Befriending Grace

Welcome to Gospel in Life Radio. We often assume that being kind, generous, and forgiving is all that matters. But in his writings to the early Church, the Apostle Paul offers a challenging truth. Even the greatest acts of love and sacrifice are empty if they're ultimately done out of self-interest. Today, Tim Keller explores how the Gospel transforms us completely, even our motivations, taking us people who love and serve others in response to God's grace for us. Do not let any unwholesome talk come out of your mouths, but only what is helpful for building others up according to their needs, that it may benefit those who listen. And do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God with whom you were sealed for the day of redemption. Be rid of all bitterness, rage and anger, brawling and slander, along with every form of malice. Be kind and compassionate to one another, forgiving each other, just as Christ God forgave you. Be imitators of God, therefore, as dearly loved children and live a life of love, just as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us as a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God. My command is this, love each other as I have loved you. Greater love has no one than this, that he laid down his life for his friends. You are my friends if you do what I command. I no longer call you servants, because a servant does not know his master's business. Instead, I have called you friends. For everything that I learned from my father, I have made known to you. It's the Word of the Lord. We're doing a series of studies in which we are looking at the marks of a supernaturally changed heart as distinguished from simply a morally restrained heart. So, in the very beginning, when we looked at 1 Corinthians 13, which is really the guidance for all of this whole series, it was a radical kind of subversive, I think it's fair to say, principle, that Paul laid down when he said, "If I give away all my goods to the poor, if I die for my faith, but have not love." See, when he said that, this is that radical principle. He was saying it's possible to do all of the morally virtuous behavior on all of the virtualists of the world, like Aristotle, Courage, Generosity, Justice, Integrity, Prudence, Self-Control, Paul says it's possible to do all that kind of morally virtuous behavior without any love at the core. It's possible to be incredibly virtuous in your behavior, and that flow out of an inner emptiness rather than an inner fullness of joy and of love and of peace. In other words, it's possible to do all that virtuous behavior to have it all done by a heart that's restrained through force, not changed at the root. And Jesus actually talks about this too a lot, constantly, this is not Saint Paul's issue only. There's a place in the ceremony on the Mount where Jesus says, "If your goodness," he says to his disciples, "If your goodness is not utterly different than, and utterly beyond the goodness and righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees and the moral religious leaders, you have nothing of me." So Jesus talks about it too. And therefore, the list, you can see, every religion of the world, when it wants to let you know what you should be like, gives you a list. And the list is always a list of virtuous behaviors, but the New Testament gives you something different. It does give you lists. And on the surface, it might look like the same kind of list, like Aristotle's list, a list of virtuous behaviors. But what it's actually giving us is a list of Galatians 5, the fruit of the Spirit. First Corinthians 13, which we're following to a great degree, love is patient kind and so on, its aspects of a supernatural changed heart. In other words, what we're looking at are the marks of how the supernatural grace changed heart shows itself in practice. Practical graces, in other words, we're calling it. And each week, we look at another one out of some of these different lists. And the more we're going to look at this evening today is in all the lists. It's in the list of a supernaturally changed heart. It's in Galatians 5 where the fruit of the Spirit are mentioned. It's in, it's in first Corinthians 13, and actually I think I printed it out at the very, very bottom of the scripture passage, kindness, love is kind. The fruit of the Spirit is love joy, peace, patience, kindness. Now, let's just ask, well, let's look at this particular mark of a supernatural changed heart under three headings. What kindness is not, what this spiritual mark trait is not, what it is and how we can get it. But it's not what it is, that's one way to be clear is to say what it's not, and then say what it is, and then say how you can get it. First of all, what it's not. Right in the middle of this passage in Ephesians that Paul writes to the church, he says, be kind and compassionate to one another, forgiving. Now, last week, we looked at the idea of forgiveness. Did we not? If you were here. And for our purposes, we ought to contrast this in most people's minds. Most people find forgiveness very hard, or at least pretty hard. Last week, I think the passage we looked at was one of the places where Jesus says, when