Love is Kind: Part 2

Jesus is Kind

Jesus offered us the greatest example of kindness in the way He lived His own life. Jesus spoke of Himself saying, “I am gentle and humble in heart.” (Matthew 11:29) This is not to say that He was weak. Though Jesus was kind, gentle, and humble, He was also very strong. Jesus was not afraid to show Himself strong in challenging the customary practices of the day. There was the time when Jesus entered the temple and found the people buying and selling goods and using the ordnances’ of God as a pretence for profit. Jesus’ anger burned against them and He set forth to cleanse His Father’s house. “And He made a scourge of cords, and drove them all out of the temple, with the sheep and the oxen; and He poured out the coins of the money changers and overturned their tables; and to those who were selling the doves He said, ‘Take these things away; stop making My Father's house a place of business.’” (John 2:15-16) Though they were selling animals to the worshipers for use in sacrifices, their hearts were not right with God and Jesus called them to account for their hardness of heart. Jesus was also not afraid to challenge the religious elite who thought they knew God but who were blind and clueless. “Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you are like whitewashed tombs which on the outside appear beautiful, but inside they are full of dead men's bones and all uncleanness.” (Matthew 23:27)

Jesus was strong, but He was also kind. The kindness of Jesus drew people to Him. People loved to be around him. People’s hearts were touched by His life and His kindness and that kindness turned the hearts of many back to God. Paul reminds us that “the kindness of God leads you to repentance?” (Romans 2:4) This was certainly the experience of Zaccheus. Jesus had invited Himself to have supper with a notorious sinner, a tax collector named Zaccheus. Zaccheus was so touched by Jesus’ kindness that he repented of his sinful ways and committed himself to making restitution to all that he had cheated. “Zaccheus stopped and said to the Lord, ‘Behold, Lord, half of my possessions I will give to the poor, and if I have defrauded anyone of anything, I will give back four times as much.’ And Jesus said to him, ‘Today salvation has come to this house, because he, too, is a son of Abraham.’” (Luke 19:8-9) It seamed that the only ones who weren’t Jesus’ friends were the religious elite. While Jesus was being entertained by Zaccheus, they were grumbling and complaining, saying, “He has gone to be the guest of a man who is a sinner.” (Luke 19:7) and they condemned Him as being a “gluttonous man and a drunkard, a friend of tax collectors and sinners!” (Luke 7:34)

Can it be said of us that we are the friends of sinners? For some of us, we have so insulated ourselves from sinners that we no longer know anyone who is unsaved. We have forgotten those who need God’s love the most and we have grown indifferent to their needs. We are very willing to point out to them their faults and we are quick to judge them for their sins, but we have forgotten that we were once like them and we hide from them the same kindness of God that lead us to repentance. We have come to believe that the kindness of God belongs to us and the severity of God to them. For those of us whom this describes, Jesus wants to change our hearts. He wants to give us His heart for the lost that we may become His ambassadors of love and kindness to the world. It is time we put aside our hardness of heart and let the love of God shine through us.

More to come… David Robison