He has told you, O man, what is good; and what does the LORD require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God? Micah 6:8 (ESV)
The Old Testament word for “kindness”, as we have it in Micah 6:8 (Hebrew chesed), is difficult to translate into English with just one word. Depending on the translation ‘kindness” is rendered as mercy, loving-kindness, goodness and steadfast love. Richard Phillips portrays this word as “the great description of God’s faithful, kind and merciful covenant love.”
As we read through the book of Micah we notice that much of it is focused on God’s chastisement of his people. God’s love for his holiness would not allow Israel to go unpunished for their sin, however, in his love for his covenant people he would not continue to be angry toward them. In Micah 7:18, Micah exclaims, Who is a God like you, pardoning iniquity and passing over transgression for the remnant of his inheritance? He does not retain his anger forever, because he delights in steadfast love (Hebrew chesed). The attitude of God’s heart is to delight in steadfast love. It was God’s inclination, his bent toward steadfast love that led to his actions in pardoning Israel’s iniquity. He did not do it begrudgingly or from duty. He took pleasure in showing kindness.
This pleasure in steadfast love seems to be God’s call to us through his prophet. We are told “to do justice” and “to walk humbly”, but we are told, “to love kindness.” Kindness is to be an attitude of our hearts. And all acts of kindness are to flow from that attitude. In explaining “to love kindness” Peter Craigie writes, “It gives where no giving is required, it acts when no action is deserved, and it penetrates both attitudes and activities.”
For certain our affection for kindness or steadfast love will lead us to a life of showing kindness to the people we come in contact with every day. We have a great example of this in the parable of the Good Samaritan (Luke 10:29-37). Here we have man who had nothing to gain, reaching out to help someone he didn’t know and has no way of repaying his kindness. We see in the Good Samaritan the fulfillment of the second great commandment to love our neighbor as ourselves (Matthew 22:39). Richard Phillips writes, “To love kindness is to look on the weak and vulnerable with the eyes of God’s love and give them not what they deserve, but what they need.”
Has God not shown us kindness when it was not deserved? Can we ever repay him for the kindness he has shown toward us? But when the goodness and loving kindness of God our Savior appeared, he saved us, not because of works done by us in righteousness, but according to his own mercy, by the washing of regeneration and renewal of the Holy Spirit, whom he poured out on us richly through Jesus Christ our Savior. (Titus 3:4-6 ESV)
If we are to be sons of the Most High, we must be kind to the ungrateful and the evil. We must be merciful because he is merciful (Luke 6:35-36). We should take to heart the wisdom of King Solomon: Let not steadfast love (chesed) and faithfulness forsake you; bind them around your neck; write them on the tablet of your heart. (Proverbs 3:3 ESV)
Is your heart bent toward kindness?
Scriptures for meditation:
Proverbs 19:22
Galatians 5:22
Colossians 3:12