someone says, how often should we forgive? And he says 70 times, or sometimes he says 70 times seven. And since seven is the perfect number, that was an ancient, Semitic way of saying Jesus was saying, you must forgive endlessly. You must constantly forgive. You must forgive no matter how often it happens to you. And the average person, when they hear about that, when they hear that Christianity or Christ calls them to endless forgiveness, the average person says, that's hard. I can't do that without help. That's really hard. But when you get to this trait, kindness doesn't seem that hard, or put it another way. Studies show. Research shows that most people admit they have trouble with forgiveness. That it's really hard to forgive. Most people admit they have some trouble with forgiveness, but virtually nobody thinks they have trouble with kindness. In other words, it's almost impossible out there to find an American who says, yeah, yeah, I'm one kind. I'm a pretty unkind person. No. There's plenty of people who say, I have trouble with forgiveness. I don't know that I'm a forgiving person. Lots of people say that. But the kindness and compassion, they say, sure, I'm kind of kind. I'm sort of kind. I mean, I'm kinder than a lot of people. I'm not unkind, see? So kindness and compassion looks easy. Forgiveness seems very hard. So the question right away comes up, why would it be on the list? Why is it on the Galatians 5 list? Why is it in 1 Corinthians 13? What's so hard about it? It seems like it's not that hard. There's a lot of kind people around. Not everybody is, but a lot of people are very nice and very kind and very good. And every family is a couple of people. They're all over the place. It's not so hard. Oh, really? Two articles recently in periodicals around here that kind of get it something that is relevant to our discussion. Dave Denby in this week's New Yorker, he does a kind of movie review of some actors who recently, he mentions Kevin Spacey, Robin Williams, and Jim Carey. He says, it seems like there's a lot of actors that get to a certain stage in their career where they want to play characters of pure kindness and goodness and filled with pure concern for other people. And Dave Denby points out that almost all of these movies are terrible. He says they're modeling their sentimental, and you may agree or may disagree with some of the, you know, which movies you think are terrible. But he says one thing in the article, which is kind of hard to disagree with, and it's very, very thought-provoking, especially in light of our discussion. He says at one point, actors forget how hard it is to make extreme goodness dramatically interesting. He says a really good person to play, really good, it's almost impossible to make interesting. Why would that be? And then, right along the same lines, it was an interview between Ian McCallan, a very good actor, and Amy Barrett, who was the interviewer, and it was in the New York Times magazine about month or two ago. And the same subject came up, and so this is a, he said, she said, I'll have to read you the interview like this. And so basically, he says, McCallan says, good characters are very, very difficult to play. And she says, really? More difficult than evil ones? He says, oh, yes, oh, absolutely. I mean, for example, do you know any really good people? And Amy Barrett says, well, I think I know a couple, and McCallan went on, and so don't just wonder at them. Don't you look at those really good people and you wonder and you say to yourself, gracious me, what is their motive for being like that? Don't you just wonder at them? It's so difficult. How does an actor figure out someone like that? And then Amy Barrett comes back and says, well, sometimes I must admit, I find goodness a little boring in people actually. And then McCellum says, right, back and says, well, you see, there it is, it's really good people who are the inhuman ones, not the really wicked people. Now, he's getting at exactly what St. Paul gets at in 1 Corinthians 13, exactly what we're getting at in this series. He says, not on all the motivations behind where everything he says, but he is talking about, and Dave Denby is talking about, they said, there's a type of goodness, niceness, kindness, which seems artificial, false, forced and unreal. Why would that be? And the answer is, according to 1 Corinthians 13, because it's possible for kindness, which is not the result of a changed heart, but of a restrained heart, right? In other words, what is kindness? I mean, common sense, kindness is the opposite of selfishness. If you're selfish, you're not kind, that's why you go by the person who's wants to talk to you. If you're kind, you're not selfish, you're selfish, you're not kind, but there is a type of kindness, there's a type of kindness in which the native selfishness of the heart is not dealt with, it's not changed, it's not really dealt with, but rather it's hidden and expressed through external actions that appear kind and generous, but are really ways of getting power over people and esteem for yourself. There's a kind of kindness, which is really all about you. Now, you shouldn't be surprised to know that Friedrich Nietzsche