Patience in Well-Doing

My January reading for the Romans Reading Plan is Romans 1:1 through 2:8. So I've been reading that passage all month and occasionally blogging about it. But the last part (2:1-11) kind of bugs me, because of this:

to those who by patience in well-doing seek for glory and honor and immortality, he will give eternal life;

Now, if you try preaching a sermon at me about how I should be "patient in well-doing," I might just walk out. The Luther-ish thing to say here would be that Christ is my righteousness--that his righteousness is imputed to me--but is Christ my patience in well-doing?

It helps to remember that this passage comes in the midst of a long argument for the proposition that, in the words of the estimable Ray Ortlund, Jr., "God has consigned the entire human race, even upright people, to domination under sin." Which means of course, that Paul's talk of "patience in well doing" is intended to show us what is required, and also that it is beyond us. The good news (again channeling Ortlund) begins with the bad news.

I don't want to look too far ahead in Romans, but I know that Paul will address this matter more completely later on. So file it away for now. Patience in well-doing. It's a challenge.

My quotations from Ortlund are drawn from his meditative devotional, A Passion for God: Prayers and Meditations on the Book of Romans. In his meditation on this Romans 2 passage, he quotes William Beveridge (1638-1708):

I cannot pray, but I sin. I cannot hear or preach a sermon, but I sin. I cannot give alms or receive the sacrament, but I sin. Nay, I cannot so much as confess my sins, but my confessions are still aggravations of them. My repentance needs to be repented of, my tears want washing, and the very washing of my tears needs still to be washed over again with the blood of my Redeemer.