saith Christ, John 14. Why? ‘You believe in God, believe also in me.’ Faith on them will cause trouble to fly away, which is a great part of Christ’s meaning when he says,’In patience possess your souls,’—that is, dwell quietly in your own spirits, as a man doth in his house, which our law terms his castle.
3. Patience carries on the heart without fainting or discouragement. ‘For this cause we faint not.’ Isa. 42:4; the meekness and patience of Christ is there first set forth: ver. 2,’He shall not cry, nor lift up his voice in the streets.’ Then follows, ver. 4,’He shall not fail nor be discouraged,’—not be broken, as the Hebrew is,—that is, in spirit, so as to cease from what God had given him to do or suffer; he should go on with his work till he had perfected it.
4. Patience in all sufferings submits to God, and the will of God. The Apostle sedulously puts in ‘if it be the will of God,’ when he had occasion to mention their sufferings, and he doth it twice: 1 Peter 3:17,’If it be the will of God that ye suffer;’ and chap. 4:19,’Wherefore let him that suffers according to the will of God,’ &c. And in chap. 1:6,’If need be,’ that is, if God see it requisite to bring them on you. And the Apostle would needs bring these clauses in, though by way of parenthesis; so in two of these
places mentioned. The stronger the sufferings are, the stronger is the will of God in bringing those sufferings. And it is patience in the soul that works the heart to submission to that will, Ps. 39:9,’I was dumb, I opened not my mouth; because thou didst it.’ Then, when he confessed his sin of Bathsheba and murdering Uriah, he considered not the wrong done them, in comparison of that he had done against God therein. ‘Against thee, against thee only, have I sinned, and done this evil in thy sight,’ Ps. 51. And now, when a retaliation for that sin, in the rebellion of his own son Absalom, came upon him, and Shimei had likewise bitterly cursed and reviled him,—which some latter expositors have deemed to have been the occasions of that psalm,—he in like manner, in this his punishment, layeth aside the consideration of all instruments that had brought those evils on him, whoever they were, whether it were these or some other, and looks only unto God, and submits,’because thou hast done it.’ And though he confesseth that he was in a fume at first, notwithstanding his fixed resolution to have been dumb as for speaking anything that should savour of murmuring before men; yet his flesh and corruption boiled within him, as that useth to rise and work in us first: so ver. 2, 3,’I was dumb with silence, I held my peace, even from good: and my sorrow was stirred,’ or my distemper wrought the more. ‘My heart was hot within me, whilst I was musing the fire burned: then spake I with my tongue.’ And what he spake savours of a man weary of life itself. For he would needs know of God when his life should be at end; thus, ver. 4, ‘so impatient was he.’ Yea, but then when his grace came more deeply and thoroughly to be stirred, and patience to have its perfect work, he then considers God’s hand alone in it; how that it was he had stirred up the spirits of these wicked ones against him, and found that himself had to do with God alone. And then he was dumb and silent indeed to purpose. And truly his heart at that time, if the occasion were that of Shimei and Absalom, had been wrought up into as blessed a frame of submission to God as ever before or after, in all his lifetime, as his words in that chapter before mentioned do declare, 2 Sam. 15:25, 26,’And David said, If I shall find favour in the eyes of the Lord, he will bring me again, and shew me both it,’—viz., the ark,—’and his habitation: but if he thus say, I have no delight in thee; behold, here I am, let him do to me as seemeth good unto him.’ He herein perfectly gives up himself to God’s good pleasure. And it is as if he had said, If it be good in his eyes so to deal, it shall be so in mine; I wholly give myself up unto whatever his design sign is upon me. Yea, he casts away himself into the supposition of God’s having no delight in him; which is the most afflicting supposition a godly man can make to himself of all other; so perfectly did his will apply itself to God’s will. He had professed his waiting on God just before in that psalm,’Now, Lord, what do I wait for? my hope is in thee.’ And now he adds,’I am dumb,’ so for the present; and,’I will be dumb,’ so for the future: I will never open my mouth about it. Piscator and the Dutch Annotator read it thus, in both tenses.
