INTRO MUSIC People can be kind for all kinds of reasons.
Sometimes kindness is motivated by a selfish agenda, trying to look good or to impress someone, maybe get something in return. Today on Truth for Life, Alistair Begg continues our study of the fruit of the Spirit by explaining how Christian kindness and goodness should be distinctly different. I invite you to turn with me to Titus 2, and we'll read the second chapter. Paul encourages Titus, as he pastors in Crete in the first century, to make sure that his people understand the importance of good deeds accompanying the story of good news.
And we read from verse 1 of Titus chapter 2, but as for you, teach what accords with sound doctrine. Older men are to be sober-minded, dignified, self-controlled, sound in faith, in love, and in steadfastness. Older women, likewise, are to be reverent in behavior, not slanderers or slaves to much wine. They are to teach what is good, and so to train the young women to love their husbands and children, to be self-controlled, pure, working at home, kind, and submissive to their own husbands, that the Word of God may not be reviled. Likewise, urge the younger men to be self-controlled. Show yourself, in all respects, to be a model of good works, and in your teaching show integrity, dignity, and sound speech that cannot be condemned so that an opponent may be put to shame, having nothing evil to say about us.
Bond servants are to be submissive to their own masters in everything. They are to be well-pleasing, not argumentative, not pilfering, but showing all good faith so that in everything they may adorn the doctrine of our God and Savior. For the grace of God has appeared, bringing salvation for all people, training us to renounce ungodliness and worldly passions, and to live self-controlled upright and godly lives in the present age, waiting for our blessed hope, the appearing of the glory of our great God and Savior Jesus Christ, who gave himself for us to redeem us from all lawlessness and to purify for himself a people for his own possession who are zealous for good works. Declare these things. Exhort and rebuke with all authority.
Let no one disregard you. Amen. Father, as we turn to the Bible, we pray for your help, for the enabling of the Holy Spirit to both understand what it says, to explain it clearly, to believe it humbly, and that we might live in the light of it faithfully, for we ask it in Jesus' name. Amen. Galatians 5.22, the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, gentleness, self-control.
Against such things there is no law. It's perhaps helpful for us to remind one another that we began this series, at least partly from my perspective, in response to the increasing acrimony and ugliness of public discourse. I think as I was listening, as you've been listening, to much that has been said within the framework of political discourse, particularly, it seemed fairly obvious that the use of language and the approach of many individuals certainly would not be the approach that we would find emanating from the lips of the Lord Jesus himself, that we would find difficulty in producing justification for from our reading of the Bible and particularly from our reading of the New Testament. We recognized in making that observation, of course, that there is an incongruity that exists within those who profess to be followers of Jesus, the incongruity of proclaiming on the one hand good news and then of being guilty at the same time of bad behavior. Many of those who would be considered within the framework of evangelicalism, at least as it is published abroad—and we would have to include ourselves in the group—have to admit that we are prone to fits of anger, to dissensions, to divisions. It's not difficult to quarrel.
It is particularly easy to slander people we have never met, particularly those in political office, and to show a general spirit of discourtesy regarding the framework of social life itself. The same individuals, ourselves, who are proclaiming on the one hand that God is sovereign over all things in the world, then find ourselves acting as if the world is actually helplessly out of control. To the extent that that is an analysis that is fair, and I leave it for your conjecture, we acknowledge, too, that we're not the first generation, we're not the first congregation to face up to the challenge. That's why we read from Titus chapter 2. Paul writes to his young colleague in Crete, an environment that was particularly challenging, urging him to get everything right, to get the leadership right, the doctrine right, and to make sure that his people understand that there's a direct correlation between faith and practice. That true belief will reveal itself in right behavior. That they need to understand that the good news of Jesus and the good deeds that are done by those who are the followers of Jesus are supposed to go hand in hand. And in our reading there in Titus 2, if you picked it up, you will notice that in particular relationship to the bondservants, although it's true beyond that, Paul is saying, when your people get a hold of this, then in every area of life and in every stage of life, if they live in this way, then they will adorn the doctrine of God our Savior. In other words, they will make the gospel, the story of good news about Jesus, actually attractive so that those who either have never heard that story or who have significant questions about the story are not turned off by the animosity and ugliness of the lives of those who want to tell them the story but actually find themselves saying, Oh, I would like to hear about that as a result of what I have seen in you. In the NIV, the phrase is actually, making the teaching about God our Savior attractive. Or as Phillips paraphrases it, tell these folks he says to Titus to be a, quote, living testimonial to the teaching of God our Savior. It was all of that by way of background that gave rise to the thought, I wonder what it will mean for a congregation, for an individual, to set themselves as a group to considering the attractiveness of the fruit of the Spirit, the characteristics that are provided for us here in Galatians 5.
