I was a student at Washington State University. My adoptive father was Dairy Products Commissioner for the State of Washington under Governor Al Rosellini (approximately 1964). He was also Chairman of the Board of County Commissioners. And he was an alcoholic.
He came to WSU to meet with members of the Dairy Science Department and attend a Road Builder’s Clinic for county commissioners. He spent the first night in our small apartment, where another Christian and I lived. He slept on my bunk while I slept on the floor. It was obvious that this arrangement was not working, so the rest of the nights he stayed in a motel.
One night, he invited me to join him at a dinner held for the county commissioners. During the dinner, he became drunk and was making a spectacle of himself. I had to take him out of the dinner and to his motel.
After my father left campus, my roommate was studying at his desk while I was lying on my bunk. He began shaking his head. I asked him what was wrong. While I lived with him for an entire year, I knew little about his background. At that time, he told me he was raised by a single mom in a Christian home. He said, “You know where you came from, but sometimes I feel that my faith is a figment of my imagination.”
Shortly after that, my father prayed to receive Christ as his Savior and went forward to testify to this publicly in my home church. Events in his life and his sudden death in a car accident prevented him from receiving the instruction that would have set him free from alcoholism and demonstrated his soul-salvation (Jas 1:21). Yet I believe he is with our Lord in paradise today.
Every one of us who knows the Lord has different life experiences. But we all have one thing in common: we are saved to demonstrate God’s “perfect patience.” Paul was formerly a blasphemer, persecutor, and violent aggressor. Yet he found God’s mercy in Christ Jesus. Every believer should have confidence that we have received God’s mercy regardless of the sins committed in our past. This confidence comes through believing the doctrine that furthers “the administration of God .” (1 Tim 1:4b)
This confidence comes through sound teaching (Gk hugiano, healthy, and didaskalia, both methodology and content) (v. 1:10). From this, we will understand God’s “perfect patience.” Here, “perfect” is hapas, and “patience” is makrothumia.
When we see the term “perfect,” the Greek term is usually teleios, referring to progress to a point. However, here the term is hapas, referring to “absolutely all” (cf. KJV, Strong’s Concordance). When the translators came to the term makrothumia, (makros, long, and thumos, passion), there was no corresponding term, so they coined a new term, longsuffering.
Whether we become known throughout history as the Apostle Paul did, or live only a brief time after rebirth, we all live to demonstrate God’s merciful and complete longsuffering.