A Patient God
God Has Every Right to be Angry... But He Chooses to Be Patient Instead.
“He does not punish us for all our sins; he does not deal harshly with us, as we deserve.” -Psalm 103:10 (NLT)
(This post is part of a series on the character of God, based on Exodus 34:6-7).
Saved by the Bell
Imagine for a moment that a family has decided to host several of their closest friends and relatives for an extravagant dinner party in their home. Mom, Dad and the kids all begin getting the house ready for their guests. Rooms are vacuumed, furniture is dusted, toilets are scrubbed, and food is cooked… lots of it!
All that remains is for Mom to make her world-famous chocolate chip cookies. The kids (who have come to know and love their mom’s famous cookies) can hardly contain their excitement about the chance to devour these tasty treats. With just five minutes to go before the first guests arrive, Mom pulls the cookies out of the oven and sets them on the counter to cool.
“Listen up!” says Mom. “You are not allowed to eat a single cookie before our guests arrive. Understood?”
“Understood,” the children reply in unison.
“Promise?” asks mom.
“We promise. We won’t eat a single cookie,” the children reply.
You know what happens next, don’t you?
While Mom and Dad are off in other rooms putting the finishing touches on the house, the kids sneak up to the counter and take one bite out of every cookie.
When Mom returns to the scene of the crime, she sees what’s happened to her cookies and turns towards her children… all of whom have chocolate chip stains on the corners of their mouths.
The Dad walks into the kitchen next and immediately senses the tension in the room.
“Just look at what your kids have done!” the Mom says to the Dad.
When the Dad asks the kids if they heard Mom tell them not to eat a single cookie, they all smile back and say to him, “We didn’t eat a single cookie. We took one bite out of all the cookies!”
And then the mother, who was boiling over in anger, opens her mouth to respond to her children.
But before she could say anything…. **Ding Dong** … the guests arrived!
What do you think the Mom was about to say to her children?
If you were in her shoes, what would you have said?
And, taking a step back for a moment, what do you think the world’s greatest and most loving mother of all time would have said to her children?
God is Slow to Anger.
In Exodus 34:6-7, God tells Moses that he is a patient God. The precise phrase he uses (in Hebrew) is “long in the nostrils,” which is a reference to self-control, patience, and the ability to wait a long time before acting on your anger.
Now that I’ve said that, you might be wondering what long nostrils have to do with God’s patience. Let me explain.
Ancient Near Eastern cultures (like Israel) thought of anger as something that burned inside of you. The way you could tell a person was really angry was if their face turned red and they started huffing and puffing out of their nose and mouth—like smoke pouring out of their nose. If you search through the emojis on your phone, you’ll probably find one that looks like that.
People who are quick-tempered start acting like that almost immediately when something goes wrong. There’s no gap between the offense and their angry response. These people live by the motto Read-Fire-Aim. Today we might call them hot-headed or a person with a short fuse. When something goes wrong… watch out!
God wants us to know that he’s not that kind of God. He’s not impulsive, he’s not quick-tempered, and he doesn’t have a short fuse. Many of the pagan gods (think: Greek and Roman mythology) were portrayed that way. They were fickle, impulsive, and hard to predict.
But not the God of Israel. Instead, he’s long in the nostrils. He is a patient God, a God who is slow to anger.
And to be clear—God does get angry, especially when innocent people are abused, or when his covenant partners sin against him. He has every right to be angry in those situations. And the reality is that God begins to feel angry almost immediately when those things happen. It’s just that he doesn’t act on his anger right away. That’s what it means to be slow to anger.
Even if you feel the emotion immediately, you have the self-control to wait before acting on it. And who knows? Maybe the other person will come to their senses before you’re forced to take further action.
And that’s precisely what God does in the Bible. People sin, God gets angry, but he shows his patience by giving them time to willingly come to their senses.
Living in the Grace Period
In other words, God’s patience has a purpose: to lead us to repentance. Consider these words from the Apostle Paul, someone who benefitted a great deal from the patience of God:
“Don’t you see how wonderfully kind, tolerant, and patient God is with you? Does this mean nothing to you? Can’t you see that his kindness is intended to turn you from your sin?” -Romans 2:4 (NLT)
God chooses to be patient with us when we sin. He doesn’t immediately punish us the way we deserve. What’t the point of all that? It seems as though he chooses to temporarily delay our sentence so that we’ll have time to come to our senses, repent of our sins, and turn our hearts back to him.
Maybe it’s helpful to think of God’s patience as a grace period after someone misses an important deadline. It doesn’t negate the deadline or release the person of their responsibilities… it just gives them some extra time to do the right thing without any further consequences. But if a person misses the next deadline after they’ve already been given a grace period, that’s on them. You can’t accuse the person in charge of being unreasonable if people fail to take advantage of the patience and grace they’ve already been given.
God’s decision to delay our punishment doesn’t mean he’s ignoring, excusing, or justifying our sinful behavior; it just means he’s giving us the opportunity to do the right thing before we have to face the consequences.
An Example from Israel’s History
We see this dynamic play out in the Nehemiah 9. The people of Israel gave gathered together in Jerusalem after years in Exile. As they retell the story of their people, they emphasize two themes: The sin of the people and the grace of God:
“29 You warned them in order to turn them back to your law, but they became arrogant and disobeyed your commands. They sinned against your ordinances, of which you said, ‘The person who obeys them will live by them.’ Stubbornly they turned their backs on you, became stiff-necked and refused to listen. 30 For many years you were patient with them. By your Spirit you warned them through your prophets. Yet they paid no attention, so you gave them into the hands of the neighboring peoples. 31 But in your great mercy you did not put an end to them or abandon them, for you are a gracious and merciful God.” -Nehemiah 9:29-31 (NIV)
When Israel sinned, God warned them about the path they were on. He was patient with them for years before taking action. Why? Because he is long in the nostrils, he’s slow to anger.
But they kept sinning against him, even in their grace period. So what happened next? God had to resort to harsher punishments in order to get their attention. But even then, he did not punish them as they truly deserved.
They took a bite out of every cookie, but he still decided to show them grace and mercy.
We serve a God who is slow to anger. He has every right to be angry with us when we sin against him, but he chooses to be patient with us so that we’ll have time to willingly turn back to him.
The question is, what will we do with the grace period he’s given us?
For Further Reading:
Fruit of the Spirit: Patience
Lord, Give Me Patience (And Do it Now)! I’ve often been told that praying for patience is a dangerous thing to do. Why? Because God is very likely to answer that prayer by giving us situations that test our patience! Why would he do that if he knows patience is the very thing we’re struggling with? It’s actually because the best way to get stronger in an…
I am grateful God is “long in the nostrils” with me and will work hard to implement that trait in my interactions with others.