Forbearance is Christ: let the Christ whom we Live and Magnify be Known to all men

It is so wonderful to enjoy Christ as our peace offering, for Christ is our peace, and Christ is forbearance; forbearance is Christ, and for us today to live Christ is to live forbearance, which brings in peace.

How do we have peace? We should not try to have peace the way people in the world try to, but we as believers in Christ need to realise that peace is Christ, Christ is peace, Christ gives peace, and for us to have peace we need to enjoy Christ in fellowship with Him.

As we fellowship with God in prayer, we enjoy the Lord as a river of peace flowing in us, and He Himself guards our hearts and mind in the peace of Christ.

Peace is not just a feeling, and real peace is not obtained through meditation and introspection. Peace is Christ, and when we fellowship with God in prayer, we enjoy the Lord as the One who protects us from any tempest and wind, as the One who provides water to us in a dry place, and as the One who overshadows us when there’s nothing but dry and hot around us.

The more we fellowship with the Lord and talk to Him about everything, the more we live Christ, express Christ, and magnify Christ, and the less we worry. When Satan – the source of every anxiety – brings anxiety out way, we need to turn to the Lord and pray with thanksgiving, telling Him everything.

When we turn our anxiety into prayer to the Lord, with thanksgiving, we will have forbearance, which is the all-inclusive Christian virtue, Christ Himself lived out of us.

What is forbearance? Paul encourages us to let our forbearance be known to all men, for the Lord is near.

Anxiety, coming from Satan, is the sum total of human life and disturbs the believers’ life of living Christ; forbearance, coming from God, is the sum total of a life that lives Christ; the two are opposites.

Forbearance is reasonableness, considerateness, and consideration in dealing with others, without being strict in claiming one’s legal rights; forbearance means that we are easily satisfied, even with less than our due. Wow.

Forbearance is really an all-inclusive Christian virtue, and such a virtue – such a living – can be only in Christ, for Christ is forbearance, and forbearance is Christ.

When Paul says, Let your forbearance be known to all men, he means, Let your Christ be known to all men, that is, Let the Christ who lives in you be expressed and magnified for all men to see Christ, who is forbearance. When we have forbearance, we have peace.

Today we want to see more concerning the matter of forbearance, and our need to live Christ as our forbearance, which also involves the matter or accepting God’s sovereign arrangement in our life, trusting in the Lord, and living Christ.

Whatever happens to us is assigned by the Lord for our benefit, for the fulfilment of God’s purpose, which is for us to magnify Christ and express Him.

Forbearance includes Accepting God’s will, being Suitable and Fitting in, having Wisdom and Ability to Supply others

According to Christian experience, the forbearance Paul speaks in Phil. 4:2 is all-inclusive, including all Christian virtues.

Forbearance includes love, patience, kindness, humility, compassion, considerateness, and submissiveness; if we have such a virtue, we will also have righteousness and holiness.

Forbearance also includes self-control, moderation, gentleness, understanding, sympathy, wisdom, mercy, peacefulness, looking to the Lord, and even the virtue of admitting that the Lord is sovereign in all things. If we fail to exercise forbearance, we fail to exercise any Christian virtue.

For example, when we are at home with our wife, if we as husbands are satisfied with less than our due and exercise forbearance toward our wife, not criticizing her or condemning her, we will show in our forbearance an all-inclusive Christian virtue.

Such a virtue includes being patient, being humble, having self-control, looking to the Lord for everything, and admitting the Lord’s sovereignty in all things.

We need to realize that all our circumstances have been assigned by God to us, whether they seem good or not so good. Both earning money and losing money comes from God’s assignment. Both health and ill-health comes from His arrangement.

If we see this, we will worship Him for His arrangement, realizing that even when we may be sick or we may lose money, all these are from the Lord and are for us to be perfected and built up to magnify Christ.

Forbearance is Christ. The first prerequisite for having Christ as our forbearance is to realise that everything is God’s assignment, so we don’t need to worry about things, for God knows what we need.

God did assign things to us, but He didn’t assign anxiety to us; anxiety comes from Satan, and peace comes from God. Sometimes God may send us hardships and sufferings to help fulfill our destiny to magnify Christ.

We can be free from worry not because God didn’t assign us sufferings but because we know that everything is God’s assignment.

The Apostle Paul didn’t care about life or death – he only cared for living Christ so that Christ may be magnified in him. Therefore, we need to make our petitions known to the Lord with thanksgiving.

We need to open to Him, tell Him what we need, and thank Him; even when we think we don’t have what to thank Him for, we need to thank Him for being healthy enough to pray to Him. If we pray with thanksgiving, this will keep us from anxiety.

Then, after we pray, we shouldn’t be worried if the Lord didn’t answer our prayer. Paul prayed three times for the thorn in his flesh to be removed, but God didn’t remove it, so that Paul would experience His all-sufficient grace.

When the Lord may not answer our prayer, our anxiety may increase instead of decrease; at such time we realize that the Lord will not change our situation but will allow it to remain so that we may experience His sufficient grace, and also to train us to experience Him and trust in Him.

If we don’t accept God’s will, we will not escape anxiety.

For example, we may be sick and ask the Lord to heal us, and He may not heal us suddenly but gradually; if we accept His will in this matter, we will have peace and no anxiety, and God’s purpose will be fulfilled in us.

