Patience
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μακροθυμία is formed from makros (long) and thymos (passion, spirit, wrath) and can be described as long-temperedness, the ability to sustain a measured response over a long time when provocation would justify a rapid one. The word is often translated 'patience' or 'longsuffering,' but neither fully captures what it names: it is specifically the quality of restraining a response of anger or judgment that would be.
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Full entry for μακροθυμία (G3115) · Open the biblical lexicon
μακροθυμία is formed from makros (long) and thymos (passion, spirit, wrath) and can be described as long-temperedness, the ability to sustain a measured response over a long time when provocation would justify a rapid one. The word is often translated 'patience' or 'longsuffering,' but neither fully captures what it names: it is specifically the quality of.
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).
μακροθυμία is formed from makros (long) and thymos (passion, spirit, wrath) and can be described as long-temperedness, the ability to sustain a measured response over a long time when provocation would justify a rapid one. The word is often translated 'patience' or 'longsuffering,' but neither fully captures what it names: it is specifically the quality of restraining a response of anger or judgment that would be warranted, in order to give time for repentance, change, or resolution to occur. It is patience with people rather than patience with circumstances.
The most theologically weighty use of μακροθυμία is its application to God. Romans 2:4 asks: 'Do you despise the riches of his kindness, forbearance, and patience (makrothymia), not knowing that God's kindness is meant to lead you to repentance?' God's makrothymia is not passivity — it is the active restraint of judgment in order to give space for turning. Second Peter 3:9 makes this explicit: '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.' Divine patience is purposive: it is the holding of judgment so that more people can be reached by mercy.
In 1 Timothy 1:16, Paul reflects on his own conversion as an exhibit of divine makrothymia: 'I received mercy for this reason, that in me, as the foremost, Jesus Christ might display his perfect patience as an example to those who were to believe in him for eternal life.' Paul — the persecutor of the church, the blasphemer, the most vivid possible case of human hostility to Christ — is the trophy display of God's willingness to wait for even the most unlikely candidate.
For the preacher, μακροθυμία is the word that names both the character of God's dealings with sinners and the posture the community of grace is called to imitate. We are patient with one another because the God who is patient with us has modeled what patient restraint looks like.
The local Greek index currently counts about 14 NT occurrences for μακροθυμία: applied to God's forbearance toward sinners (Romans, 1 Timothy, 2 Peter), named as a fruit of the Spirit (Galatians 5:22), included in lists of virtues for community life (Ephesians, Colossians), and described as the posture of faithful ministers (2 Timothy, Hebrews, James). The word connects divine character to human calling: the patience we are to practice is modeled on the patience God has practiced toward us.
Or do you disregard the riches of His kindness, tolerance, and patience, not realizing that God’s kindness leads you to repentance?
The purposive theology of divine patience: God's makrothymia is not delay for its own sake but restraint in service of an aim — that the person under judgment would be led to repentance by the kindness that patience expresses. To despise God's patience is to misread it: to mistake a window of mercy for proof that judgment is not coming. The patience is real mercy; it is also real urgency — the window is open, not closed, but it will not remain open indefinitely.
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 as the exhibit of divine makrothymia. The word 'display' (endeixetai) is a public showing-forth — Christ's patience with Paul was meant to be seen, not merely experienced privately. The persecutor becomes the demonstration that no one is beyond the reach of God's patient mercy. This is the pastoral use of the term: the church should be the community that knows its members are exhibits of the same patience, not people who have earned their place.
But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness,
μακροθυμία as a fruit of the Spirit — the fourth quality in the list. Its placement after peace and before kindness and goodness locates it within the cluster of relational virtues that shape community life. The Spirit is forming in the believer the same quality of patient restraint that God demonstrates toward sinners: an unwillingness to write people off, an ability to sustain relationship through provocation, a long-temperedness toward difficult people.
With all humility and gentleness, with patience, bearing with one another in love,
μακροθυμία in the relational context of the community: bearing with one another. The word 'bearing with' (anechomenoi) names the active work of enduring one another's failures, differences, and provocations. Patience is not passive; it is the active choice to remain in relationship and not retaliate or withdraw. It is paired with humility (tapeinophrosyne) and lowliness, which suggests that makrothymia is what humility looks like when it is tested by actual people.
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 eschatological frame: the Lord's delay is not failure but patience, and that patience is 'salvation' — it is the means by which more people are reached before the end. The Petrine use holds together the urgency of the coming judgment and the pastoral meaning of the delay: God is not slow; He is patient, and His patience is itself a form of grace extended toward those who have not yet believed.
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 corpus Greek token appearances from Scrivener 1894 Textus Receptus in the full New Testament corpus.
14 Greek text appearances shown. Linked morphology labels have verse guides.
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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.
μακροθυμία is the virtue that God has demonstrated most continuously toward human beings — and the one the church is most prone to abandon toward one another. God's makrothymia with Paul (1 Tim 1:16), with Noah's generation (1 Pet 3:20), with Israel across centuries of rebellion, and with every person reading this companion is the sustained refusal to let anger or judgment have the final word before mercy has had its full opportunity.
The church called to practice this patience in Ephesians 4:2 is a community of people who know they have been on the receiving end of exactly this quality from God. The person in the congregation who is difficult, who fails repeatedly, who provokes — that person is someone God has been patient with, is being patient with, and the community's patience is the visible extension of the same grace.
The test of makrothymia is always the person who has used up your natural goodwill. That is the moment the virtue is actually required, and the resource for exercising it is the remembered experience of having been the recipient of what you are now being asked to give.
Rom.2.4
μακροθυμία is formed from makros (long, extended) and thymos (passion, spirit, wrath). Thymos names the quick-burning anger — the immediate emotional response to provocation. Makrothymia is literally the quality of having a long thymos: sustaining the restraint of that immediate response over a long time. Its synonym ὑπομονή (hypomone — patient endurance) is distinguished in the classical sense as follows: hypomone is patience with circumstances and suffering; makrothymia is patience with people and provocations (cf.
Lightfoot, Col. 138; Trench, Syn. liii). The distinction matters pastorally: they are different virtues for different situations, and conflating them can produce misapplication of the text. Makrothymia requires a provocation — there must be something (usually someone) that would justify a different response — and it is the choice not to take that justified response while mercy still has room to work.
The OT background runs through the divine self-revelation formulas: 'The Lord, the Lord, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger (erek appayim — long of nose/nostrils, the Hebrew idiom for the makros-thymos pattern), and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness' (Exod 34:6). 'Slow to anger' is the OT expression for what makrothymia names in the NT: the restraint of the divine response to provocation in order to allow mercy to operate.
This formula is repeated across the OT — in Numbers 14:18, Psalms 86:15, 103:8, 145:8, Joel 2:13, Jonah 4:2 — and each time it is spoken as the foundation of Israel's hope. The people who have sinned have a God who is slow to anger; that slowness is not weakness but the expression of covenant mercy. The NT's attribution of makrothymia to the Spirit's fruit in believers is the call to become what the OT confessed about God: people who are slow to anger and rich in patient mercy toward those around them.
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