1Pet. 2:1 Therefore, putting aside all malice and all deceit and hypocrisy and envy and all slander, 2 like newborn babies, long for the pure milk of the word, so that by it you may grow in respect to salvation, 3 if you have tasted the kindness of the Lord.
Psa. 145:17, The LORD is righteous in all His ways
And kind in all His deeds.
Twice in the first chapter of Ephesians, in verse 5 and 9, Paul says that God asked towards us according to his kind intentions.
The bottom line is this; God is kind. He doesn’t just do kind things; He is kind. That is his personality and character. Like the Aslan figure in C.S. Lewis’s books, God is all powerful and is able to destroy the universe with a single breath, but He is kind.
Somehow we think that if God is righteous He can’t be kind, because often the people around us who claim to be righteous are mean-spirited and judgmental towards others. That passage in Psalm 145 says that God is righteous in all His ways and kind and all His deeds. That is, He is always righteous; and He is always kind. I would dare to say that the holiest and most righteous thing about God is that He who is love, is kind. Romans 2:4 says, “… the kindness of God leads us to repentance.” It’s not just that God it’s kind to offer us a way home into fellowship with Him through repentance, or that He kindly leads us to repentance, instead of angrily leading us to repentance; what that verse says to us is that we are motivated to repent because we know on the other side of our confession and repentance we find a God who is kind waiting to embrace and cleanse us. That’s an amazing truth to understand; in those times when we fail, to know that on the other side of confession and repentance there is not an angry God who wants to condemn and reject us. Like the father of the prodigal son, in kindness He waits for our repentance so that He can throw a party on our behalf. I know it doesn’t sound fair, because we have a tendency to always condemn our own hearts; but it’s His kindness, and the grace that flows from His kindness that makes him SO OTHER.