Christmas Kindness (Part 2)

Do not let kindness and truth leave you; 

Bind them around your neck,

Write them on the tablet of your heart.

So you will find favor and good repute

In the sight of God and man.

--Proverbs 3:3

In my last post, I discussed a few earthly examples of kindness from the Old Testament. These showed us that biblical "kindness" happens when an authority figure steps down to show undeserved favor to someone in life-or-death danger, especially when it seems illogical or even imprudent to do so. But those were just human examples.

Now, we'll get to the good stuff: some examples from the New Testament that show us GOD'S kindness, and what it means for humanity, especially on this holiday where we celebrate its coming.

We know that the New Testament advises us to be kind to one another; that is, for brothers and sisters in the Church to treat one another with kindness, so that the world may know that we are His disciples. (Because, to be frank, if we can't treat each other kindly, then we can by no means treat the world kindly.) We are empowered by the Holy Spirit to do this. Everyone knows these verses:

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

So, as those who have been chosen of God, holy and beloved, put on a heart of compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience, bearing with one another, and forgiving each other whoever has a complaint against anyone; just as the Lord forgave you, so also should you. {Colossians 3:12-13}

Be kind to one another, tender-hearted, forgiving each other, just as God in Christ also has forgiven you. {Ephesians 4:32}

It's clear from these verses that we wouldn't know how to be kind to one another without Christ's example. It's also clear that His example has something to do with forgiveness. But what does that have to do with a baby in a manger?

Well, we saw in our OT examples that it's not kindness if it costs you nothing to give. David had to give up riches and the good opinion of others to bless Mephibosheth; Jonathan risked his life to protect David. Rahab also put her life on the line to help the Israelite spies. None of them HAD to do what they did; in fact, it would have been easier for them if they hadn't. But they had the power to rescue someone in a less fortunate position, and out of compassion, they did it. Without personal sacrifice or compassion, the action ceases to be kindness and just becomes some sterile form of moral justice.

Jesus didn't HAVE to be born as a baby. He could have descended, full-grown, from the clouds in a glitter storm, threw some lightning bolts around, and shouted, "I'm takin' back the earth, little pipsqueaks! Bow down to me! If you don't become a robot to my will, I will SQUASH you!" He would have had the authority to do that--just as David had the authority to slaughter Mephibosheth if he had wanted to. He is, after all, the King of Kings. It would have been totally just and moral for Him to complete a heavenly coup d'etat with some angelic tanks full of Holy Spirit power.

But Jesus didn't do that. He became a baby.

A BABY.

I don't know if you've spent much time around babies, but they are very small. And very helpless.

Can you imagine packaging the force that created the whole universe into a newborn human? And then wrapping that human up in old cloth and laying Him in a cow feed trough? I mean, He was probably bitten by fleas within the first hours of His life.

Can you imagine sending your own child into a dark, primitive, pre-medieval world, full of nasty diseases and a very short life expectancy? And would you send Him there knowing that He would live as a foreigner; and then He would not just be murdered, but brutally and barbarously murdered as a spectacle, an object of ridicule, for a savage audience?

I mean, these people didn't even take baths once a year. They probably never washed their socks and underwear (if they even had underwear). They were callous towards death, because it was all around them. Who could love them? Or, even more, who could send their only son--beloved and beautiful--to love them? What an insult: to be rejected by proud people who regularly raped and murdered others and didn't even brush their teeth--and thought nothing of it. And then submit to being mocked and killed by them!

The Father sent a BABY to do that. HIS baby.

He didn't have to. But if He had had to, it wouldn't be kindness. If it had cost Him nothing, it wouldn't be kindness.

Are you starting to get it?

But God, being rich in mercy, because of His great love with which He loved us, even when we were dead in our transgressions, 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 ages to come He might show the surpassing riches of His grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus {Ephesians 2:4-7}.

Jesus is the Father's kindness.

The Old Testament characters we discussed rescued those who could not save themselves, often from brutal death. Jesus stepped down and went even further: He gave His own life in exchange for our adoption into the family of God. It would have been enough just to be saved from death; but He brought us into His own family.

