The old word sounds like it means enduring pain. It actually means how long it takes you to get angry, and it starts with the way God describes Himself.
Long suffering in the Bible is the old English word for the Greek makrothumia, and it means being slow to anger. It measures how long your fuse is, not how much pain you can absorb.
It starts with God, who described Himself to Moses as slow to anger, and it grows in us as fruit of the Spirit. It makes room for people to change. It never asks anyone to stay somewhere they are being harmed.
That last line matters, because this word has been used on hurting people for a long time. We will get there. First, the word itself.
The King James translators used “longsuffering” in Galatians 5:22, where most modern translations say “patience.” Both are trying to carry one Greek word, and the English compound has caused a quiet misunderstanding for four hundred years. People hear the word suffering and assume the virtue is about how much hurt you can take.
It is not. Look at what the word is built from.
Makros, long, and thumos, anger or passion. The lexicon entry traces it to exactly that compound. Literally, something like long tempered.
The distance between a provocation and your response. How long before the heat takes over.
Galatians 5:22 in the fruit of the Spirit, 1 Corinthians 13:4 where love is patient, Romans 2:4 of God's own patience, and 2 Peter 3:9 and 3:15.
Endurance under hard circumstances is usually a different word, hupomone, remaining under pressure. Makrothumia is about how you treat people who provoke you.
Erek means long. Appayim is the word for nostrils, and in Hebrew the nose is also the word for anger. Long of nostrils.
Hebrew locates anger in the face, hot and flaring. A long nose is a slow burn.
Exodus 34:6, Numbers 14:18, Psalm 103:8, Joel 2:13, Jonah 4:2 and Proverbs 16:32, among others.
You will sometimes hear this preached as a breathing exercise, God taking long slow breaths before He responds. It is a lovely picture, and it goes a step past the text. The idiom is about anger and how slowly it rises. We do not need to decorate it. The plain meaning is strong enough.
What does the Greek word makrothumia literally combine?
Makros means long and thumos means anger or passion. The English word longsuffering hides that, which is why so many people assume the virtue is about absorbing pain rather than restraining temper.
When you read longsuffering in the King James, read slow to anger. That is the whole virtue in three words, and it reframes everything else.
The first time the phrase shows up, God is describing Himself, and the timing is remarkable. Israel has just made the golden calf. Moses has smashed the tablets. If there was ever a moment for God to lead with anger, this was it.
“The LORD passed before him and proclaimed, ‘The LORD, the LORD, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness.’”
Exodus 34:6 (ESV)That line became Israel's creed. Later writers quote it again and again, sometimes in prayer and sometimes in protest. Follow it through the story and you see what long suffering looks like when God does it.
Peter looks back and says “God's patience waited in the days of Noah, while the ark was being prepared.” The building took time, and the time was mercy.
God names Himself slow to anger right after the people broke covenant, almost before the ink was dry.
When the people refuse to enter the land, Moses quotes God's own words back to Him and asks for pardon. He gets it.
Jonah ran because he knew exactly who God was: “For I knew that you are a gracious God and merciful, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love, and relenting from disaster.” Nineveh repents, God spares it, and Jonah is furious. We look at that story more closely in the sign of Jonah.
Peter's readers were asking why the promised day had not come. His answer: “The Lord is not slow to fulfill his promise as some count slowness, but is patient toward you, not wishing that any should perish, but that all should reach repentance.” That window belonged to that generation, the years between the cross and the fall of Jerusalem in AD 70. God held the door open as long as He did so more people could walk through it.
Notice what patience is for in every one of these. It is never indifference. Paul says in Romans 2:4 that God's kindness, forbearance and patience are “meant to lead you to repentance.” Slow anger is mercy with a purpose. It also means God's anger at evil is real, and we have written about that honestly in what the wrath of God is.
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Manage My Giving"Each of you should give what you have decided in your heart to give, not reluctantly or under compulsion, for God loves a cheerful giver."2 Corinthians 9:7
Exodus 34 keeps going past verse 6. Verse 7 says God visits the iniquity of the fathers on the children, to the third and fourth generation. This is where reading the Bible through Jesus matters. Ezekiel 18 had already pushed back on children paying for their parents' sins, and when the disciples asked Jesus whose sin caused a man's blindness, He said it was neither his nor his parents' (John 9:3).
Jesus is the clearest picture of what God is actually like. So we take the slow to anger line and read it through Him, and we let Him correct how the rest was understood. Here is what it looked like in His hands.
In John 13 Jesus knows what Judas is about to do. He washes the disciples' feet anyway and hands Judas the bread. No exposure, no scene.
Three denials, then a charcoal fire in John 21 and three questions. No lecture. A restored calling.
“Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.” Luke 23:34. Long suffering at its limit, spoken toward the people doing the harm.
Paul says he received mercy “that in me, as the foremost, Jesus Christ might display his perfect patience as an example.” 1 Timothy 1:16.
And the same Jesus turned over tables in the temple, called religious leaders whitewashed tombs, and walked away from towns that would not receive Him. Long suffering in Jesus was never a lack of spine. He was slow to anger with the weak and the confused, and very direct with people using religion to crush others.
That combination is the model. His call to love your enemies comes from the same heart, and it was never a call to pretend wrong is right.
This is the part of the teaching that has done real damage, and we want to be clear about it.
A godly spouse, child or church member endures whatever is done to them. Leaving, reporting or setting a boundary shows a lack of long suffering. Keep quiet and pray.
Slow anger toward people who wrong you, so there is room for them to change. It says nothing about remaining where you are being hurt, and God's own patience always aims at repentance.
Sound of Heaven's position is simple. Long suffering never means staying in an abusive situation. Teaching that it does is wrong, and that teaching has mostly landed on wives, on children, and on members of controlling churches, the people with the least power in the room.