5. Patience makes a man not dumb only, or not to open his mouth through submission, but it makes him put his mouth in the dust; whereby a deeper humiliation and submission is yet expressed. It is a further humiliation to lie at God’s feet with his face on the dust, which is as low as the person can go: that if God will tread and trample upon him, there he is; and in that posture presents and declares himself ready for that, or any dispensation from God. Lam. 3, the church did not only wait, ver. 25, and ‘wait quietly,’ ver. 26, and then ‘sit down’ and ‘keep silence,’ ver. 28, but did ‘put her mouth in the dust,’ ver. 29.
But you will say, All this was done when the soul had hope, as appears in those words in that Lam. 3:26,’It is good that a man should hope and wait quietly;’ and, ver. 29,’He puts his month in the dust, if so be there may be hope.’ And, indeed, David, in the 39th Psalm, and likewise in these places cited of him out of Samuel, had hope concerning that particular thing he yet submitted unto God in, as at the 7th verse of that psalm appears: ‘And now, Lord, what do I wait for? my hope is in thee;’ and then mentions the deliverance wherein his hope lay, in ver. 8–10. And thus when Shimei cursed him, his soul in like manner did gather up hope the more upon it that God would bless him: 2 Sam. 16:12,’It may be the Lord will look on mine affliction, and that the Lord will requite me good for his cursing this day.’ But yet, I confess, his hope there, and the church’s before, did each rise up but to an ‘it may be.’
6. But gospel patience, sixthly, will work an effect, when there is no hope, as to the things and concernments of this life, David and the church said, ‘If there may be hope;’ but patience will say, If there be no hope—that is, in this life—that ever I should come out of this trouble. I differenced patience from Christian fortitude before by this. The apostles did put, primitive Christians over to the day of the restitution of all things, and the refreshing that should be then. Thus, James 5:7, 8,’Be patient therefore, brethren, unto the coming of the Lord. Behold, the husbandman waiteth for the precious fruit of the earth, and hath long patience for it, till he receive the early and latter rain. Be ye also patient; stablish your hearts: for the coming of the Lord draweth nigh.’ As if he had said, As for your pressures, I can give you no hope of release out of them during this life; but let your hearts fixedly make account of no other outward refreshment but that which shall be then by the coming of Christ, which will be spiritual in glory. And his similitude of the husbandman’s waiting for the harvest declares thus much: ver. 7,’Behold, the husbandman waits for the precious fruit of the earth,’ &c. Poor man, he doth not reap this precious fruit of the earth until the harvest. He parts with precious seed, and as unto him, it is until the harvest-time as good as lost. The Psalmist hath the same comparison,’They sow precious seed, and they go weeping,’ as loath to part with it,’but shall return rejoicing, bringing their sheaves with them.’ Brethren, there is a harvest a-coming, and joy sown for the upright in heart, against that time. It is now but sown, but must come up one day. But although the husbandman in all appearance looks upon all as lost until the harvest; yet, however, he hath before then, in the meanwhile, the early and the latter rain: and they give hope of a harvest, whilst he sees and finds God blessing and following his corn with rain upon his ground. This as to the husbandman’s hope, which is the Apostle’s similitude. And as to the Christian’s hope, I understand by the early and latter rain, according to the course of the similitude, to be signified those illapses from heaven, those refreshing bedewments which the Holy Ghost vouchsafeth all along to such an expectant’s soul, as earnests of heaven, and pledges of God’s certain intending to give him his expected harvest, according to the proportion of his patience and waiting. But still all these hopes wholly respect that other life; but as to this life, the Apostle gives no other hopes for them. Nor no more doth the Apostle to the Hebrews, chap. 10:36, whilst he thus speaks,’Ye have need of patience,’ even to the end of your lives; for it follows,’that after you have done the will of God, you may inherit the promises.’ Still you will need patience to your very last. We use to speak the same to a man whose case is remediless: You had need of patience, for your condition is not like to be bettered. These had suffered the spoiling of their goods already, ver. 33, and had ‘endured a great fight of afflictions,’ as there. Well, but the storm is not yet over: you have need of patience still, yon are never like to have your goods and estates again, and I can give you, says he, no other hope but that you would patiently wait for the restitution of all things, which is to be at the day of judgment; for so it follows, ver. 37,’For yet a little while, and he that shall come will come, and will not tarry.’ And therefore ‘cast not away your confidence, which hath great recompence of reward,’ ver. 35. So that all the hope in this life is, that the time will not be long.
