“When the kindness and love of God our Savior appeared, he saved us…” (Tit. 3:4-6). “God is kind to the ungrateful and the evil” (Lk.6:35). “The kindness of God leads you to repentance…” (Rom. 2:4). “As God’s chosen people, holy and dearly loved, clothe yourselves with … kindness….” (Col. 3:12). “The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control” (Gal.5:12-13).
Heavenly Father, thank you for being incomparably, relentlessly, extravagantly kind to us. How kind are you? Through our union with Jesus, we live in a perpetual state of your favor, affection, and delight.
You’re not kind until it “no longer works”—and you have to resort to being a bit harsh with us. Not at all… for it is your kindness that compels and leads us to repentance (Rom.2:4). Indeed, your kindness isn’t a sweet mood; it’s the loving fire of your heart that breaks and melts our hard hearts.
So we repent, Father, on this 1st Sunday morning of 2025. We repent of refusing to believe you love us as much as you say you do (Eph.3:18-19). We repent of under-believing the Gospel. You don’t “put up with us” with strained tolerance; you put us “in Christ”—counting Jesus’ death and righteousness as ours, raising us to newness of life in him—even declaring Jesus’ life to be ours, and our future to be an eternity of sharing in his glory. (Col. 3:1-4).
Father, by the power that raised Jesus from the dead, enable us to love and live this one verse today, then tomorrow, and the rest of our lives: “Be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ forgave you” (Eph. 4:32). So Very Amen.