was into this, and it was all, I mean, it was onto this. When you first read "Also Sprags Arethuscher," the one thing that really strikes you about Nietzsche is so offensive at how much he despises the trait of kindness and neighbor love, and he just despises Christianity for having produced kindness and neighbor love, and he says, "Oh, this is the morality for the weak," and when you first read that, you're so offended, you say, "What happened to him? What's the matter with him?" But he's actually, if you're willing to sit with him and listen to him, he is saying very similar things about morality out there in our society that Jesus was saying about the scribes and the Pharisees and the Paul was saying. There's one place, for example, when Nietzsche says this, "Subjection to morality can be slavish, vain, and self-interested, and therefore not moral at all." Now, what is he talking about? If Nietzsche and St. Paul and Tim Keller are agreeing on something, you ought to at least give it some weight, but if let me illustrate this by going to a really great book, Great Novel, Pride and Prejudice, which I've referred to recently, in Pride and Prejudice now, if you've never read the book and never watched the films, you still figure this out because you recognize the types of people. You've got three of the five sisters that will illustrate what we're talking about. You have Jane, Mary, and Lizzie Bennett. Jane, Mary, and Lizzie Bennett. Now Jane is temperamentally nice. She's the oldest child, and she is just, you know the kind of person. She's temperamentally so nice, so good, so kind, never a harsh word, never a word of criticism. Always eager to please, always so complying, and you know exactly the kind of person. Because you know that kind of person, because they're always so dear, and they're so endearing that I'm going to have to step in here because what I'm about to say about the kind of person that Jane represents is going to sound sort of harsh to you, so I'm going to step in and be honest about my own life and heart and take some of the abuse I'm about to give out. I'm an oldest child too, and whereas I certainly don't have the personality, I'm too sardonic, I'm not like Jane in some ways, but I'll tell you this. I also, I can partake of the oldest child syndrome thing. I am a knee jerk nice maker. Now you've heard of your refrigerator has an ice maker. Okay, I'm talking about a nice maker, not an ice maker. And what do I mean by that? My instincts, absolute instincts are agree, give in, make nice, make peace, smile. This can be a win-win situation. There's no need for a confrontation, there's no need for a division. Everything can be just fine. Absolutely my instincts. Everybody can be happy. I know it can happen. It doesn't matter. I'll do anything. But years ago God showed me, a little word of personal testimony, that there was almost no concern for other people in my temperamental kindness. It's almost completely about me. Now you say how would that be? You just want to be like, it's really not quite that simple. It's not that simple. All I know is, and some of you listen, everybody knows people like this, and a lot of you are like this, so it's not like this is not relevant, everybody. I'm the kind of person that unless everybody inside my sphere of influence is happy, I don't feel like a worthwhile person. So for example, one of the things is, I've had a parent, now I don't have any of my kids here tonight, so I can use this. I've had to parent three sons alongside of a spouse, a mother, who really has no problem having people unhappy inside her sphere of influence, no problem at all. And so for example, many times we would have to say to one of our sons something that we knew he did not want to hear and was going to make him incredibly unhappy for minutes, hours, or days. And what was so intriguing was, I could not live. I mean, it was just like agony to have somebody inside my sphere of influence who was unhappy. I could hardly take it. Whereas my wife did have no problem with it at all, not a bit. And Kathy would just say, he's always going to be unhappy. And it just about killed me. Is that a virtue? Why did it kill me? Because I'm just so sensitive and she's not, because I'm a better person, she's not. No, absolutely not. I do not feel like a worthwhile person. If somebody inside my sphere of influence isn't happy. And therefore, I need for you to be happy. It's not about you. I've got to have you happy. It's not about you. It's all about me. And see, Nietzsche's right. My kindness, temperamental niceness so often is actually a result of inner weakness, of inner lack of confidence, of inner emptiness. It is all about you. That's temperamental niceness. That's the Jane kind of person. But then you have another kind of person. It's a kind of person who's very nice and very kind, but you need them to be happy. It's all about you. There's another kind of niceness and goodness, which is I'll call not temperamental niceness, but moralistic niceness. And that's represented by a second, another one of the Bennett girls, Mary. And Mary, I think I may have referred to her a couple of weeks ago, in the book. You won't get this in the film. The