June 8

Kindness that Leads to Salvation

  Have you ever wondered what motivated God to send His only Son, Jesus, to die for unrepentant and ungrateful people such as ourselves?  “For if while we were enemies we were reconciled to God through the death of His Son, much more, having been reconciled, we shall be saved by His life”? (Romans 5:9)  And how is it that we as His enemies ever finally come to listen to His message to us, having been thoroughly estranged to Him by our inherited sin nature?  Paul makes this case in Romans 2:4, “Or do you think lightly of the riches of His kindness and tolerance and patience, not knowing that the kindness of God leads you to repentance?”

  It was ultimately God’s love for us that became irresistible as His sweet Holy Spirit of Grace whispered to us.  Hence it was His love by which we were drawn to Him, literally an Irresistible Force.  Jesus addressed this in John 6:44 when He said, “No one can come to Me unless the Father who sent Me draws him…” 

The Greek word for ‘draw’ is not the passive English variety of an ethereal spiritual attraction, but instead it is an active word that more resembles ‘drags’!  The central idea here is that God’s Spirit is overwhelming in a supernatural way.  The most essential idea connected to that is that His attraction is irresistible because His love and His kindness cannot be opposed by mere human flesh!  

Today, even now, we are still drawn to Him in such a way that we cannot resist the power of His perfect desirability and the kindness represented by the pure, sacrificial love of our Lord Master.