And--in Jesus' own words--that's what Christmas is all about: "For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish, but have eternal life. For God did not send the Son into the world to judge the world, but that the world might be saved through Him" (John 3:16-17).

And again, in Jesus' own words: "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. Be merciful, just as your Father is merciful" {Luke 6:35-36}.

What would it have been like for Jesus to say these words, knowing that He Himself--His birth, His life, His death--was the very demonstration of a Father's mercy to an unrepentant, rebellious, stinky, flea-bitten lot of sinners? And knowing that He would accept some of these with joy into His own family, sharing His Father with them?

That is the greatest kindness of all: that the Father was willing to share His Son, and that Jesus was willing to share His Father with us.

Maybe that's why Jesus was born as a baby, into a family. Because He is our savior, but He is also our brother.

Maybe we take baths and have iPhones and wouldn't dream of putting a baby to sleep in flea-infested straw; but we are human just the same. Don't let the first-world conveniences anesthetize you to this painful truth: we, like our savage forbears, were born into a position of utter despair and hopelessness, sentenced to death from our conception, unable to save ourselves from our own habitual immorality, hardness of heart, and downright meanness. I don't care how "good" you are: you cannot be good enough to stand before the One who is the very definition of goodness. He Himself is the only one good enough to save us. We need to receive life from the one who created it. There is no other way.

But what a beautiful way it is! That a Father would give us His baby--innocent, glorious, a little package of hope in an utterly dark world--and would use our own brutality against Him to exonerate us of it. How ironic! He fulfilled His mission not with the indifference of a judge exchanging a bond for a prisoner's freedom, but with the compassion of a Father's heart.

The beauty of the Lord is that He did not just save us with justice--He saved us with kindness.

Listen to Me, O house of Jacob,

And all the remnant of the house of Israel,

You who have been borne by Me from birth

And have been carried from the womb;

Even to your old age I will be the same,

And even to your graying years I will bear you!

I have done it, and I will carry you;

And I will bear you and deliver you.

{Isaiah 46:3-4}

I'll end with one more example of kindness from the New Testament.....

In the last chapter of Acts, Luke relates the story of Paul and his companions being shipwrecked at Malta. They could have expected to be robbed or even killed by the people of the island, or at the least ignored; but instead, this is what happened:

The natives showed us extraordinary kindness; for because of the rain that had set in and because of the cold, they kindled a fire and received us all. {Acts 28:2}

The Lord knows that the earth is rainy and cold, and that we are shipwrecked and lonely. When He sent Jesus to earth, He kindled a fire and received us all.

Kindness is well-described by one of our favorite Christmas hymns:

Truly He taught us to love one another
His law is love, and His gospel is peace
Chains shall He break, for the slave is our brother
And in His name, all oppression shall cease

"Fall on your knees" indeed!

Repeat the sounding joy! Let heaven and nature sing!

Merry Christmas!

Christmas Kindness (Part 1)

"In an outburst of anger, I hid My face from you for a moment, 

But with everlasting lovingkindness I will have compassion on you," 

Says the Lord your Redeemer.

--Isaiah 54:8

They say that Christmas is the season of "kindness." Hallmark movies, pop songs, and television commercials wrap "kindness" in a box like a pair of warm slippers, making it so fluffy and pleasing that we forget that the world's version of kindness is mercenary--meant only, in the end, to make us feel better about ourselves. Culture anesthetizes us into thinking that our lives have meaning just because we watched someone else on TV being kind and thought it was a great idea.

Don't settle for that. There is real kindness. And it is defined by the heart of the One who made us.

And His kindness is much bigger than the warm fuzzy feelings we get from television. In fact, it is not for the faint of heart.

I want to show you some stories from the Old Testament where the word "kindness" is used (at least in my NASB translation). I'll give the brief run-down; you can go read the stories for yourselves.

Genesis 40:14--"Only keep me in mind when it goes well with you, and please do me a kindness by mentioning me to Pharaoh and get me out of this house."
Joseph (the dreamer) was thrown unjustly into prison, and he interpreted dreams for his fellow inmates, one of whom was cupbearer to Pharaoh. He asked for kindness from the cupbearer: that he would wield his influence and somehow get Joseph out of prison, where he was condemned to rot forever unless someone decided to let him go free.