book, the narrator, Jane Austin says, Mary's problem was that she was the plaintiff of the five girls. And because she was plain, she desperately needed to feel like she was better than other people in something. And because she needed to feel she was better than other people, she got into morality, altruism, and charity. And therefore, she was very altruistic and she was very charitable. She was always doing nice things for people. But it was all about her. Because unlike the temperamental nice person, who desperately needs other people to be happy, the moralistically nice person desperately needs other people to be grateful. And so, for example, nobody put it better than Lewis in his The Weight of Glory, where CS Lewis says, no, it's in the four loves. And he says, if you do someone a kindness to show him or others or yourself, what a fine chap you are, or to put them in your debt. And then you sit down and you wait for gratitude. You're going to be in for a lot of disappointment in life. All natural affection, do you hear this? Wow. All natural affection is idolatrous and needs to be purified. What he means by that is all natural kindness is self-serving. So you see, some people are very kind, but it's all about you. Not about them. You look for gratitude, indebtedness. Now, you will treat me with the respect that I want and deserve. Or it's all about neediness. It's all about, I need to have you happy. Otherwise, I don't feel like I'm really a worthwhile person. And now, thirdly, you get to Lizzie. And what's interesting about Lizzie is Lizzie is not an artificially kind person like Jane and Mary. She's an unkind person. I mean, what's really what the book's about is she's the smart one. She's the witty one. She understands what's really going on. And people, she knows how to skewer them. She knows how to deconstruct them. She knows how to see what they're really about. But as a result of that, she's harsh. She tells her. people off. And that's what I think what the book's name is about. It's about pride and prejudice, and a lot of it is hers. But I believe that she gives us more of a picture of what God means, what the Bible means by kindness, because she's humbled into kindness. Mary and Jane don't have enough inner strength, whereas Lizzie does not have enough humility. Lizzie has the confidence, but not a humility to be kind. She's unkind. She's brussed. She's harsh. She's indifferent. She writes people off. But Jane and Mary, they don't have enough humility. They don't have enough inner confidence. They don't have enough inner assurance. So because don't you begin to see nobody's really kind naturally. There's people who are very, very humble, but they don't have enough inner assurance. So they're artificially kind. And it's all about you them. And there's other people who got plenty of confidence, but as a result, they tend to be brussed and busy and indifferent and condescending. And they're unkind. Only if there was some incredible juxtaposition of deepest humility, an incredible assurance and inner strength, could you really be truly kind, the kindness that's not that's not selective, the only kind of certain people, a kindness that's not conditional, you know, on the basis of gratitude or happiness or people getting better quickly since I'm helping you. Real spiritual kindness is something that is not natural. It really has to be a mark of a supernatural-chase heart. Do you see? It's got to come to us. It's got to be born in us. And therefore, the fact of the matter is artificially kind people do seem, as was said, less human than even broken people or even bad people. Because you see at least broken people and bad people, you can, they know what's going on in their heart. And they're usually very often sensitive in some cases to other people who are also messed up. But as you see, artificially good people are really less human. They really are less human. It is forced, it is odd. They don't know about, they're not in touch with their own heart. They're not in touch with what's really going on in themselves. And very often, they're very, very, they don't understand why other people can't pull themselves together like they have. But it's possible to have a kindness that doesn't make you less human, but more. Many of us spend more time thinking about ourselves than we'd like to admit, whether we're comparing ourselves to others or just trying to live up to our own expectations. It's easy to become pre-occupied with what we've done or accomplished. In his short book, The Freedom of Self Forgetfulness, Tim Keller shows how embracing the truth of the gospel makes it possible for us to let go of the constant need to evaluate ourselves and points us to an identity that's secure because of Christ's work on the cross. This month, as thanks for your gift to help gospel in life spread the good news of the gospel with more people, we'll send you two English copies of The Freedom of Self Forgetfulness and one Spanish copy that you can share with a Spanish speaker in your life. Sharing the Spanish copy is part of our focus this month on gospel and life's translation initiative, as we launch the Global Reach Project, where with God's help and in partnership