Agapē Is Kind

“Or do you presume upon the riches of his kindness and forbearance and patience, not knowing that God’s kindness is meant to lead to repentance?”

Rom. 2:4

Nobody in the world knows me better than my wife, Hayley.  I began to think to myself about how she reacted to my kind of “kindness” and quite often, though not always, her response would be to say, “What are you after?”  It is such merited cynicism as the anti-type which we must keep in mind when we think about God’s kindness.  The first thing we must insist upon is this – For kindness to be agapē kindness, it must want nothing for itself.  That principle is non-negotiable.  If kindness wants anything for itself, it is disqualified.  Agapē is always and can only be “me for others”.  It can never be “others for me”.  Kindness having anything up its sleeve is not kindness at all.  It is manipulation or seduction.  Sadly, the vast majority of our exposure to “kindness” has been the counterfeit variety which, in truth, is manipulation, i.e. self-giving in order to promote self-getting.  And this gives rise to the widespread notion that men give love to get sex and women give sex to get love.

Q: How do you feel knowing that God is kind to you not because He wants something from you but because it is His nature?

Agapē Cannot Envy

“A tranquil heart gives life to the flesh but envy makes the bones rot.”

Proverbs 14:30

Because agapē is self-for-others, agapē cannot envy. That is the kernel and the central truth of agapē. It can only ever be “me for your benefit”. Envy is the signature of the self-life. Envy is the desire to take from others while agapē is compulsion to give to others. Envy demands that “what is yours is mine” whereas agapē declares “what is mine is yours”. Agapē gives all it has to us – for free.

All of us have felt envy’s sting while some of us bear its scars, physical and emotional scars, which run deep and these wounds run the deepest when the sting comes at the tail of “love”. There will be very few of us who have not been the victims of envy and/or jealousy and who have even been envious or jealous of others.

What is “envy”? Literally, “envy” is the feeling of displeasure produced by witnessing or hearing of the advantage or prosperity of others. If allowed to take root, envy quickly and easily becomes jealousy. Jealousy is distinct from envy in that jealousy does not simply feel displeasure but goes on to give birth to an indignation which desires to deprive the victim of that which it is envious and take it for itself. In contrast, agapē is never jealous of you, it is jealous for you. Agapē loves people and uses things. It does not use people and love things.

Q: How do you feel knowing that God is not jealous of you but is jealous for you and that you will never need to be jealous ever again because part of His being jealous for you is that He is jealous on your behalf?

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