Joshua 2:12--"Now therefore, please swear to me by the Lord, since I have dealt kindly with you, that you also will deal kindly with my father's household, and give me a pledge of truth, and spare my brothers and my sisters, with all who belong to them, and deliver our lives from death."

Rahab, the prostitute, gave shelter to the Israelite spies who came into the promised land to check it out. In this verse, she asked for a "kind favor": "Could you please not kill me or my family when you take over, even though you're totally going to slaughter everyone else?" The Israelites did spare the lives of Rahab and her family, even though they ruthlessly killed everyone else in the city. That type of blood and gore story isn't really what we curl up with hot cocoa to watch on Christmas Eve television....but it is real.

1 Samuel 20:15--"You shall not cut off your lovingkindness from my house forever, not even when the Lord cuts off every one of the enemies of David from the face of the earth."
Jonathan made a pact with David that he would protect him, and would receive that same kindness in return. But this wasn't just a BFF kind of vow. It was serious. Jonathan's father, Saul, wanted David dead. He went to extremes to hunt him down in order to kill him. So when Jonathan said he would "show kindness" to David, he literally meant that he would preserve his life if he could--and that the two would do so for each other and their households forever. Moral of the story: kindness can save your life.

2 Samuel 9:1--Then David said, "Is there yet anyone left of the house of Saul, that I may show him kindness for Jonathan's sake?"
David became king in the place of Saul. True to his word to his friend Jonathan, he sent and found Mephibosheth, Jonathan's only surviving son, who was crippled in his feet. In this day, a new king would exterminate all the relatives of the former king so that they would never challenge his right to the throne. So when the messengers came for Mephibosheth, he went and appeared before the king thinking that he was going to be executed. Instead, however, David showed him kindness by not only letting him live, but blessing him with an inheritance out of love for his father, Jonathan. It was a breach of royal protocol that probably shocked the people. And it is one of the reasons that David was called "a man after God's own heart"--because he saw an orphan, and showed him kindness where he expected death.

These are just four examples, and they all feature human-to-human kindness. We haven't even gotten to the God-kindness yet! But I think these human examples outline a couple principles about kindness for us, because they are similar in two ways:

1. They all deal with serious consequences. Old Testament kindness isn't giving someone a cookie or dropping 20 cents into a donation tub. Although those are good things to do, let's be honest: we're really doing them because we want to feel better about ourselves, and we're not sacrificing anything to do it. No, this version of kindness is rescuing the condemned from certain death or hopeless imprisonment when they have no other way out. That's life-or-death kindness.

2. They all show someone in authority helping someone of little or no importance. A prisoner, a prostitute, a crippled son in hiding, a wanted man with a price on his head. Kings and conquerors decided to help people who could not repay them, even though it was inconvenient and even contrary to social and cultural norms to do so. (I would like to point out that David was, in his lifetime, both the rescued and the rescuer, which is perhaps why his compassion on Jonathan's son was so great.)

We all have authority in some area. Maybe we are not kings, able to literally give the word and save someone from execution; maybe we are not the rich, who can give out much-needed supplies to whole villages single-handedly.

But we all have the authority of Christ. And that makes us kings. You may not be able to bust Joseph out of prison; but you DO have the authority to speak blessings into other people's lives, to smile at someone, to pray for someone--to preach the gospel, that some might be saved from death. If you believe in Jesus Christ, you have more authority than the world. (You can look that up in the Bible for yourself.)

The Lord has not only given us authority as daughters and sons, He has given each of us authority in particular areas--certain relationships, environments, and spheres.

Don't underestimate yourself.

You really can change someone's life. You really can turn their circumstances around.

The world is full of dying people. And we have been given authority to ease their condition, to listen to them, to hold them, and to tell them the message that will turn their hearts back to the Father who loves them. It IS life-or-death kindness. And something as small as an encouraging word can bring all the power of God that got Joseph out of prison and saved Rahab's life. Just stopping to acknowledge someone else--someone unnoticed and ignored--and give him or her your sacrifice of time. You don't have to; you choose to.  Like these kind men of the Bible, you will lose something in the process, or it isn't kindness.

