As we’ve done each week, we’ll begin with a quick review of several important characteristics of the…
THE FRUIT OF THE SPIRIT
1) Is demonstrated by being not doing
2) Is developed as Christ followers cooperate with the Holy Spirit
3) Is to be delightful to an unbelieving world
The way we do that as a body is reflected in two aspects of our life together in the body:
• The way we treat each other
• Our corporate worship
Today we’ll be focusing on kindness as one aspect of the fruit of the Spirit. This morning’s story from Home Town Tales is called “The Day I Met Paul Harvey”.
[Read story]
THE FRUIT OF THE SPIRIT IS…KINDNESS
Once again it is essential that we begin by defining Biblical kindness. The Greek word that Paul uses here is “chrestotes”. That word conveys the concept of something that is useful, helpful or beneficial. In both the Old and New Testaments, kindness consists of two components:
1) An inner disposition of compassion or mercy, that results in
2) An outward act that is meant to benefit someone
In the New Testament, kindness is most frequently used to describe God and the way He deals with us. So let’s look at several of these passages and see what we can learn about the kindness of God and how we can take and apply what we learn there to our relationships with each other and our corporate worship. We’ll go through these rather quickly and I’ll just make a few brief observations on each passage.
Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.”
Matthew 11:28-30 (ESV)
At first glance, you might ask why we’re looking at his passage since we don’t find the word “kind” or “kindness” anywhere. But the word “easy” in verse 30 actually comes from the same root word as the one translated “kindness” elsewhere in the New Testament. The idea that Jesus is expressing here is that His yoke would not chafe or be an irritation.
But love your enemies, and do good, and lend, expecting nothing in return, and your reward will be great, and you will be sons of the Most High, for he is kind to the ungrateful and the evil. Be merciful, even as your Father is merciful.
Luke 6:35, 36 (ESV)
Here Luke uses the kindness of God toward those who are ungrateful and even evil, as an example of how we are to treat even our enemies. We see that genuine kindness expects nothing in return. That is an important aspect of kindness that we’ll focus on some more in just a moment.
Or do you presume on the riches of his kindness and forbearance and patience, not knowing that God's kindness is meant to lead you to repentance?
Romans 2:4 (ESV)
Here we see that God’s kindness is exhibited in His forbearance and patience with us for the purpose of leading us to repentance. This demonstrates just how all the aspects of the fruit of the Spirit are interrelated – it is one fruit with nine aspects and not nine different fruits. There is a close connection between God’s patience and His kindness.
But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ - by grace you have been saved - and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, so that in the coming ages he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus.
Ephesians 2:4-7 (ESV)
Once again, we see that God’s kindness is inseparable from his mercy and grace. God didn’t wait for us to respond positively to Him before He extended His kindness toward us.
Be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ forgave you.
Ephesians 4:32 (ESV)
Here God’s kindness is demonstrated by His forgiveness that He has made possible through His Son. And as we’ve seen consistently in all these passages, God’s kindness is extended without regard of how man might choose to respond to that kindness.
But when the goodness and loving kindness of God our Savior appeared, he saved us, not because of works done by us in righteousness, but according to his own mercy, by the washing of regeneration and renewal of the Holy Spirit, whom he poured out on us richly through Jesus Christ our Savior, so that being justified by his grace we might become heirs according to the hope of eternal life.
Titus 3:4-7 (ESV)
Again we see the connection between God’s kindness and His mercy. God did not save any of us because we did something to deserve it, but rather His salvation flows from his kindness toward us which is not dependent on how we respond to Him.
Based on what we learn about God’s kindness from these passages, I think we are now ready to develop some principles that will help us demonstrate that same type of kindness within the body in the way that we treat each other and in our corporate worship.
• Developing kindness in the way we treat each other
1) Act without expecting anything in return
As we discussed earlier, Biblical kindness begins with an attitude of compassion that results in an act that benefits someone else. And true kindness always acts without any expectation of receiving something in return. We certainly see this demonstrated by Jesus throughout His earthly ministry.
Several times throughout His ministry Jesus is described as having compassion toward people. And in every case, he then takes some action to meet their needs.
In Matthew 9, Jesus is described as having compassion on the people because they are like sheep without a shepherd. And He immediately calls the twelve apostles and sends them out to cast out evil spirits and heal people. And as He instructs His apostles, He makes it clear to them that not everyone is going to receive their ministry with open arms.
