Patience
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G3115 is a noun for patience, forbearance, or longsuffering. Its fourteen governed occurrences apply the word to God's patience and to patient Christian character, ministry, instruction, endurance, and life together.
Reader summary
Full entry for μακροθυμία (G3115) · Open the biblical lexicon
G3115 is a noun for patience, forbearance, or longsuffering. Its fourteen governed occurrences apply the word to God's patience and to patient Christian character, ministry, instruction, endurance, and life together.
The BSB source-word alignment has 14 aligned rows for this entry. Common renderings include patience (10), [and] patience (1), of patience (1), patient (1), patiently (1).
The source-word alignment first shows this entry at Romans 2:4. Its strongest book concentrations include 2 Timothy (2), Colossians (2), Romans (2), 1 Peter (1).
G3115 is a noun for patience, forbearance, or longsuffering. Its fourteen governed occurrences apply the word to God's patience and to patient Christian character, ministry, instruction, endurance, and life together. Romans 2:4 places patience among the riches of God's kindness and tolerance, while the sentence directly says that God's kindness leads toward repentance.
First Timothy 1:16 calls Christ's patience with Paul a public example for later believers. First and Second Peter place divine patience within the days of Noah and the present call to regard the Lord's patience as salvation. Other passages name patience as the Spirit's fruit, a virtue worn with humility and gentleness, a quality of ministry, and a way believers endure affliction and inherit what God has promised.
The noun does not mean passive approval of evil, limitless access for harmful people, avoidance of discipline, or a promise that every delayed judgment ends in repentance.
Fourteen exact G3115 forms occur in fourteen verses across Romans through 2 Peter. The noun describes divine patience, Spirit-formed character, ministry practice, endurance under affliction, and patient instruction.
Or do you disregard the riches of His kindness, tolerance, and patience, not realizing that God’s kindness leads you to repentance?
The verse joins patience to divine generosity and warns against mistaking it for moral indifference.
But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness,
Patience is one aspect of the Spirit-produced life, not an isolated technique of self-control.
With all humility and gentleness, with patience, bearing with one another in love,
The relational setting ties patience to humility, gentleness, love, and shared unity.
Being strengthened with all power according to His glorious might so that you may have full endurance and patience, and joyfully
Paul prays for divine strengthening that produces endurance, patience, and joy.
But for this very reason I was shown mercy, so that in me, the worst of sinners, Christ Jesus might display His perfect patience as an example to those who would believe in Him for eternal life.
Paul's reception of mercy displays Christ's patience for later believers.
Preach the word; be prepared in season and out of season; reprove, rebuke, and encourage with every form of patient instruction.
Patience governs the manner of instruction without removing correction or rebuke from the charge.
Brothers, as an example of patience in affliction, take the prophets who spoke in the name of the Lord.
James connects patience to faithful speech and suffering while directing readers toward the Lord's compassion and mercy.
Consider also that our Lord’s patience brings salvation, just as our beloved brother Paul also wrote you with the wisdom God gave him.
The command interprets the present delay as a saving opportunity while the chapter still anticipates judgment and calls for holy conduct.
BSB source-word alignment connects this entry to exact verse rows, English rendering, source form, transliteration, and parsing.
How English Renders ItA compact distribution from source-word alignment before the full evidence tables.
Greek word. Steadfast forbearance under provocation or hardship; God's restraint from judgment despite human sin.
Textus Receptus witness, full corpusGreek token appearances from Scrivener 1894 Textus Receptus in the full New Testament corpus.
14 Greek text appearances shown. Linked morphology labels have verse guides.
patience, forbearance
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Read verseFull New Testament corpus: 260 chapters, 7,957 verses, 140,628 tokens. Data source: honza/textus-receptus (data only), with authority check against byztxt/greektext-textus-receptus.
How this word appears across different grammatical cases and numbers.
This word appears as a noun across 4 case and number patterns. The form changes show how the word functions in a sentence; they do not change the basic lexical meaning by themselves.
Verse guides are not available for this word yet, so verse references remain plain evidence markers.
Selected passage-level study witnesses for this word. This section is not the full occurrence list.
Showing 1 selected witness from 14 lexical occurrence verses.
μακροθυμία is built from this root:
Christ’s patience toward Paul demonstrates hope for all future believers, highlighting the wideness of divine mercy.1 Timothy 1:12-17
Compound and idiomatic phrases that include this word. Follow a link to study the phrase and how its parts work together.
G3115 presents patience as active faithfulness over time. God shows patience without ceasing to be just, and His kindness calls people toward repentance. Christ's patience with Paul displays mercy, while the Lord's patience gives the present time a saving significance. The Spirit forms patience alongside love and kindness, and apostolic instruction joins it to humility, gentleness, endurance, correction, and hope.
This patience is not cowardice or denial. Second Timothy can command rebuke and patient instruction in the same sentence. Churches therefore need the steadiness to keep loving, teaching, and waiting without excusing abuse, suppressing truthful reports, or postponing accountable action that protects people.
Rom.2.4
The fourteen singular noun forms use four case forms. The noun can describe God's forbearance or a human virtue, and each passage supplies the object, pressure, purpose, or neighboring qualities that govern its force.
First Peter explicitly locates God's patience in Noah's days, and James names the prophets as examples of patience in affliction. These canonical links remain governed by the arguments in which the New Testament authors use them.