Look at how God's patience works in Scripture. It waits for repentance. It does not pretend nothing happened, and it does not require the victim to stand in the line of fire. Paul, who wrote that love is patient, was lowered over the Damascus wall in a basket when people were trying to kill him (Acts 9:25; 2 Corinthians 11:33). Jesus walked straight through a crowd that meant to throw Him off a cliff and went on His way (Luke 4:29 to 30). Leaving danger is not a failure of patience.
You can be slow to anger toward someone and still keep your distance from them. You can forgive and still call the police. You can pray for a person's repentance from somewhere safe. Those do not conflict. Forgiveness is not the same as access, and we unpack that in what seventy times seven means.
The error runs the other way too. Some people wave off long suffering as weakness and call their temper honesty. Scripture does not let that stand either: “Whoever is slow to anger is better than the mighty, and he who rules his spirit than he who takes a city” (Proverbs 16:32). Quick anger is not strength. It is the lack of it. There is more on that in what the Bible says about anger.
If you are being hurt at home, or you are afraid of someone you live with, please hear this. Leaving, getting help, or telling someone is not a lack of faith and it is not a failure of love. God is not asking you to absorb it.
If you are in danger right now, call 911. The National Domestic Violence Hotline is free and confidential at 1.800.799.7233, or you can text START to 88788. And if you want someone to pray with you, you can reach out to us here.
Long suffering is listed as fruit of the Spirit, and fruit is grown, not manufactured. You cannot grit your teeth into it for very long. That is good news, because it means the Holy Spirit is doing the deep work and our part is to cooperate. We walk through all nine in the fruits of the Holy Spirit, so here we stay with this one.
“Put on then, as God's chosen ones, holy and beloved, compassionate hearts, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience, bearing with one another and, if one has a complaint against another, forgiving each other; as the Lord has forgiven you, so you also must forgive.”
Colossians 3:12 to 13 (ESV)Anger usually announces itself in the body first: the jaw, the chest, the voice. James 1:19 asks us to be slow to anger, and you cannot slow down what you have not noticed.
Patience with others grows fastest in people who remember the patience they received. That is the logic of 1 Timothy 1:16, and it is the heart of what mercy means in the Bible.
“Beloved, never avenge yourselves, but leave it to the wrath of God” (Romans 12:19). Long suffering is not deciding the wrong did not matter. It is deciding you are not the one who settles it.
Jesus did this on the cross. It is very hard to stay quick tempered toward someone you are regularly praying for, and not only about.
“Be patient with them all” in 1 Thessalonians 5:14 sits right beside “admonish the idle.” Long suffering still speaks up. It just does not explode. It pairs naturally with gentleness, and with learning to wait on the Lord for what only He can do.
Long suffering is not a personality type. Some people are naturally calm and some are not. It is something the Spirit grows in anyone who keeps showing up, and the quickest way to grow it is to remember how patient God has been with you.
Everything here comes back to Jesus. At the cross, humanity did its worst to God in the flesh, and the answer that came back was “Father, forgive them.” Nobody has ever had a longer fuse.
The Kingdom is here now, and its people are meant to look like its King. When the Spirit grows long suffering in you, the people around you get room to change. Your home gets calmer. Your church gets safer. And the people who have hurt you are left in better hands than yours.
And if you have ever been told that patience means staying where you are being harmed, hear it from a pastor: that was never what this word meant.
For related reading, see slow to anger, what the Bible says about patience, the power of patience and what we believe. If you are on Long Island, you are welcome to plan a visit and meet us in person.
Long suffering in the Bible is makrothumia, being slow to anger the way God is slow to anger, giving people room to change without ever asking anyone to stay in harm.
If someone is testing every ounce of patience you have, or you are not sure whether what you are enduring is safe, send us a note. Someone at Sound of Heaven will pray with you.
Long suffering is the King James word for the Greek makrothumia, which joins the words for long and anger. It means being slow to anger, holding back retaliation and giving people room to change. The Old Testament version is the Hebrew phrase erek appayim, literally long of nostrils, used when God describes Himself in Exodus 34:6. In Galatians 5:22 it is listed as fruit of the Spirit, something the Holy Spirit grows in believers rather than something they produce by willpower.
Mostly, yes. Modern translations usually render makrothumia as patience, while the King James says longsuffering. The older word keeps an edge the modern one can lose: it is patience specifically with people who provoke or wrong you, not simply waiting in line or waiting for an outcome. Endurance under hard circumstances is usually a different Greek word, hupomone. So long suffering is best understood as patience with people, the same slow anger God shows toward us.
No. Long suffering means being slow to anger, and it never requires anyone to remain where they are being harmed. God's own patience aims at repentance, not at keeping a victim in danger. Paul escaped Damascus in a basket, and Jesus walked away from a crowd trying to kill Him. You can forgive someone and still leave, set boundaries, or call the authorities. If you are in danger, call 911 or the National Domestic Violence Hotline at 1.800.799.7233.
Because His patience has a purpose. Romans 2:4 says God's kindness and patience are meant to lead people to repentance, and 2 Peter 3:9 says He is patient, not wishing that any should perish. Slow anger is mercy giving people time to turn. Jesus shows this most clearly, from restoring Peter after his denials to praying for the people crucifying Him. God's patience is not indifference to wrong. It is love holding the door open.
Long suffering is fruit of the Spirit, so it grows through relationship with God more than through willpower. Practically, it helps to notice the early signs of anger, to remember how patient God has been with you, to leave judgment with Him as Romans 12:19 says, and to pray for people by name rather than only about them. Over time the Spirit lengthens the fuse. Honest friends, confession and a praying community make the process much faster.