And on each occasion that we've turned to these things, we have sought to make sure that we were clear concerning three truths. Number one, that what we're dealing with here, this fruit, is the product of the Holy Spirit's ministry in the life of the child of God. It is not an imitation, it is not produced by law, it is the product of life, the life of God. Secondly, it follows that this fruit is then the evidence of the individuals abiding in Christ. You remember in John 15, Jesus says, I am the vine and you are the branches, and then he talks about what it means to abide in Christ. Phillips paraphrases that, it is the one who shares my life and whose life I share who proves fruitful.
For the plain fact is that apart from me, you can do nothing at all. So it is the fruit of the ministry of the Spirit, it is the evidence of the believers abiding in Christ, and thirdly, it is fruit that is produced in all parts in each believer. Fruit here is a collective noun. The Spirit is at work not just producing one or two segments of the fruit in individual lives, but he is actually producing all nine. That, you see, is what makes it quite challenging, isn't it? As we've gone through this, it's like having the searchlight of Scripture turned upon our hearts—what we know ourselves to be and what we know God knows us to be. Some of these segments may be in greater evidence than others, but they all must be there, because God is in the purpose of creating a whole integrated Christian character—in short, making us like Jesus. Now, with that said, we come this morning actually to two elements.
I'm going to take kindness and goodness together. It's not because I'm trying to chase to the end, although there is value in that, but it is because there is little distinction between these two elements. In fact, the words themselves are often used interchangeably in the Scriptures.
The person who taught me New Testament in London a long, long time ago now, Donald Guthrie, made it clear to us that when Paul produces a list like this, it is very unlike him to use two synonymous words without actually intending some distinction between them. It is, he says, quote, just possible that goodness is conceived to be more active than kindness. You notice the absence of dogmatism there, which I find wonderfully encouraging. You know, there are many, many people who would be able to give you the definitive reason without having any definitive reason at all. It would surely be their conjecture. But nevertheless, he says, it is just possible that.
And so I'm going with my prof. I'm taking it as read. And I'm going to think of kindness in terms of disposition of heart, and I'm going to think of goodness as the expression of that disposition. So we have disposition—that which is internal, that attitude, that core element—and then the expression of it. But before we get to that, it is vitally important that we realize that this kindness and goodness is grounded in the character of God. In my mind, I can hear some young person saying, Oh, please, let's just get to the good stuff that's about us. Why do we need to know about the character of God?
Well, Calvin told us that it is vital for us to descend from a devout musing upon the Godhead to come to a consideration of ourselves—that it is first in understanding who and what God is that we are then able to make sense of who and what we are in Christ. So I'm going to give you just a little bit of a paper chase. You can follow with me. I'll tell you where I am.
I'll go through it as quickly as I can. But this is of vital importance. Let's start with Psalm 145, where the psalmist says, The LORD is good to all, the LORD is faithful in all his words and kind in all his works. And people say, Well, who is God, and what is God like?
Well, we know he is this, that he is good to all, that he is faithful in all the words that he speaks, and that he is kind in all of the works that he does. And that's why the psalmist is able to go on and say, It is in light of that that he upholds all who are falling, and he raises up all who are bowed down. It's not unusual on a morning like this to find some people who have come into an assembly like this, and quite honestly, that describes you. You've tripped, and you're falling.
You feel yourself to be bowed down, and you're not sure that you might ever get up again, at least back to where you were. Well, what do you need? Well, you need God. And what is God like? Well, he's faithful in all his words. His promises can be trusted.
He's kind in all his works. He lifts up those who have fallen down, and he picks up those who feel that they cannot return. When you go to Hosea chapter 11 and the word of the prophet—and you can turn to that if you choose.
It's always hard to find Hosea, so don't worry if you can't get it in time. But Hosea 11 begins, When Israel was a child, I loved him. So this is the picture of God dealing with his people. Out of Egypt I called my son. The more they were called, the more they went away.
Isn't that amazing? The more God called them, the more they went on their own way. The more he told them what to do, the more they did what they liked. They kept sacrificing to bails and burning offerings to idols. And yet he said, even given that, it was I who taught Ephraim to walk, I took them up by their arms.
They didn't know that I healed them. I led them with cords of kindness and with the bands of love. Despite their rebellion, despite their wandering, God is towards them as a father to his children, as a tender farmer to his cattle. I think the hymn writer had Hosea 11 in mind when he wrote the hymn, I found a friend, O such a friend, he loved me ere I knew him.
Because the next line is, he drew me with the cords of love, and thus he bound me to him. God is not in the business of wrenching people's arms out and drawing them to himself. God is the one who comes in his kindness and in his goodness, in the awareness of our predicament in light of him. He is good to all. In fact, when you read in the New Testament, we jump forward to the New Testament, and Jesus is speaking, encouraging his followers to declare themselves to be truly his followers by the way in which they deal with individuals who are not like them at all. And he says in Luke chapter 6 and verse 35 that God is kind to the ungrateful and the evil.
What is God like? He's kind to the ungrateful and the evil. His kindness is uninfluenced by the gratitude or the ingratitude of those to whom it is shown.
