Kindness and Repentance

Or do you think lightly of the riches of His kindness and tolerance and patience, not knowing that the kindness of God leads you to repentance?
                                                                     Romans 2:4


I was raised in a religious culture that saw God primarily as a force to wrathfully punish wrong doing if we were not Christians or having no concern at all about our wrong doing if we had accepted Jesus. It was kind of a crazy dichotomy that led me to reject the image of God that I was taught.

I often heard prayers prayed from the pulpit for God's wrath to be poured out on non-believers who were doing things that were wrong. At the same time I heard sermons of dismissal of offences for those who believed but were doing the exact same things. Even as a non-believer I wondered how people could actually get their thinking around the obvious double standard.

When Jesus revealed himself to me I was totally stunned. Phillip Yancey wrote a book titled, "The Jesus I never knew." The book's title resonates for me a truth that continually helps me to remember what it is like for someone who is outside looking in. I did not know the Jesus I met on a street in Dallas Texas some forty one years ago. The thing that was so very strange to me about him was that he was kind.

I had battled the god of oppression whose sole purpose in my existence was to demonstrate that I was not even worthy of existence. I was quite willing to go to the hell I was always told I would go to rather than serve the god of hate I had heard about since my youth.

When I rarely went to church, it was with my grandparents because I loved them and wanted to respect their desires for me. I could not miss that on the front row, saying their, “amens” to the preacher's fiery sermons, was most of the first squad of the football team at my local high school. The same group got drunk on Saturday nights and came looking for the only hippie in the district to prove their manhood by beating the snot out of him for being different than they were. I was that hippie. Difference was the reason that justified their being instruments of a wrathful god on me. They, no doubt, would have burned crosses on a black man's yard if they had lived a little earlier in time and a few hundred miles southeast.

The greatest irony to me was that they could not see that their hearts were as black as mine. If God hated what I was doing (and He did), He hated what they were doing just as much. But when I came to know Jesus I could easily forgave them for the same reason. I saw that He was kind to all. Even to those who beat me and thought they were doing Him a favor.

Interestingly, I had the privilege of being an influence for Jesus in a few of those football players lives, but not until I had kindness in my heart towards them. And not until I learned that it is God's kindness, not his wrath, which opens the door for transformation in our lives.

It is a pretty radical thing to consider that God uses kindness to bring about repentance. My culture thought kindness was weakness. They certainly were not the first to do so. From the dawn of history some people have understood God as being perhaps the most unkind being in the universe.

The horror of knowing that there are people right now who believe that they are called to give up their own lives in a suicidal purpose to destroy others and believe that their god is pleased with such acts is extremely troubling. Not since Hitler has there been such an interpretation of atrocious acts of evil as being good. It is because they do not believe that God is kind to all.

Luke 6:35 "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 Himself is kind to ungrateful and evil men.

When we have lost touch with basic human kindness as being based in the image of God who so loved the world that He gave his only Son, we are capable of almost any horror - even if we say we believe in Him. But that is not the heart of our Saviour.

Above all else he is kind.

It is his kindness that has led me all these years to repentance. Not just turning from the wrong doing of fleshly indulgences which we almost exclusively centre on as God's greatest concerns, though they are not. For me the greatest call to repentance has been to lead me away from the pride of my heart that would treat others unkindly and use Him as a justification for it. When I see the kindness he feels towards the ones I envision as my adversaries I find myself being drawn to believe that perhaps my kindness might touch their hearts with His kindness and they too might be able to step into His love. Even if they are profoundly unkind as I myself have been.

Proverbs 19:22 What is desirable in a man is his kindness,

Micah 6:8 He has told you, O man, what is good;
And what does the LORD require of you
But to do justice, to love kindness,
And to walk humbly with your God?

2 Corinthians 6:4 but in everything commending ourselves as servants of God, in much endurance, in afflictions, in hardships, in distresses, 5 in beatings, in imprisonments, in tumults, in labors, in sleeplessness, in hunger, 6 in purity, in knowledge, in patience, in kindness, in the Holy Spirit, in genuine love,

Galatians 5:22 But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, 23 gentleness, self-control; against such things there is no law.

Ephesians 2:4 But God, being rich in mercy, because of His great love with which He loved us, 5 even when we were dead in our transgressions, made us alive together with Christ (by grace you have been saved), 6 and raised us up with Him, and seated us with Him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, 7 so that in the ages to come He might show the surpassing riches of His grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus. 8 For by grace you have been saved through faith; and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God;

Titus 3:3 For we also once were foolish ourselves, disobedient, deceived, enslaved to various lusts and pleasures, spending our life in malice and envy, hateful, hating one another. 4 But when the kindness of God our Savior and His love for mankind appeared, 5 He saved us, not on the basis of deeds which we have done in righteousness, but according to His mercy, by the washing of regeneration and renewing by the Holy Spirit,

1 Peter 2:2 like newborn babies, long for the pure milk of the word, so that by it you may grow in respect to salvation, 3 if you have tasted the kindness of the Lord.

2 Peter 1:5 Now for this very reason also, applying all diligence, in your faith supply moral excellence, and in your moral excellence, knowledge, 6 and in your knowledge, self-control, and in your self-control, perseverance, and in your perseverance, godliness, 7 and in your godliness, brotherly kindness, and in your brotherly kindness, love. 8 For if these qualities are yours and are increasing, they render you neither useless nor unfruitful in the true knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ.