"But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness...." ~Galatians 5:22a
In our series on the fruits of the Spirit, we come this week to the fruit of kindness. This is another area, just as we saw last week when talking about patience, where Paul overlaps some of his teachings and includes a fruit of the Spirit in his description of what love is in 1 Corinthians 13 - "Love is patient and kind" (1 Corinthians 13:4a).
We hear a lot about things like niceness and kindness in our day and age, and our culture is quick to define these characteristics in a way that doesn't enable us to both 1) disagree with someone else or to disapprove of their life choices and 2) still be described as being nice or kind. We are told that disagreement or disapproval = hatred. But this simply is not the case.
On the other end of the spectrum, there are professing Christians out there who will say that the nicest or kindest thing you can do is point out someone's sin, and will do so as a way to excuse their nasty behavior when pointing out someone's sin. They will refer to the topic of "speaking the truth in love", but forget to add in the love part while speaking the truth. This is wrong, as well.
The Greek word translated "kind" in 1 Corinthians 13:4 is "chrēsteuomai", the definition of which is "to show one's self mild, to be kind, use kindness". The Greek word translated as "kindness" in Galatians 5:22 is "chrēstotēs", the definition of which is "moral goodness, integrity, benignity, kindness", and elsewhere in Scripture is translated "gentleness"
So, what do we take from this? We see that Biblical kindness as we are called to is gentle, mild, benign, and good. This is all important for a number of reasons, not the lest of which being that it corrects both wrongs and extremes I mentioned above.
On the one hand, kindness is moral goodness. Paul tells us in 1 Corinthians 13 that love is both kind and also does not rejoice in wrongdoing. So, it is not kind to support someone's ongoing, unrepentant sin. That sin is not in their best interests, so the kind thing to do for that person is to gently and humbly address it with them and help them to find the answer to their struggle and their eternal need for Christ.
But also note that kindness is also mild mannered, benign, and gentle. Kindness does not look like beating someone over the head for their sin. Far from it! It looks like being long-suffering with people, humbly acknowledging our own sin struggles, and gently interacting with them.
Kindness is also not the same thing as niceness, either, for to remain "nice" can sometimes mean sweeping things under the rug, not having the hard conversation or needed confrontation, or refusing to speak honestly for fear of not being viewed as "nice". Niceness can look like being a peacekeeper, but kindness looks like being a peacemaker - and there is a world of difference between the two! "Niceness" can look like the deceptive "approval" of an enemy as talked about in Proverbs, while kindness is open, honest, and true.
In a world wherein the true definition and meaning of words can get twisted so very quickly, it is important for us to know God's definition of them. And this is certainly true in the area of the fruit of the Spirit known as kindness!
Reflection Questions:
1) What stood out to you about today's study?
2) Do you tend to operate from the Bible's definition of kindness or from the world's definition?
3) What needs to change in your kindness (or lack thereof!) towards others? How can you lean on Christ and the Spirit to help you with that?
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