7. A seventh act or work of patience is, it causeth the soul to sanctify God in a man’s heart, all sorts of ways. I shall still instance, as I have done, more specially in Job’s carriage, whose patience is so cried up by our Apostle. When his outward losses of children, &c., had their full accomplishment, and the sad tidings thereof had filled his ears and heart, chap. 1, by messenger after messenger, till he had no more to lose, the text tells us, ver. 20,’He fell down on the ground, and worshipped.’ He had been frequent in worshipping before, and that upon occasion of his children, that they might not sin, so you read, ver. 5; but all those, his foregone worship, sacrifices, and prayers, could not prevail with God to preserve them, nor his goods neither. But now when they are all gone, the first thing he does is, he falls down and worships.
Quest.—What may that contain in it?
Ans.—I shall limit myself unto what his speech thereupon doth utter, and the posture of his worshipping doth signify, both plainly shewing what was in his heart that moved him so to do, and moved within him in the doing it.
1. He adores God in his sovereignty, both in his falling down, as also in those words,’The Lord hath given, and the Lord hath taken.’ He is Lord, says he, the Lord of all. All was his own; and shall he not do what he will with his own? as Matt. 20:15. I am the clay, he is the potter. He is the Lord of me, and all. Job had prayed for his sons, as we did for the city, so far as he had then in his view what might then concern them; but for all his good prayers for them, God took them away by a violent death: and herein God seemeth angry with his prayers, as with ours for the city; yet Job begins to worship him afresh, and adores him after all. And it was the first thing he applied himself unto. Faith and patience will cause the heart to apply itself to God in all sorts of dealings, and will vent and utter gracious dispositions some way or other. And to adore God, which was most suitable to this condition he was in, is a higher act than to pray, simply considered, though it be done mostly in prayer. And as thus at first, so he retained this practice and principle all along, although he did grow very unquiet when his sins and God’s wrath came in upon him. Yet however impatient he otherwise were, he still afterwards continued in this manner to adore, and fall down before God at times. Thus, in chap. 23:11, 12, you shall see how this poor man falls down before God, and submits to him. He first professeth his integrity, at ver. 10, and his faith as to the issue of his trials, that all would be for good: ‘He knoweth the way that I take: when he hath tried mo, I shall come forth as gold. My foot hath held his steps,’ &c. As if he had said. But yet for all he knew my holy walking with him, his resolution and design upon me, thus to try me, went on. And all my prayers beforehand could not turn him therefrom, as follows ver. 13, 14,’But he is of one mind, and who can turn him? and what his soul desireth, even that he doth: for he performeth the thing that is appointed for me;’—what is my lot from him, as this was, I must take it and submit to it;—’and many such things are with him,’ many such strange and wonderful unusual dealings are with him, and we must magnify him in all. It is God’s sovereignty, you see, which he here adores and falls down before. And this passage you may set upon the score of those eminent speeches wherein he expressed his patience, which the Scripture commends it for; and in the issue of his worst fits, we find him still adoring and submitting to God.
2. Secondly, he humbles himself to the dust, falls down to the ground. First, as himself was a creature, poor and emptied of all. Alas! what am I, says he, or what have I to challenge or assume to myself as mine? What have I, or am I, that I have not received? A poor naked thing I came into the world at first; and but as poor and naked am I now, when bereft of all my goods; and as naked I must return. I had nothing at first, and I have but nothing now, and I shall carry nothing with me into the other world. Thus spake he.
When Jacob was in hazard of, and thought he should lose his goods, and children, and all, as Job here actually lost both, see how beforehand he humbles and debaseth himself,—as you read in Gen. 32:10,—and how greatly, before the Lord: ‘I am less than the least of thy mercies.’ I am not worthy of a bit of bread, and thou gavest me all I have. And what was I once? He considers, as Job, his original condition, both as to matter of estate and children. I came over Jordan but with this staff; I had no more, says he, and now I have two bands, both of cattle and children. And if God take all, I am but where I was, and where he once found me. And truly Jacob’s best policy and design was to have compounded the matter, and if he could but save half of either, ver. 8; if he might have half his estate, and half his children, he should have been, considering the hazard of all, something well appeased: but now he puts in with God for the whole. His thus humbling of himself was before he had lost anything, to the end to preserve it, and Job’s was when he had lost all; but both express the same humility.