Later, in chapters 14 and 15 of Matthew, Jesus is again described as having compassion on the people. First He heals the sick and then He provides food for the large crowd that is gathered. And Jesus does all this knowing that some of those same people will be the ones who will join the crowds and shout “Crucify him!” not far in the future.
And then Jesus tells the parable of the Good Samaritan to demonstrate what it means to exhibit kindness with no expectation of receiving anything in return. When the Samaritan saw the injured man, he not only had compassion, but he acted for the injured man’s benefit. He spent his time and his money to make sure that the injured man would receive the care that he needed without expecting that he would ever be repaid.
Unfortunately, we have a tendency to be kind to others based on what we are going to receive in return. And we often do that in ways that we don’t even see.
Sometimes we engage in acts of kindness because we want to create a sense of obligation in the other person that we can exploit for our own benefit. Have you ever done something for someone else and said, “You owe me one”? Or has someone exhibited kindness to you in some way and you respond, “Now I owe you one.”? Or maybe we put it like this: “I’ll scratch your back if you’ll scratch mine.” That is not genuine kindness.
Sometimes we fail to engage in acts of kindness because the other person is in no position to reciprocate. This is especially true when we are dealing with those who are needy, poor and weak – whether physically, emotionally or spiritually. But genuine kindness requires us to reach out to those who are helpless even when we know that we won’t get anything in return because the other person just isn’t capable of giving back.
As a body we need to be a safe place where hurting people can come just as they are and receive our kindness without ever feeling like we are expecting something in return from them.
2) Exhibit kindness whether or not it is deserved
Again, we see this aspect of kindness demonstrated in the life of Jesus. Jesus never waited until someone did something to deserve his kindness before He acted. Obviously the greatest example of that kindness was His death on the cross:
but God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.
Romans 5:8 (ESV)
Aren’t you glad that Jesus didn’t wait until we deserved it to give His life for our sins? We would still be waiting wouldn’t we?
In practical terms what this means is that we must all be willing to be adaptable to the needs and desires of others rather than expecting them to adapt to ours. That’s exactly what Jesus did for us. He did not need to die on the cross to satisfy His needs – He did it to satisfy our need to have our sins forgiven.
As we saw in Luke 6 a little earlier God is even kind to the ungrateful and the evil. In other words His kindness is manifest even to those who don’t deserve it. As we saw in Romans 2, He does that in order to lead us to repentance.
Therefore, we need to behave in that same manner, both within our body and in our interactions, both personal and corporate, with those outside of the body. It means that we need to extend kindness even when the other person responds with animosity or is unkind to us.
Many of you may remember when a milk truck driver named Charles Roberts entered an Amish schoolhouse in October 2006 and killed five young girls and seriously wounded five others before taking his own life. The world was shocked when the Amish community not only forgave the killer, but also engaged in an undeserved act of kindness. The community took some of the money that had poured in from around the world and put it in a fund for the killer’s children.
If that Amish community could engage in that kind of unmerited act of kindness then how dare we allow some petty little disagreement or some other insignificant issue to prevent us from having compassion for others and acting in kindness when we have the opportunity.
Before we leave this principle a word of caution is in order here. There is a difference between kindness and just being nice. The dictionary defines “nice” as “being agreeable” which implies that it is tolerant to the point that it enables the other person to continue in some sinful or unhealthy behavior. Genuine kindness does not do that because it is concerned with the total well-being of the other person.
Probably the best Biblical example we have that demonstrates the difference between kindness and niceness is the account of the woman caught in adultery who is brought before Jesus, as recorded in John 8. When those who condemned her begin to leave one after another after Jesus writes in the dirt, Jesus extends kindness, but not niceness to the woman:
Jesus stood up and said to her, “Woman, where are they? Has no one condemned you?” She said, “No one, Lord.” And Jesus said, “Neither do I condemn you; go, and from now on sin no more.”
John 8:10, 11 (ESV)
The woman deserved condemnation, not forgiveness. So Jesus extended kindness to the woman even though she was undeserving. But at the same time, Jesus did not enable that woman to continue in her life of sin. Speaking the truth in love about her sin was actually an act of kindness.
3) Give and receive kindness with grace
Kindness is a two way street and we have to learn to accept the kindness of others as well as to offer it to them. And from what I’ve observed, I’m convinced that many times it is often harder for us to receive the kindness of others than it is to give it. Perhaps that is because we are so self-sufficient and to accept the kindness of others is an admission of some kind of weakness on our part.