A forbearing person is one who always fits in, one whose behavior is always suitable (see 2 Cor. 6:1a; 10:1; Phil. 1:19; Isa. 11:2). We have an all-fitting life in us, and this life honors others, fits in with others, and can live and work in any kind of environment and situation.

If we are forbearing, we shall have the wisdom and the ability to supply others with what they need; we shall also have the full knowledge of what to say to them and when to say it.

As seen in Isa. 50:4-5, we need to have the tongue of an instructed one, the tongue of a disciple, by being awakened by the Lord morning by morning and letting Him open our ear to hear as a disciple; then, we will have a word to sustain those who are weary.

To be forbearing is to consider how others will be affected by what we do or say. Solomon’s prayer when he was young was that God would give him wisdom and knowledge how to go out and come in before the people of God (see 2 Chron. 1:10).

This should be our prayer also, that the Lord would be our wisdom and knowledge so that we can consider how others are affected by what we do and say (Col. 2:2-3).

We need the Lord when we contact people, and we need to be pure in our motive when we contact both the elderly and the young, with the only motive being to minister Christ to them that they may grow in the Lord.

Lord Jesus, we bring all our problems and needs to You, and we thank You for Your supply. Grant us to look to You in all things and have the virtue of admitting that You are sovereign in everything. Lord, we bring all things to You with thanksgiving, and we want to learn to accept Your will and trust in You, knowing that all things work for good that Christ may be magnified in us. Awaken us morning by morning and give us an ear to hear as a disciple from You that we may have a word to sustain the saints. Be our wisdom and knowledge, Lord, in all we do and say, that we may know how to deal with others and supply them with Christ.

Forbearance is Christ: let the Christ whom we Live and Magnify be Known to all men

As seen in the Bible and confirmed by our Christian experience, forbearance is an all-inclusive virtue – forbearance is Christ. Since Christ is forbearance, for Paul to live was forbearance (Phil. 1:21; 4:5).

The only word that forbearance can be replaced with in Phil. 4:5 is Christ – let your forbearance be known to all men equals let the Christ whom we live and magnify be made known to all men.

The Christ whom we take as our pattern, the Christ we pursue as our goal, the Christ whom we live and magnify, this Christ needs to be made known. If we look at what forbearance is, we realize that only Christ is forbearance, and forbearance is Christ.

Only the Lord Jesus lived a life full of forbearance, and only Christ can be our forbearance today. Only Christ is full of love, patience, kindness, humility, compassion, considerateness, and submissiveness; He was always willing to yield to the Father’s will.

Only Christ had self-control, was moderate and gentle, was understanding and full of sympathy, had wisdom and mercy, and was peaceful.

Christ always looked to the Father, and He admitted that the Father is sovereign in all things, even in His going to death. Christ always fitted in with those around Him, and His behaviour was always suitable; there was no reproach that others could bring Him.

Christ had the wisdom and the ability to supply others with what they needed, for He always spent time with the Father to listen to the Father, be infused with His desire, and have His words to speak to the people in need.

Christ was full of knowledge of what to say to people and when to say it to them. Christ always considered others, and He considered how they will be affected by what He did and said; He said some things in the open, other things only to His disciples, and a different set of things to the religionists.

Christ is forbearance, and forbearance is Christ. When Paul said that we should let our forbearance be made known to all men, this means that we should let the Christ whom we live and magnify be known.

To make known our forbearance is to live a life that expresses Christ as the totality of all human virtues. This is our Christian life today, a life of making our forbearance known by living a life that expresses Christ as the totality of all human virtues.

Lord Jesus, we want to let our forbearance be known to all men by living Christ and magnifying Christ. Amen! You are our forbearance, and forbearance is Christ Himself. Live in us, Lord, and be magnified in us. Only when You are magnified in us can we have self-control, moderation, gentleness, understanding, sympathy, wisdom, mercy, and peacefulness. Only when Christ is lived out in us we can always fit in and have a suitable behavior. Lord Jesus, be expressed and magnified in us as our forbearance to all men!

References and Hymns on this Topic

• Inspiration: the Word of God, my enjoyment in the ministry, the message by Ed Marks for this week, and portions from, Life-study of Philippians, msgs. 59-62 (by Witness Lee), as quoted in the Holy Word for Morning Revival on, Crystallization-Study of Leviticus (1), week 10, Christ as the Peace between God and God’s People for Their Co-enjoyment in Fellowship to Have the Vital-group Church Life and to Consummate in the New Jerusalem as the Ultimate Peace Offering.
• Hymns on this topic:
  # Blest assurance! God has fully ordered / Every matter by His sovereign hand; / Every person (though we see so dimly), / Every thing’s according to His plan. / Every trial is but the Father’s answer / To the groaning of the Spirit’s prayer; / May He gain in every tribulation, / Until we Christ’s glory fully share. (Hymns #1210)
  # Live Thyself, Lord Jesus, through me, / For my very life art Thou; / Thee I take to all my problems / As the full solution now. (Hymns #403)
  # Oh, what a thought! Oh, what a boast! / Christ shall in me be magnified. / In nothing shall I be ashamed, / For He in all shall be applied. / In woe or blessing, death or life, / Through me shall Christ be testified. (Hymns #499)