with the Keller family, we are translating 500 of Dr. Keller's sermons into 30 of the world's most spoken languages. Through the Global Reach Project, millions more people around the world will be able to access the hope of the gospel shared through Dr. Keller's teaching in their native language to learn more, go to theglobalreachproject.com and to request your copies of the Freedom of Self Forgetfulness, visit gospelonlife.com/give. Again, that's gospelonlife.com/give. Now here's Dr. Keller with the rest of today's teaching. So secondly, that's what it's not. Kindness is not all about you. There's an artificial kind of, what is real spiritual kindness? Three things, practical grace, befriending grace, visionary grace, real kindness to other people, real warmth, real love. Boy, are you a kind person? The people that know you, if they had to, if you said, choose two adjectives that really sum up who I am or how I come across to people, would either them be kind? A lot of you say, oh no, then listen. Three things. First of all, kindness is practical grace meeting needs. Now this is the most common sense of the three aspects of kindness. You see it in verse 29, perfectly. This is only communication. This is the venue of kindness through words and through communication, but there it is. In verse 29, do not let any unwholesome talk come out of your mouths, but only what is helpful for building others up according to their needs that it may benefit those who listen. There it is, in a way. Benefit those who listen. In other words, everything I do when I speak is not what meets my needs, but what meets theirs. What do they need? What do they need to hear? That's what I give them. And then you're kind. That's a kind conversation. It's kindness expressed through your words. Do you enter into conversations asking, what do these people really need from me? What do they need the conversation to go? That's kindness. So basically kindness is very simple. It's meeting the needs of other people instead of your own. It's meeting the needs, it's noticing needs and meeting the needs of other people instead of your own. But look carefully before we move on. Even here, it doesn't say that you should say what pleases them, but what benefits them. And here again, you have a distinction, not between just kindness and unkindness, but between unkindness, artificial kindness, and real kindness. Because unkindness says, it tells people off. It just says whatever you want to say. But artificial kindness never tells people off, never criticizes. Never says anything that's kind of harsh. Why? Artificially kind people, it's all about you. So you're so warm and you're so supportive and you're so kind and you never criticize and you never tell people off, why? Because you're not that concerned with what benefits them. You're not truly kind. You're artificially kind. You're using what looks like kind, generous actions to get power over people or to meet your own needs or something like that. It doesn't say, tell people off and meet your own needs, but it also doesn't say, only tell them what pleases you, what pleases them and therefore meet your own needs, but tell them, give them what they need, whatever it is. Even if it means they're going to be mad at you, then you know you're kind. Then you know you're kind. So kindness, first of all, is meeting other needs. It's practical grace, but secondly, it's befriending grace. Now what do I mean by that? Listen, you're not supposed to just give things. Kindness is not just giving things, not just giving advice, not just giving money, not just giving deeds, it's giving yourself. There we start to see how hard it is. Notice in verse 32, it says, be kind and compassionate to one another. If the sentence said, be kind and compassionate to others, Paul would be calling for you to find objects for your kindness. But when he says, be kind and compassionate to one another, he is calling you to find subjects for your kindness. Now what that means is, one another is a mutual relationship. And therefore what he's saying is, I want to see you engaging in mutual interdependent relationships with your kindness. So without personal involvement, without a willingness to open up, without a willingness to enter in to relationship, you're not really a kind person. A kind person is marked by befriending grace. Now why did I say it that way? I thought a lot about I was trying to get this across. You can only have so many friends, right? You can't be friends with everybody. You only have so much time, you only got so much of you. But I believe that that doesn't mean that it's not possible in every encounter, even with people you've never met before, and with person maybe you never will meet again. It is possible, though, that person can't be your friend, for them to experience through you befriending grace, which is the essence of kindness. It means that it means that the same two elements of real friendship can show up in every encounter you have with people, even people you just happen to meet or bump against in the subway. Now what are those two elements? Well let me say it several times over and over to get them through. The two elements of real friendship are