And as you find him here humbled, as a poor creature, as poor as ever any was; so elsewhere as deeply broken for his being a sinner, and professing himself to be as naked and empty in respect of any righteousness of his own, or of anything he had to stand upon in the sight of God. The great Apostle doth not mere divest himself thereof, in Phil. 3, than holy Job doth in chap. 9:2,’I know it is so of a truth: but how should man be just with God? If he will contend with him, he cannot answer him one of a thousand.’ And yet more deeply and expressly, ver. 20, 21,’If I justify myself, mine own mouth’—I sinning in all my speeches, and even in this now whilst I speak it—’shall condemn me: if I say, I am perfect, it shall also prove me perverse.’ His meaning further is, Had I never so perfect an inherent holiness, yet if I come before God to be justified,’I know not mine own soul,’ as he there adds; that is, I look at nothing in my own soul, I utterly renounce all in it: yea,’I would despise my life;’ that is, all that holiness I have in the course of my life exercised, and had in me, I despise it, I count it dross and dung. Though as fur an integrity, in point of sanctification, he stood upon his points with God himself.
We find other saints in their distresses to have been patient in the sense of their sins. I might instance in David, how he humbled himself in that great distress which we spake of, and which silenced him so, as you heard in that fore-cited Psalm 39. ‘Deliver me from all my transgressions,’ saith he, ver 8. The remembrance of those struck him dumb before God; for that speech immediately follows, ver. 9. So the church, Mic. 7:9,’I will bear the indignation of the Lord, for I have sinned against him.’
3. A third act comprehended in Job’s worshipping God is his blessing God, as his words therewith also uttered shew; which blessed frame and disposition of spirit his faith by patience had wrought in him upon this occasion. Lo! his high sufferings cause him to bless the Lord. ‘Blessed be the name of the Lord,’ says he. He blesseth him that he had given him at first, and that he had afforded him those blessings of children and goods so long. ‘The Lord gave, and the Lord hath taken; blessed,’ &c. And he was thankful for that; and thought it but reasonable that if he received good, he should also receive evil, as the pleasure of God was, chap. 2:10. He blesseth God, also, because he found that God had blessed him with such things and blessings heavenly, which could not be taken away. He found the love of God the same still. It is a sure rule, we never bless God but when we find that God blesseth us first; as we do not love God, but because God loves us first. Now when the soul finds that in afflictions and tentations God doth bless it, this draws out from the soul a blessing of God again. And then doth the soul say, It is not only the will of my Father, and therefore shall I not drink the cup he gives me? but it is the blessing of my Father, and shall not I bless him for it? ‘In everything give thanks,’ saith the holy Apostle, 1 Thess. 5:18; that is, whatever the condition be, still there is matter of thanks, and so of blessing God.
Third Branch of the 3d General Head.—The fruits of patience
These the Apostle terms the peaceable, quiet fruits of righteousness, which chastening yieldeth, after ye have been exercised thereby, Heb. 12, and that is through patience gained by those afflictions.
1. The first fruit; it works contentment, a holy contentment; and that adds a perfection to the other former works of this grace, Phil. 4:11, 12,’I have learned, in whatsoever state I am, therewith to be content. I know how to be abased, and I know how to abound: everywhere and in all things I am instructed both to be full and to be hungry, both to abound and to suffer need.’ And he had learned it, as Christ learned his obedience, through sufferings; and by his having run through so great a variety of conditions. A man may be content when he is not fully satisfied. When God frames a, man’s estate to his will, then he is satisfied; as, Ps. 17:14,’whose belly thou fillest with thy hidden treasure.’ But to be content is another thing. It is not when I have an estate according to my will, but my will is brought to my estate; and then I have as much content in that as in the greatest estate; for life, says Christ,—that is, the comfort of life,—lies not in abundance. It is true, such a man would choose rather, as the Apostle speaks, a full estate; yet patience boweth his judgment to such an approbation of his present condition as that which is best for him, as being that which out of God’s judgment and wisdom is allotted to him; he so bends his will unto such a correspondency with God’s will as he rests content.
2. A second fruit of patience is self-sufficiency; the word is so, 1 Tim. 6:6, ‘But godliness with contentment is great gain.’ The word μετʼαὐταρκείας, translated ‘contentment,’ is a more reaching word by far. To say ‘contentment,’ that is too bare and scant a word; but this more amply signifies ‘self-sufficiency.’ In 2 Cor. 9:8, the same word is there translated sufficiency, but still in the Greek it hath ‘self’ added to ‘sufficiency,’ which imports a sufficiency within a man’s self that he needs not go abroad for anything; he is sufficiently supplied from what is within. The words of that verse are,’And God is able to make all grace abound towards you; that ye, always having all self-sufficiency in all things, may abound to every good work:’ which let us consider.
It is true that in the word ‘all grace’ he includes an outward grace, of giving such an abundance of external blessings as they might ‘always’ and ‘in all things’ have enough for themselves, and to spare; yea, to abound in every good work to others. But yet the main of that grace he centres in is an inward self-sufficiency in a man’s own heart, as without which they would never have satisfaction at home, much less a heart to scatter abroad; but a man’s natural self-unsufficiency, as oppositely I call it, would make his heart clung and narrow, never contented in himself, much less abounding to others, though he had all the whole world. So as indeed that is the grace which the Apostle puts the weight upon; that is the grace he predicates.
So as the inference or corollary, as to our purpose, from thence may justly be: that if, on the other hand, a true Christian be in never so great want, or fallen into a condition of extreme poverty, comparatively either unto what himself once had, which is the case of many a good soul now, or unto others who still abound; yet if God give him this ‘all grace’ of inward self-sufficiency, he may be, and is still, as content and sufficient within himself as those in that abounding condition which the Apostle wisheth unto those Corinthians.
And the reason is, that the self-sufficiency of him that hath the most of such things lies not in those things, but depends utterly upon that inward grace spoken of, or that inward frame of Spirit, which this grace composeth his soul unto.
And this is evident from that place to Timothy first cited, where it is that the Apostle useth the same word on purpose to comfort the saints, that were in a scant and bare condition as to this world, as the coherence of ver. 6–8 shews. ‘Godliness with self-sufficiency,’ says he,’is great gain,’ even virtually as much, yea, infinitely more, than gaining all the world, as Christ’s speech is, which, moreover, is spoken with a connexion to these words; ‘for we brought nothing into this world, and it is certain we carry nothing out.’ And therefore, if we have nothing but ‘food and raiment, let us therewith be content;’ so it follows. And for so much God hath undertaken.
And the holy Apostle verifies this in himself, that he had learned thus to be as content when he wanted as when he abounded. And in this frame we find elsewhere his mind to have been in the midst of all, not wants only, but pressures of all sorts; which also shews that patience and endurance through sufferings had been his tutors and instructors thereunto. For in 2 Cor. 6, he having first reckoned up his sufferings, ver. 4, and made a catalogue of them, then in his final conclusions, ver. 10, he sums up the frame of his spirit all in this: ‘As sorrowful, yet always rejoicing; as poor, yet making many rich; as having nothing, yet possessing all things.’ In which few words he compendiously speaketh what either out of that to the Corinthians, chap. 9, I have now insisted on, or that paradox in my text doth amount unto. For those words,’as sorrowful’ in respect of divers temptations,’yet always rejoicing,’ are all one with ‘count it all joy when ye fall into divers tentations,’ as in the text. And his ‘having nothing, yet possessing all things’ there, is adequate and equivalent to the Corinthians’ supposed outward ‘abounding always, and in all things.’ But then his ‘being poor, yet making many rich,’ therein he exceeded and transcended what they, or any the most liberal-hearted rich man that ever was in the world could boast of, in any of their or his abounding in any or every good or charitable work, in relief to others. So we see it is possible and attainable that a Christian may in the want of all have an all-self-sufficiency, superabounding the fulness of him in outward things who aboundeth most. And all this was the fruit of his patience, and continual abiding under sufferings. For he speaks this of himself, whilst he is enumerating his sufferings, which in that chapter he doth at large. Thus perfect will patience make you, that, as here the Apostle in my text speaks, you shall want nothing, even in outward things, when you have lost all.
