Sinclair Ferguson

In some circumstances, simply being patient with a difficult person is being kind to them.

Kindness is a beautiful thing.

I think there's some evidence that it's related to the old word kine or kin, meaning your relatives, people in your family.

It means treating people as family.

Kindness often translates one of the greatest words in the Hebrew Bible, chesed, what one of the Old Testament scholars translated as leal love, loyalty love.

It's just as Paul says in 1 Corinthians 13 and verse 4.

I think we should notice something here again that's both important and encouraging.

Kindness isn't something spectacular, is it?

This isn't about being on the big stage and being fawned on by adoring fans as though you were some kind of celebrity.

But this is what really matters.

This is what the Holy Spirit most delights to produce in us.

Not kudos, but kindness.

Actually, it's what the Little Old Testament book of Ruth is all about.

How Ruth showed kindness to her bereaved mother-in-law, Naomi.

And how Boaz showed kindness to Ruth.

and how Boaz felt that Ruth had shown kindness to him, and all because of the kindness of the God who is kind to his people.

The Spirit wants to inject that into our spiritual DNA so that it's embedded in all we are, in everything we do, in all the words we say.

Kindness is a simple thing, but it's a beautiful grace.

I think I've noticed over the years, in all the different personalities of the outstanding Christians I've known, that for all their differences in temperament, there's always this common feature.

They're kind, and they show kindness.