vulnerable transparency and unconditional constancy, transparency, constancy. A friend always lets you in, never lets you down. Now you got to have the two of them. Some people are very good at being there for you, but they don't let you in. You know, arms together. They don't let you in, they don't let you see you. They won't let you down, but they won't let you in. And there's other people who let you in, you know, all the time, every time you talk with them, it's just, you know, their whole life, but they're not there for you, and they're not friends then. Friendship, friendliness, to be a friend is an active grace, of course. And it's also, well, we're not going to talk about friendship in general, we can't do it. But I am saying that you are supposed to be, if you're a kind-hearted person, that means that you'd give befriending grace in every encounter. Those same two elements can be there. In fact, by the way, you see him in John 15, you notice this, when Jesus Christ, and I put this in after Ephesians 5, that we're not actually studying it, when Jesus Christ says, "I'm your friends," He gives the same two elements, what makes him our friend? One is, you're not a servant, you're a friend, because I tell you my business. I tell you what's going on inside. I let you in, and secondly, I give my life for you. I don't let you down. Same two elements. Have you ever encountered somebody who gave you befriending grace in that encounter? Didn't just brush you off, and didn't just sort of do their duty. Well, really kind, what is befriending grace? Well, I've experienced in this what it means. First of all, it's the same two things that you've got to have to be a truly, super-spirited kind person. There's a humility, and yet there's a confidence. On the one hand, befriending grace happens when this person I'm talking to, that there's a humility, and therefore there's a transparency. There's no spin. There's no sense that I have no sense that he or she is trying to control what I see of them. There's just an openness. There's just a, you know, there's a transparency. There's a lack. There's a willingness to simply be very, very honest about him or herself. So on the one hand, there's a transparency, but on the other hand, there's a safety. Now, here's what I mean by that. See, friends, never let you down. Even in an encounter, you sometimes recognize with somebody that they are so, they have such an inner strength and inner confidence that they actually don't need you to be anything. They don't need you to get happy if they help you. You don't sense that they need you to do better. You don't sense that they need you to be grateful. You don't sense that they need you to do anything. So often you get it, as soon as you encounter some people, you know immediately, here's a person I could shock. Here's a person I could offend. Here's a person that it wouldn't be that hard for them. Right now they're friendly, but it wouldn't take much for them to say, "Forget you." They're not safe. They need for you to be a certain kind of person. They need for you to say certain things. They need for you to be in a certain condition, where the relationship can't go on. But in befriending grace, you got somebody so humble that there's a transparency and an openness, but so confident and so sort of internally full that they don't really don't need you to be in a certain way. Therefore, it's safe to be honest. It's safe for you to stop spinning and putting spin on everything. Have you experienced that kind of befriending grace? Do you give it to people? Do you give it to everybody you meet? Do they sense that from you? So first of all, kindness is meeting needs of other people instead of your own, and not just selfishly being at all about you. Secondly, it's befriending grace, but thirdly, it's visionary grace. It's practical grace, it's befriending grace, and it's visionary grace. In other words, kindness is toward an end. It's got a vision for the people that you're encountering. See, what is the motive for your kindness? That was what Ian McCallan asked way back in the beginning of the sermon when we read that part of the interview. He says, "I look at some good people, I look at people who are like Jane. They're so nice, they're so sweet, and they're never kind." And I say, "What's the motive for that?" And that's the question we've been asking all along. We've seen all the bad motives, but now what's the right one? Why are you kind to people? Just so you can feel that you're a great person, like Lewis said. What is the goal? Interestingly enough, verse 29 talks a little bit about it. It says, "Don't do anything or say anything, but that which is helpful for building up others." And the word there, "Oikido-me," is a word for building up edify, but it really is a word for building a house, and that's interesting because you never build a house without a blueprint. You got something you're looking at, right? What are you looking at when you encounter people? And if you're not, you're not going to be kind. What's your vision for your encounter? If you don't have this vision, I just don't think you're going to be able to keep up the kind of standard of kindness that we've got