Do you get that? The kindness of God is uninfluenced by the gratitude or the ingratitude of those to whom it is shown. I called out to my people. I led them in kindness and tenderness. I drew them to myself with cords of love. They rebelled against me. They went their own way.
They sacrificed to foreign gods and to idols. His kindness is not inhibited by the reaction of those upon whom he sets his love. And when we read in Titus chapter 2, we read purposefully, and we could have read on into chapter 3, which provides in a verse the Christmas Day passage for the Anglican church in the prayer brook, when the goodness and loving kindness of God our Savior appeared. When the goodness and loving kindness of God our Savior appeared. Where did it appear? In whom did it appear?
Well, it is this. This is why they read it on Christmas Day. Because when Jesus has come, then the character of God is displayed. His kindness, his goodness receives its ultimate expression. So when we look at Jesus and how Jesus lived and what Jesus did and how he dealt with people, then we understand something of the character of God. In fact, in our studies in Ephesians, we saw—and I hope some of us even remember in Ephesians chapter 2—that God in his grace has not only raised us up with him, that is, Jesus, and seated us with him in the heavenly places, but he has done so, verse 7, so that in the coming ages he might do what? He might show the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus. So in other words, in the age to come, in the new heaven and in the new earth, the Father will still be magnifying the wonder of his loving kindness towards us, expressed to us in Jesus, so that we will find ourselves actually saying to one another in whatever context, isn't it amazing that God was so kind to us? Isn't it amazing that God was so good to us? What an amazing thing that God would love those who didn't love him, that God would seek those who were running from him, that God would show his kindness in order to soften our hearts and open our eyes and make us realize that if we got what we deserved, it would be dreadful, and he gives to us something that we're entirely undeserving of.
It's amazing. Now all of that, then, has to form, if you like, the soil in which we think about the growth of both kindness and goodness. If you think about it, it is clear that the entire Godhead is involved in this—kindness and goodness defined in the character of the Father, displayed in the person and work of the Son, and produced in the life of the believer by the work of the Holy Spirit.
Now, I have purposely taken time on that. Let's see if the balance of the time will allow us to say something concerning, first of all, kindness in terms of disposition. Apart from the grace of God, each of us is preoccupied with our problems, our problems, our plans, our pleasures. People would say that's absolutely natural. And it is actually natural.
And the reason it's so natural is because it's an evidence of our predicament in terms of turning our back on God. Psychology Today, the magazine which you may see every so often in a bookstore, I pay attention to it fleetingly, but I have occasion to be amazed by it, and I love the honesty of it. It's described as a magazine providing insight about everybody's favorite subject—ourselves.
Right? That's honest. It's a magazine that provides insight about everybody's favorite subject—me. I am my favorite subject.
And so are you, by nature. If there are twelve of us waiting for a bus, and we are number seven in line, and the fellow conductor says, There is room for seven. How much do you think we care about eight, nine, ten, eleven, and twelve? We're only concerned about seven. I'm number seven.
I need to get on this bus. Now, when grace begins to refine a heart, when this fruit is produced in the life of the child of God, then we begin to take more than a passing interest in the well-being of others. We're not talking here about sort of instantaneous notions of kindness—oh, I think I'll do something!—but rather, we're talking about inner disposition, the disposition of heart.
God knows what the disposition of my heart is. I know it to a certain degree. You don't really know it. The only way you're going to know it is when we get to the expression of it.
But when we think in these terms, we say, Wow. You're listening to Truth for Life. That's Bible teacher Alistair Begg explaining the significance of Christlike kindness and goodness.
We'll hear more tomorrow. You know, you can grow deeper in your understanding of how kindness and goodness and the other attributes of the fruit of the Spirit were fully and perfectly displayed in the life of the Lord Jesus when you ask for a copy of the book we're recommending called The Character of Christ, The Fruit of the Spirit in the Life of Our Savior. This is a book that supplements our current series. It takes an in-depth look at how Jesus, whose every step was in harmony with the Spirit, displayed the fruit of the Spirit in his own life and ministry. While we may not always feel like we're making forward progress on our own, this book will be an encouragement to you by reminding you that it is God's Spirit who is the one making progress.
He's the one transforming us into the likeness of his Son. Ask for your copy of The Character of Christ, The Fruit of the Spirit in the Life of Our Savior when you support the ministry of Truth for Life today. You can make a donation securely online at truthforlife.org slash donate. By the way, your financial support is what cares for the cost of producing and distributing this daily program, and your giving also cares for the cost of making Alistair's online teaching library available for free. In fact, there are more than 3,000 messages on a variety of topics, including series through entire books of the Bible, and you can listen to or watch these on our website or on our mobile app. Well, we're glad you've joined us today. Tomorrow we'll learn how simple kindness can often be the most effective means of pointing others to Jesus. The Bible teaching of Alistair Begg is furnished by Truth for Life, where the Learning is for Living.
