Love is kind, and God is bigger than Mount Everest

Love is patient and kind; love does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth. Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. 

- 1 Corinthians 13:4-7 

 

Kindness is something that automatically goes with love. Right? This attribute of love is the one that seems to be the most obvious in our mind. Kind actions are loving actions. That's just how it works.

And kindness—defined as the "quality of a sympathetic or helpful nature" by our good friend Merriam-Webster—is clearly loving. Sympathy? Of course. Help? Obviously; most people want those who love them to help them. But I think it's easy to forget what the Biblical definition of lovingkindness is. 

Ephesians 4:32 says, "Be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ forgave you." There we go: kindness means being "tenderhearted" (a more common modern synonym would be "compassionate") and forgiving one another. Like with patience, a key part of a Biblical kindness means forgiving an offense. 

The Bible goes into detail on human forgiveness many times (Matthew 18:21-22, to name one), but the forgiveness we're able to give is only a shadow of the forgiveness we've already experienced from God. 1 John 1:9 reads, "If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness." God has forgiven us. And not just forgiven half of our huge Mount Everest of sin—he's forgiven all of it. Our huge weight, which by a human court would probably merit a thousand life sentences, has been completely pardoned, thanks to the kindness of God. 

So, next time you have an opportunity to show kindness to someone, take it. The love we've been shown by God is more than plenteous enough to share.

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