here. What is that vision? Well, right in the middle of all this talk about, build each other up, don't tear people down, be kind, be compassionate, be forgiving. Suddenly Paul says, "And don't grieve the Holy Spirit of God, with whom you were sealed for the day of redemption." What's that doing in there? Well, now first of all, you say, "Well, and this is right, the most obvious part is, here's the part that is easy to understand." Obviously, it's saying that it's unkindness that grieves the Holy Spirit. The presence of God with you is grieved by unkindness. Okay, that's why he's saying that. And that's great to know. But why does he add this little description of the Holy Spirit? Why does he say, "Unkindness particularly grieves the Holy Spirit because the Holy Spirit's job is to seal people for the day of redemption." That's why unkindness hurts him. What does that mean? And what's the day of redemption? Well, it's a future thing. It's not the past. It's not looking at the day in which we got redeemed in the sense of, that we gave our lives to Christ. It's looking to the future. It's looking to the day of redemption. The day in which utter redemption happens. Redemption of your souls, redemption of your bodies, redemption of the universe, redemption of everything spiritually and socially and culturally and physically. On the day of redemption, everything broken will be repaired. Everything, every good thing lost will be recovered and everything sad will become untrue. And yet more glorious for having once been sad and broken and lost. And because the Holy Spirit is always dealing with every person, always working in every life with that in view, he hates unkindness. Because unkindness means you're out of step with the Holy Spirit. Because the Holy Spirit in all of his dealings with everyone is looking to that day. Do you? What do we mean by that? Well, what are you going to be like on that day? What could Paul talks about it in Romans 8? He says, "I consider that the suffering of this present time is not worthy to be care-paired with the glory that will be revealed in us." Glory revealed in us? Yeah. Here's an acorn. Imagine. How does that compare to the redwood tree from which it comes? It's incredible. You like that was all in there, but it was. And it was all in there. Incredible potential in that acorn. Giant redwood. How much different is the giant redwood from the acorn? Okay, now look around you. Well, it's New York, so don't look. No eye contact. Think around you. You know what you've got? Go out in the street and look around you. Spiritual acorns, as far as I can see, what this means is any human being that gets planted. See, that's what makes a difference. That's what makes an acorn erupt. Anything that's planted, any human being is planted in the love and power of God. In them, there is such beauty, there is such potential, there is such power, there is such stuff in there that is so beyond what they are right now, in power and beauty and degree, that it makes the difference between an acorn and a redwood look like nothing. And the Holy Spirit says, "That's what I'm after in all my encounters. I want to get people to their glory cells. I want to get people to that future time. And can you stay in step with him? Or are you going to grieve him? Can you conduct all of your dealings with people with that in view?" Now, nobody ever put it any better than C.S. Lewis, who puts it like this in his famous book, "Glory," a famous essay or his talk, actually. He says, "There are no ordinary people. You've never talked to a mere mortal. Nations, cultures, arts, civilization, these are mortal, and their life is to ours has the life of a nat. It's a serious thing to remember that the dullest and most uninteresting person you talk to may one day be a creature which, if you saw it now, you would be strongly tempted to worship. Or else, a horror and a corruption such as you now meet if at all only in a nightmare. All day long, we are in some degree helping each other to one or the other of these destinations. It is in the light of these overwhelming possibilities. It is with the awe and circumspection proper to them that we should conduct all our dealings with one another. All friendships, all loves, all play, all politics. Lift up your eyes, you know what you've been doing, you know what we do? We think of ourselves as like we have our story, our little story, and when we encounter people it's like they come into our story and we say I wonder if we can get them to play the role we want, so that our story will go in the direction we want it to go in. Lift up your eyes, every human being is in a story, and the end of that story is glory or terror, and God's watching it and the angels are watching it and every encounter, every encounter you have, you get into their story. Now are you going to come into their story, fill with your own needs, say how can I use these people to make me feel better? Or are you going to say as God and the angels watching, are you going to come into that story and say what can I do to get these people into God eventually, and all it takes by the way, is every, you know, see what Lewis says, every day we're moving people either toward