If you ask me, Whence hath a Christian this self-sufficiency within himself, and wherein lies it?—
I answer, If God and Christ dwell in the heart; if I have the earnest of the Spirit for my salvation, or am partaker of his holiness, and that grace which accompanies salvation; and do delight in the will and glory of God, and in pleasing him, and the like to these; then I have a self-sufficiency within me. If, as in 1 John 4:16,’we have known and believed the love that God hath to us: God is love; and he that dwelleth in love dwelleth in God, and God in him,’—then we have all within ourselves; and is like as a man that hath all provisions in and about his own house so plentifully as he needs not go forth for anything; so is it, and will it be, with us.
3. A third fruit is joy: Col. 1:11,’Strengthened with all might, unto all patience and long-suffering with joyfulness.’ You have it also in the text, ‘count it all joy,’ &c. And, Rom. 5:3,’We glory in tribulations, knowing that tribulation worketh patience.’
You will say to me, How can this be? Doth not the Apostle say, Heb. 12:11, ‘No chastening seems to be for the present joyous, but grievous;’ and our Saviour,’You shall weep when the world shall rejoice;’ and many the like? I give these answers —
First, The object of your joy is not simply your afflictions. No, no man can delight in them alone; they, indeed, are grievous, thus saith the Apostle. But your joy lies in looking unto what is the issue and event, the end and reward of your trials by them; and that is it you are to count the matter of your joy, and all joy. To rejoice in the thing, or the affliction itself, is one thing; and to rejoice in the expectation of the event and issue, is another.
Then, secondly, if you observe it, the word in the text is favourable: says he,’count it all joy;’ that is, esteem it so. He doth not say, you shall have all joy at present, but though you have not, you may count it all joy,—that is, you may reckon it as matter of all joy, as many interpreters paraphrase the words,—and so reason yourselves into joy in your judgments, and so esteem it all joy, appretiative, as the school speaks, though the passion of joy be wanting.
Thirdly, Jesus Christ himself, when he did endure the cross, and whilst he hung upon it, and likewise before, whilst within the garden, he was not in a joyous frame of spirit at that present as to the passion of joy; nay, his soul was heavy unto death that while. Yet it is said, Heb. 12:1, that ‘for the joy that was set before him he did endure the cross,’ &c.; and he therein is set forth as an example unto us, in the same verse,’Let us run with patience the race that is set before us, looking unto Jesus,’ &c. It is well if you look to the joy set before you, as that which you certainly expect to come, although you want the passion of joy in that which you expect to come.
Fourthly, You may perhaps not rejoice at present with great joy, yet afterwards, through much exercise of patience, it may grow up in you. And this answer the Apostle himself gives in that Heb. 12, distinguishing between what for ‘the present,’ and what for ‘afterwards,’ in time: ver. 11, ‘Now no chastening for the present seemeth to be joyous, but grievous: nevertheless afterward it yieldeth the peaceable fruit of righteousness unto them which are exercised thereby.’ And upon the hopes of that he bids them to lift up the hands that hang down, and strengthen the feeble knees.
Yet, fifthly, Some Christians have had, and you may have, actual joy at that present in the midst of your afflictions. Those two, great trials and great joys, may well meet and stand together in the heart at once, as in divers respects; for the Apostle hath reconciled these two, 1 Pet. 1:6, ‘Wherein ye greatly rejoice, though now for a season, if need be, ye are in heaviness through manifold temptations.’ That speech,’wherein ye greatly rejoice,’ reacheth and riseth higher than to an accounting it matter of joy about what is to come, but doth further absolutely speak of joy for the present. And therefore to have the affection of inward joy itself greatly raised up, and yet at that instant, in the same ‘now’ as he speaks, in outward respects to be in heaviness, are compatible. And, Col. 1:11, the Apostle speaks of such a glorious power accompanying the saints in trials as shall work ‘patience and long-suffering with joyfulness.’ And why else doth the Apostle also say,’Rejoice in the Lord always; and again I say, Rejoice?’ He contents not himself to have said it once, as if to have them rejoice a little, but he professeth, to say it again, because they should rejoice abundantly, and this ‘always,’ and therefore in all times and in all conditions. Of the co-existence of which two himself proposeth himself an example: ‘As sorrowful, yet always rejoicing.’