But if you know the kindness that was shown to you, then you will think twice about passing an opportunity for kindness by.

Like David, we know how to rescue, because we have been rescued. (But more on that in Part 2!)

Yet it was I who taught Ephraim to walk; I took them up by their arms, but they did not know that I healed them. I led them with cords of kindness, with the bands of love, and I became to them as one who eases the yoke on their jaws, and I bent down to them and fed them.--Hosea 11:3-4 (ESV)

What are you, O great mountain?

Then he said to me, "This is the word of the Lord to Zarubbabel saying, 'Not by might nor by power, but by My Spirit,' says the Lord of hosts. 'What are you, O great mountain? Before Zarubbabel you will become a plain; and he will bring forth the top stone with shouts of "Grace, grace to it!"'"--Zechariah 4:6-7

I highly endorse working hard, seeking and accepting opportunities, or going somewhere new even though it's intimidating. Proactivity has gotten me a lot of places in my life.

However, there's the flip side to that coin. I was thinking about all the times I've tried to make things happen on my own--accepting opportunities that are not quite right, or less than what I wanted. Sometimes this comes from plain, inexcusable impatience; but other times, there is a deeper reason. I think the deeper reason I have done this--have tried my best to settle for less--is because I did not believe I was worth God blessing me in that particular area. I did not think I deserved a God-given door, so I tried to find my way through a broken window.

People like to say, "When God closes a door, He always opens a window." I'm of the opinion that God never closes doors; He closes windows. He closes doggie doors and fire escapes, cracks in the wall and holes in the floor: all the ways of exit we think we must take because He won't offer us a door. We expect Him to disappoint us. 

We are all just waiting for the other shoe to drop, for God to let us down, for us to have to make it on our own. I mean, that's what people have always done to us. They have left us alone and lonely. We've had to struggle by ourselves because other people have abandoned us, let us down, or outright rejected us. We have ALL experienced this.

But that's not who the Father of Lights is. He is not a man, that He should lie (Numbers 23:19). The amazing, drop-the-mic revelation of Christianity is that it really will all be ok. He really IS in control. It's not a cliche. It's biblical truth.

You can trust Him.

The greatest miracles in my life are not the healings I've seen or the dramatic provisions I've experienced--all the physical impossibilities that became possible in Jesus--although there are enough of those to fill a book. Instead, the greatest miracles are the hundreds of ways He's revealed to me that I need to trust Him in each little tiny bit of my life. It seemed impossible for those internal insecurities to change; they seemed an immovable mountain. But when my own fears have appeared as a concrete wall before me, He's given me the grace to trust Him anyway. And, in those moments, Jesus takes great pleasure in walking through your walls and kicking out a door.

The peace of truly trusting Him with the secret things that are dearest to me, and believing that He will not let me down: THAT'S the peace that surpasses understanding.

Like the rest of us, I've got a long way to go in this, but I can say that, in moments when I have surrendered to this trust, I have felt the truest, purest sense of purpose a human can experience.

NO ONE and NOTHING can offer you the security that a relationship with Jesus Christ can. It's why He was born in a stable 2,016 years ago. It's why God became a baby, so that He could open a door for you that will never be closed. So that you will not have to be abandoned, rejected, alone, or afraid any longer.

"Ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives, and he who seeks finds, and to him who knocks it will be opened. Or what man is there among you who, when his son asks for a loaf, will give him a stone? Or if he asks for a fish, he will not give him a snake, will he? If you then, being evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father who is in heaven give what is good to those who ask Him!"--Matthew 7:7-11

There's no catch. He really can make it all better. And He really will. He loves you so much.

You don't have to scrape by. You are not a pauper. You are not an unwanted squatter in the house of God. You don't have to skulk around near discreet exits, waiting for the moment you have to run. You aren't homeless, moving through window after window and accepting any warm place to sleep every night.

So then you are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are fellow citizens with the saints, and are of God's household (Ephesians 2:19).

The door is wide open. And in Him, you will find yourself saying to an impossibility, "What are you, O great mountain?"