The Kindness That Turns a Man

If you’re not going to take the mountain by force, you had better know what actually changes a person, because something has to.

Scripture names it. We quote the verse constantly and almost always miss the word.

“Or despisest thou the riches of his goodness and forbearance and longsuffering; not knowing that the goodness of G-d leadeth thee to repentance?”

ROMANS 2:4

Your King James says goodness twice in that verse, and Paul used two forms of one word to do it. The riches of his goodness is CHRESTOTES. The goodness that leadeth thee to repentance is CHRESTOS. Same root, and the root is the kindness word. It’s the same family as CHRESTOTES in Titus 3:4, and it’s the same word the King James renders gentleness in the fruit of the Spirit. (Galatians 5:22)

The English hides it. The Greek says it outright.

Kindness is what leads a man to repentance.

Not fear. Not pressure. Not shame, not argument, not leverage, not a majority on the school board. Paul is not making a suggestion about tone. He is naming the mechanism, the actual working part, the thing that turns a human heart around.

And he isn’t the only one. “But after that the kindness and love of G-d our Saviour toward man appeared, not by works of righteousness which we have done, but according to his mercy he saved us.” (Titus 3:4-5)

Kindness appeared. Then people got saved. That’s the order, and it’s the same order we’ve been tracking since chapter three. The kindness came first and it came toward people who had nothing to bring.

So toward people, the posture is kindness. Full stop.

That is not softness. Understand me here, because this gets heard as weakness by men who confuse volume with strength. Kindness is not what you do because you can’t fight. Kindness is the weapon. It is the thing scripture says actually works, and most of the church has been reaching past it for a hundred years trying to find something with more horsepower.

Now, kindness toward people does not mean there is no fight. It means the fight is aimed correctly.

“For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places.”

EPHESIANS 6:12

Paul says it again from another angle. “(For the weapons of our warfare are not carnal, but mighty through G-d to the pulling down of strong holds;) Casting down imaginations, and every high thing that exalteth itself against the knowledge of G-d.” (2 Corinthians 10:4-5)

That word imaginations is LOGISMOS. Reasonings. Arguments. Thought-systems. Ideas with buildings and budgets behind them.

Read both texts and see what is never on the target list. A person. Not once. Paul names powers, rulers of darkness, spiritual wickedness, strongholds, reasonings. He never names a neighbor.

So there is a war. I believe that completely, and I’ve spent years of my life in it. But the enemy has never been the man standing in front of you, and the day you forget that is the day you start doing damage in the name of G-d and calling it boldness.

This is the whole difference between what I’m building and the posture I’m departing from. That contention is carnal and its targets are institutions and the people running them. Mine is aimed only at the ideology running through a place, never at the people standing in it.

Jesus modeled both in the same breath, in the same chapter, in the same speech.

He called the Pharisees a generation of vipers. He did not soften it, He did not apologize for it, and He said it in public. And then, a few verses later, in that same speech, He looked at the city those men ran and said, “O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, thou that killest the prophets, and stonest them which are sent unto thee, how often would I have gathered thy children together, even as a hen gathereth her chickens under her wings, and ye would not!” (Matthew 23:37)

Sharp at the hypocrisy. Grieved over the people carrying it.

Both true in the same moment, and there’s no contradiction in it, because they were never aimed at the same target. He went after the system with everything He had and He wept over the people standing inside it.

Most of us have that exactly backwards. We’re gentle with the ideology because confronting it costs something socially, and we’re brutal with the people because they’re standing right there and they’re easier to hit.

Here’s what this looks like on a Tuesday, since this book is not a theory.

The co-worker whose politics make your jaw tight. The relative who said the thing at Thanksgiving. The person online you’ve already filed under lost cause. The neighbor whose life is a slow-motion wreck that you’ve privately decided he earned.

You have a position on every one of them. Fine. Hold it.

Now do them good anyway, with nothing attached to it.

That’s the test, and it’s harder than the argument. Anybody can win an argument. Almost nobody can do a real kindness for someone whose position they despise without slipping one small piece of correction into it, because the correction is how we keep our dignity while being kind.

Take the correction out. That’s the whole assignment.

And now the guardrail, because this chapter has a ditch on the other side and I’ve seen good people drive into it.

Read Romans 2:4 one more time and hear what it actually says. It does not say the kindness of G-d is the point. It says the kindness of G-d leadeth thee to repentance.

Repentance is the destination. It’s in Paul’s own sentence. And the verse immediately after it is not warm at all. “But after thy hardness and impenitent heart treasurest up unto thyself wrath against the day of wrath and revelation of the righteous judgment of G-d.” (Romans 2:5)

So kindness is the mechanism, and repentance is the aim.

Which means a theology of kindness that cannot call anybody to repent has not out-loved the conquest model. It has just stopped talking.

That’s a real danger and I want it named. It is entirely possible to take everything I’ve written in this chapter and turn it into a permission slip for never saying anything true to anyone. You can call that kindness. It isn’t. It’s conflict avoidance wearing kindness like a coat, and it leaves people exactly where you found them, which is the one thing actual kindness will never do.

Kindness is not the absence of confrontation. Kindness is what makes confrontation survivable.

Which brings me to the hardest thing in this book, and the place where everything I’ve just argued gets tested.

Because in the last week of His life, Jesus walked into the temple and turned the tables over.

If my thesis can’t survive that afternoon, it isn’t worth the paper. So the next chapter goes straight at it.