Love Is Kind
Love is patient and kind. 1 Corinthians 13:4 (ESV)
Having already commented on the patience of love, I would now like to turn our attention to the kindness that flows from love. Kindness is not simply an emotion or mere feeling; it is much more. Jesus was a man with emotions like the rest of us; when He saw the multitudes, the Bible says, He felt compassion for them. And yet kindness isn’t measured by intentions or feelings.
To be kind is not to be wimpy and afraid to confront another person. Some picture kindness as almost a serene indifference, a mushy fuzzy thing that says “Anything goes.” That is not the Scriptural picture of kindness; in fact kindness will sometimes need to confront and to challenge; it will need to help correct, for it understands that it is not a loving thing for one Christian to allow another to live recklessly and sinfully and do nothing about it. It costs something to be kind. In his book, A Gardener Looks at the Fruit of the Spirit, Philip Keller reminds us that “it is the kind physician who lances the boil, drains off the poison, cleanses the wound, and so restores the patient.”
Neither is kindness random. You might have seen a bumper sticker which urges us to “practice random acts of kindness.” Now, I appreciate the sentiment, but the kindness of which Paul is speaking here is not random nor irrational; on the contrary, it involves a clear motive and is done with clear purposes which build up people and glorifying God!
Patience and kindness can be described as two sides of the same coin, the passive and active senses of the same character trait. Patience involves staying our hands and our mouths from rash responses or inappropriate action choosing instead to trust God in the matter. Kindness, on the other hand, is the active sense of spontaneous action done for the good of others. It involves actively seeking the good of another, and doing so with a gentle spirit.
Kindness takes love on the road; it works for the welfare of the one loved. Can we not agree that in this cruel world, we are presented with plenty of opportunities all around us to be kind toward others, to demonstrate this critical quality of love to a world which knows so little of love? An American general by the name of McAuliff, who found himself at Gastogne surrounded by the enemy, said, “Men, we are surrounded by the enemy. We have the greatest opportunity afforded an army. We can attack in any direction!” So it is with the opportunity we have been afforded; we can be kind literally in any direction, for there is such a need for this world to see kindness exemplified and the love of Christ magnified.