Not surprisingly, Jesus demonstrated the importance of graciously accepting the kindness of others. In John 12 we read the account of Mary anointing Jesus with expensive perfume. But when Judas tries to stop her Jesus rebukes him and allows Mary to complete the act of kindness that she is directing toward Jesus. He receives that act of kindness with grace.
As usual, this week I’m primarily preaching to myself here because I really struggle with the idea of receiving kindness from others with grace. As I was working on this message, lo and behold I glanced across my desk and there staring me in the face was a tangible reminder of how I haven’t done a real good job applying this principle in my own life.
For the past several years now our family has agreed to limit the gift buying at Christmas, at least in part to enable all of us to use the resources that God has blessed us with to help others who are truly in need. But around Christmas time this last year, Mary and I received a check from a relative as a gift. And because I was convinced that we really didn’t need that money, that check is still sitting on my desk. But as I was working on this message this week, I began to wonder if I wasn’t guilty of robbing these relatives of the joy that they could have by extending what they viewed as an act of kindness to us. Not to mention the fact, that I’ve probably been driving them crazy when they have tried to reconcile their checkbook the last four months.
All three of these principles that we’ve looked at this morning really go hand in hand. When I quit being kind only to get something in return and when I quit basing my acts of kindness on whether or not the other person deserves my kindness then it frees me up to give and to receive kindness with grace.
And when we begin to exhibit kindness among our body in that manner, it certainly will be alluring and attractive to the world around us where often kindness is only exhibited for the purpose of indebting another person or a means to getting something that a person wants. No wonder mark Twain once described kindness like this:
Kindness is the language which the deaf can hear and the blind can see.
Let’s work together to make this a place where our kindness leads the deaf to hear and the blind to see Jesus.
• Developing kindness in our worship
1) Embrace the value of being together
Obviously we can’t exercise kindness to each other without being together. There are over 50 “one another” verses in the New Testament. And in a sense all those verses are about acts of kindness to some degree – “do good to one another”, “encourage one another”, “care for one another”, and my favorite “greet one another with a holy kiss.”
I often hear people say, “I can be a good Christian without being part of a church.” And they are apparently in good company. According to a Barna Research Group Study, about 10 million self-proclaimed “born again” Christians have not been to church in the past six months other than at Christmas or Easter. Although they say that their spiritual life is very important, that spiritual life has nothing to do with church.
But the Biblical writers and early church leaders certainly never envisioned the life of a Christ-follower apart from the church. That’s why Paul often describes the church as a body in which every believer plays an important part. And it is why the writer of Hebrews penned these familiar words:
And let us consider how to stir up one another to love and good works, not neglecting to meet together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another, and all the more as you see the Day drawing near.
Hebrews 10:24, 25 (ESV)
Apparently, even by the time the book of Hebrews was written there were Christians who had already begun to abandon the church. But the fact is that we need each other.
When we gather together to worship each week, it is our confirmation to each other that we value being together. Merely by our presence here each week, we demonstrate by our actions that we value the relationships we have with others in the body.
2) Focus on edifying others rather than being fed
Since kindness revolves around that which is edifying and beneficial to others, then when we worship together our focus needs to be on what we can do as part of our worship experience that will help others to grow in their relationship with Jesus rather than on how we can be fed ourselves.
You know who the people that do this the very best in this body? They are the ones who aren’t in the auditorium right now because they’re in the nursery or teaching in children’s church. They’re the ones who run the PowerPoint slides and the sound so that the rest of us can see and hear the message and the music. They are the ones who come prepared to teach their “Connections” class each week, not knowing whether they will even have any students. They are the ones who greet us when we arrive and make the coffee and put out the food each week.
Every one of these people miss out on all or some part of our corporate worship service each week because they are busy doing something to help all the rest of us be fed and edified. The very least that we owe them is a word of gratitude and thanks. And perhaps we also owe them some time off from those duties once in a while. Maybe we need to volunteer to be more of a participant rather than just a spectator.
Instead of coming to church to get something out of our experience or to be fed ourselves, we need to come focusing on what we have to offer God and how we can help others to be edified. And when we do that, a funny thing happens – we find that we actually get much more out of the worship service personally than when we come seeking something for ourselves.
So let’s all make a commitment this morning to exhibit kindness toward each other and in our dealings with people outside these walls. Let’s do that without any expectation of receiving anything in return. Let’s do that even when the other person doesn’t deserve it. Let’s work to both give and receive with grace. And in our worship, let’s embrace the value of being together and focus on helping others to be edified instead of just focusing on what’s in it for me. That kind of kindness will certainly be attractive to the world around us.
