We come now to the second set of virtues: patience, kindness, and goodness. If the first three were the rooted disposition of a fruitful marriage, these three are its visible expression. Of course, love, joy, and peace certainly have outward dimensions to them, but these virtues are outward by their very nature.

Paul fittingly places them in the center of the list. They are what will be most readily seen in our lives. But they spring from the first three and only rely upon the last three to be sustained.

UNDERSTANDING THE VIRTUES

The Greek word for patience is makrothumia, and it is a compound word. Makros means large or long, which we have smuggled into English for discussing things like macroevolution or macronutrients. The second part is thumia, which is related to thumoi, which Paul used in verse 20 and the ESV translates as “fits of anger.” Put together, makrothumia means long-passioned or, as the KJV says, longsuffering. We might also call it being long-fused, as opposed to being short-fused. Patience is the opposite of being easily provoked or easily flustered, especially by difficult circumstances.

This is an attribute of God Himself. The Old Testament idiom is wonderfully vivid: God is long-nosed, meaning that He is slow to flare His nostrils in wrath. The ESV rightly calls it slow to anger. That is patience. A steady level-headedness, even in the midst of provocation.

Kindness is chrestotes, which comes the root of describing something that is useful or beneficial. For example, aged wine that had lost its sour bite and turned sweet was called chrestos. Some translations call it gentleness, but kindness is probably best. We might say that say that kindness is the sweetness of character that comes from love, joy, and peace within a person.

Paul gives us an idea of kindness in Ephesians 4, saying, “Be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ forgave you.” Those three things clearly go together. To be kind is be tenderhearted and ready to forgive. It is being free of harshness and bitterness in your deals with others but having the kind of pleasantness that flows from truly loving those around you.

Finally, goodness is agathosyne. In Greek, there are two words for good. Kalos typically means good in form and appearance, while agathos refers to intrinsic and moral good. Agathosyne is the character of loving what is good and striving to do what is good. That, also, is rooted in God Himself. Psalm 119 says of God, “You are good, and you do good.” This virtue is our imitation of that attribute of God Himself.

PERFECTED IN CHRIST

Jesus’ patience was perfect, which is highlighted in how Jesus bears with His disciples in the Mark’s Gospel. The disciples are continuously slow to understand Jesus’ words because of the hardness of their hearts. But Jesus does not become wrathful toward them. He never loses His composure. Even when He rebukes Peter sharply, calling him Satan, it is ultimately an act of love, meant to stop Peter from becoming a instrument of Satan for tempting Christ from His mission. And His patience reaches its apex at the cross, where He is mocked and scorned, yet still prays, “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.”

Christ’s very coming to us is a display of the kindness of God toward us. After all, He could have damned us all as with Satan and the fallen angels, and He would have still be good. But in His great kindness, Christ came to rescue us. Paul says so in Ephesians 2:7.

Acts 10:38 gives us a simple but wonderful summary of Jesus’ earthly ministry: “He went about doing good and healing all who were oppressed by the devil, for God was with him.” Indeed, Jesus entirely devoted Himself to what was good, not what was most comfortable or most expedient for Him. His mind was always set on fulfilling the Father’s will, which is the very essence of goodness.

Even in the moments where Christ appeared to be breaking the law, such as healing on the Sabbath, Jesus was doing so precisely to show people what was the highest good. “Is it lawful on the Sabbath to do good or to do harm, to save life or to kill” (Mark 3:4)? Everything Jesus did was good.

APPLICATION TO MARRIAGE

I would argue that impatience is, at its root, a failure to trust in the Lord and a failure to love our neighbor. Most of what provokes our patience is not catastrophe but disruption: things that interrupt our schedule, things that do not go how we had planned. We want our will to be done, and when it doesn’t happen, we lose our patience.

Paul says to us, “Put on… patience, bearing with one another, and if anyone has a complaint against another, forgiving each other as the Lord has forgiven you, so you also must forgive” (Colossians 3:12-13). That is what patience looks like in practice. It is bearing with others. It is absorbing grievance rather than retaliating. It is refusing to complain against one another, even if the complaint may be valid. Of course, patience does not mean never addressing problems. It means addressing them without bitterness, retaliation, or contempt and always with the readiness to forgive.

Paul knew God’s patience well. In 1 Timothy, he says that God displayed His perfect patience by rescuing the chief of sinners. Do we strive to show the same kind of patience with our spouse?

What about kindness? How are you showing kindness to your spouse? Are your conversations, your everyday tone and attitude, marked by harshness and bitterness or by sweetness and tenderness? Paul says, in Ephesians 4:4, “Let there be no filthiness nor foolish talk nor crude joking, which are out of place, but instead let there be thanksgiving.”

That is one reason why Tiff and I consistently tell couples in premarital and marital counseling to remove sarcasm from their speech to one another. It is never rooted in kindness, and what feels like playful jabs today easily becomes verbal thorns in the heat of an argument. That is not the pattern of Christ. Are your actions and words marked by kindness to your spouse?

What does it look like to cultivate the virtue of goodness in our marriage? It means actively pursuing our spouse’s good as well as striving to be a good husband or a good wife.

We know that Christ saved us by grace alone, not by works, but He saved in order for us to good works. Again, your spouse is your closest neighbor. If the good works that flow from our salvation are not first and foremost given to and seen by our spouse, something has gone very wrong. How tragic if we take care to be good to strangers while neglecting the person with whom we are one flesh!

Proverbs 31:12 is a fitting verse to conclude this study. While we typically think of Proverbs 31 as being addressed to women, it is actually an oracle that King Lemuel’s mother taught him, and the final 22 verses are about finding an excellent wife. Verse 12 of that final poem says, “She does him good, not harm, all the days of her life.”

Shouldn’t that be a life verse for our marriages? Our fundamental aim ought to be to do our spouse good all the days of our life together, not harm.

We can also note that these virtues become most visible precisely when things are most difficult. Patience is best seen during provocation and disruption. Kindness is best seen when bitterness is most natural. Goodness is best seen when the sacrifice of doing good costs the most.

That is why Tiff and I often come back to this simple truth: we are committed to each other. Once you begin to truly grasp that, you also begin to notice the foolishness of holding onto anger. Most of the time, that anger and bitterness is only making life miserable for both of you. So, being quick to forgive is not only the right thing to do; it is also the wisest course of action. Why waste the finite time we have together in bitterness and resentment? It simply isn’t worth it. Forgive each other quickly. Be kind to each other. Pursue good together. Seek to do good, not harm, to each other, all the days of your life.