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Amongst the many ominous characteristics of our age, there is hardly one which stands out so glaringly and alarmingly as the growing want of quietly enduring patience. In various forms this spirit penetrates the Christian world, and tends to bring into it a certain feverishness, haste, and restlessness.

I. How PATIENCE IS TO BE HELD FAST. Patience is composed of confidence, hope, and belief in future perfect redemption; it prevents our becoming faint-hearted (Romans 8:25). Two other ingredients of patience are obedience and humility, which keep the spirit calm and submissive.

1. If we cast away confidence and the joyful hope of a better future, all capacity for patience is gone. Thence the answer of the text to the question, "How can we hold fast patience?" is, by resisting the temptation to cast away confidence and joyousness. This is particularly great at the present day.

(1) In private life, where vice is gaining the upper hand, many impure passions are fostered, so that the capacity for earnest labour and quiet endurance is lost. If everything does not go quite smoothly; if health and fortune are squandered; if this sad seed begins to ripen into a sad harvest, then weariness of life. lays hold on the guilt-laden soul, which finds itself more and more firmly clasped in the temptation to cast away all confidence, and with it often life itself. Resist the temptation. Life is, and always will be, a great blessing; and so long as Christ and forgiveness of sins is preached, there is no cause for despair.

(2) In the spiritual life and work of the time, pessimism is, to many, the fashionable philosophy of the day, i.e., the casting away our confidence in a better future. As if those promises no longer stood firm.

(3) In social life: you all know how many, at the present time, have cast away confidence in a satisfactory development of our social conditions, and devise plans of annihilation; how their number increases in many lands, so that here and there a throne is trembling. What are they? What but an embodiment of that hopelessness which refuses to know anything of the blessing and support of our Christian faith in the guidance of the world by God in Christ.

(4) Even in Christians there is no lack of temptation to cast away confidence; here, heavy, manifold, and long-continued sufferings, or the sudden loss of apparently indispensable props; there, the too slow march of the kingdom of God, so that zeal outruns all discretion, and here and there turns to new and questionable methods of a more rapid line of procedure for the spreading abroad of the kingdom.

2. But how, then, are confidence and joyfulness to be held fast in spite of all temptations to the contrary? If confidence is steadfastly to endure, look not unto men and unto the circumstances that lead into temptation, but cast thyself wholly upon God. The more thou growest in the knowledge of Him, the more strength wilt thou receive to persevere in cheerful confidence and patience. Then, too, look upon Christ. He is the visible form of the patience of God, the Lamb of God, who bore without a murmur so much contradiction. Is it a time to cast away confidence, now in the midst of the rapid extension of Christ's kingdom at home and abroad? And in order that it may become easier for us to hold fast our confidence, the text adds another weighty reason and stimulus: "which hath great recompense of reward."

II. WHY IS IT SO INDISPENSABLE TO SHOW OPENLY THAT WE POSSESS THIS PATIENCE?

1. Without it we cannot do the will of God. It is the will of the God of patience that we should be patient as His children (2 Corinthians 6:4). Let us do the will of God patiently upon earth, by patient continuance in well doing seeking for eternal life (Romans 2:7). Have we patience not only with ourselves, and the slow progress of our work, but with others also? (1 Thessalonians 5:14; Ephesians 2:14). But specially by patience in suffering must we learn to do the will of God. Learn not to shrink from little troubles, but to bear them quietly, so that, in time, thou mayest be able to endure great ones (Romans 12:12; Hebrews 12:1). All virtue is, as it were, shorn of half its glory, if it be not crowned with patience (ver. 38).

2. Patience is also indispensable for the receiving of the promise. He alone that doeth the will of God and endureth in faith and patience, can receive the whole rich contents of the Divine promises of grace for this life and for the life to come. Hence the exhortation (chap. 6:12). It is impossible for Him who loses patience, and with it hope, to have a part in the future fulfilment of hope.

(T. Christlieb, D. D.)

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KJV: For ye have need of patience, that, after ye have done the will of God, ye might receive the promise.

WEB: For you need endurance so that, having done the will of God, you may receive the promise.