Fourth Branch of the 3d General Head.—Some eminent properties or adjuncts of patience, which, added, do make it and its work perfect
1. When a man’s spirit is brought to do these things with ease, so as he shall not need to chide his spirit into a patient frame, nor force himself into it, but like as Ezra is said to be a ready scribe, Ezra 7:6,—that is, he was perfect at his work, Ms heart was prepared for it and inured to it, ver. 10,—thus patience hath had a perfect work when it frames the heart to a readiness to these actings before mentioned. Thus the Apostle, Acts 21:13, ‘I am not only ready to be bound, but I am ready to die at Jerusalem, for the name of the Lord Jesus.’ His heart was so fully prepared as he stuck not at all at it; yea, it was a heart-breaking to him that his friends should offer to dissuade him: ‘What mean you to break my heart?’ &c. It was his being inured to endurance and patience that had begotten that habit of it in him; his heart was not to seek for it.
2. A second adjunct or property which adds a perfection to all these is when the practice of it is durable, and hath some constancy in it.
As, first, not by fits only. That was Jonah’s fault. Oh, he was a broken, humble man when in the whale’s belly; but how outrageous when out! In Moses, patience had its perfect work, in respect of the constant exercise of that grace, and therefore it was he had the honour to be styled the meekest man on earth; and truly it was not that meekness of his natural temper, nor merely as a moral virtue in him, for which he is so extolled, though these might contribute thereto, but it was a grace that was spiritual in him, the grace of meekness, and consequently of patience, which the Holy Ghost had wrought in him, and which he by sufferings had learned. And my reason, among others, principally is, that he was a type of Christ therein, according as God’s promise was to raise up a prophet like unto Moses; like, as in other eminencies, so especially in this grace; for which, as Moses is commended there, so Christ in the Evangelists, and therein proposeth himself as an example,’Learn of me, for I am meek,’ &c. Now, how constantly did Moses bear all along with that perverse, murmuring, and rebelling nation, both against God and himself, with an invincible patience, and still interceded for them; and thus Christ doth with us, and for us. And although we read how Moses was and could be sometimes angry, yea, exceeding wroth, as the words are, (whereof I gave the collection out of Ainsworth,) yet it was often in God’s cause, and still but so as the usual and constant frame of his spirit was otherwise, for which he had that renowned denomination, and never was greatly out or overcome with impatiency, we read of, but once, Num. 20:10, 11, compared with Psalm 106:32, 33.
Secondly, Patience is then perfect when it continues to the end. As a colour is said to be perfect when it is durable, as a dye in grain, or as the India colours, which, while the cloth remains, they endure. Now it is he that endures to the end, Matt. 24, that shall be saved. You shall therefore find that unto patience, long-suffering is added in two several places: Col. 1,’Strengthened unto all patience and long-suffering.’ Patience there respects the weight or grievousness and heaviness of the affliction we are under; and long-suffering respects the duration and time. The other is in an instance of the Apostle of himself, 1 Tim. 3:10,’Thou hast known my long-suffering, charity, patience.’ In James 5:7, it is said of the husbandman, whose case is made the persuasive unto patience, he ‘hath long patience’ This is a perfection indeed, to bear long, and to the end: ‘Be thou faithful to death,’ Rev. 2:10. To carry a great burden a quarter of an hour is an effect of some patience, but to carry it a day, or more, or for a week, there is long-suffering. Why is it said that when you have done the will of God, you have need of patience, but because still, in the last part of your life, after an active life for a long while ran through, even then when you are near the promise, your patience may be then at last most of all put to it?
3. A third property or requisite to perfect patience is, that it be universal; which his either when a man hath been every way tried, and hath passed through all sorts of tentations, or when he hath still come off with patience in some good measure in all those wherein he hath been tried, although his trials have not been of all sorts. A man’s natural spirit will help him to be patient in some things, but in other things his heart is weak, and cannot bear. Oh! not such a cross, of any other. But it is certain, as God tried Abraham in his Isaac, so God will the sons of Abraham in what is dearest to them, and yet enable them to bear it, as 1 Cor. 10, and go through therewith. Hence in the epistles you meet with all added to patience and long-suffering, both when patience is prayed for, as Col. 1, and exhorted unto, as 2 Tim. 4:2. But though this universality is to be prayed for and exhorted unto, as that which makes it perfect; yet it is well if, in the great trials of our lives, we come off with some patience suitable, and from henceforth resolve with endurance so to do: and so much is expected. And it may seem strange that many that should be able to bear great trials between God and them with much quietness and submission, are yet easily disadvantaged upon smaller occasions between men and them; for which some reasons might be given.
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