more hope and more openness and more love and more encouragement and, or away from it, in the way we treat each other, are you willing to enter into all of your relationships into every encounter with the awe and circumspection proper to that realization? Every grace means when I come upon a person, any human being, I realize I've got something of infinite preciousness, infinite value. I want to come into their life the way God has come into my life, not to be served but to serve. Practical grace, befriending grace, visionary grace, where are we going to get the power for this? We're going to get the power for this, you know, sending you out to be more forgiving people last week was bad enough. And you thought kindness was easy and you thought, well, I'm pretty kind. What are we going to do? Where do you get the power for this? How do you get this? Well, I mean the answer here is, is so simple. Paul lays it right out. Notice how, where the therefore is. Chapter 5 verse 1, after he's been saying, I want you to never say anything except that which benefits people, how about that? I want you to conduct all of your dealings the way the Holy Spirit does in light of the day of redemption. I want you to know anger, no sprawling, no slander, no bitterness and rage, kind, compassionate to one another, how? Therefore, if you want to do all that, therefore, look at the God who is kind to us in Christ. Titus chapter 3 puts it perfectly. At one time, we too were foolish, disobedient, deceived, enslaved by all kinds of passions and pleasures. We lived in Malice and envy, being hated and hating one another, oh, but when the kindness and love of God, our Savior appeared. He saved us. Where did the kindness appear? The kindness of God appear, you know what that word means? It means, it became visible. You know who he's talking about? Would you like to see the ultimate kindness, Jesus, practical grace, concrete grace, incarnation? He became visible. He became concrete. But friend and grace never lets you down, always us you in. Look at Jesus' vulnerability. Are his arms open to you? They were nailed open for you. There's vulnerability. And then secondly, you went constancy when Jesus Christ was in the Garden of Gethsemane, he suddenly realized that he was going to have to go through hell if we were going to be his friends. Hell quote unquote, hell, capital H, capital E, capital L, capital L, and he did it. And see, let's go back to the beginning. What did we say? Real spiritual kindness. The kindness we're talking about takes a radical humility and a radical confidence. And we're going to get that. If we're doing well in life, we're confident, but not humble. If we're not doing well in life, we're humble, but not confident, where are we going to get that? The great thing about Lizzie Bennett in the book is that she is humbled into kindness. She's moved into kindness. It's not the natural artificial kindness that comes from need, but she's humbled into it. And here's what will both humble and affirm you into kindness. It's the kindness of Jesus, nailed open, constant. The kindness of Jesus shows because he died on the cross. And humbles you because it shows you were so bad, he had to die for you, but it affirms you because it shows you're so valuable, he wanted to die for you. And when you put those two things together, then and only then, will you be able to live a life of love? That's the source of it. You have to take it. You have to make it real to yourself. You have to think about it as you walk out the door. You know, one thing about forgiveness is probably unless somebody, you know, punched you in the jaw on the way out. You have to practice last week's sermon on the very way out the door, you know, on forgiveness. But this week, the way you treat people just as you get out of here is we affected by your grasp of this call, be kind, compassionate to one another, as God was kind of compassionate in Jesus Christ to you. Let us pray. Father, we pray that you would give us befriending grace so that we can move out of the world with a kind of warmth, with a kind of concern for other people so that in every one of our encounters, we're looking for what will benefit them, what will meet their need, not ours. We're looking to give them befriending grace. We're looking to that great day. We have a sense of excitement for what they can be. Father, how that would, that would just so transform the way we relate to everybody. And so we ask that you would help us. Make us a community of people like that. And then, and then, what great neighbors we would be for the city in which we live. Make us like your son, who came not to be served, but to serve, and give his life a ransom for many in his name we pray, amen. Thanks for joining us here on the Gospel and Life Podcast. If you are encouraged by today's teaching, you can help others discover this podcast by reading and reviewing it, and to find more great Gospel-centered content by Tim Keller, visit gospelandlife.com. Today's sermon was recorded in 2002. The sermons and talks you hear on the Gospel and Life Podcast were recorded between 1989 and 2017, while Dr. Keller was senior pastor at Redeemer Presbyterian Church. [BLANK_AUDIO]