We continue our focus this week on the following two passages:

With what shall I come before the Lord, and bow myself before God on high? Shall I come before him with burnt offerings…? He has told you, O mortal, what is good. What does the Lord require of you, but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?
Micah 6:6,8

Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you tithe mint, dill, and cumin, but have neglected the weightier matters of the law: justice and mercy and faith. It is these you ought to have practiced without neglecting the others.
words of Jesus in Matthew 23:23

Three things, the prophet Micah says, God requires of us – “to do justice, to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God.” Yesterday we noted that to “do justice” means to work for a society in which people are treated rightly. Today we will focus on what it means to “love kindness.”

The original Hebrew word in Micah 6:8 that is translated here as “kindness” is actually the word hesed – one of the most important words in the Old Testament. It means “steadfast love,” a love that is unlimited, unrelenting, and ready to forgive. It is love that is unearned, the sort of love that God pours upon humanity. So it is “kindness,” but it is also much more! Many people are kind, especially to their friends and neighbors. But to “love hesed” means that you are perpetually ready to show love even when it is undeserved, and you are ready to forgive even great wrongs. Obviously, the person who most supremely did this was Jesus!

In Jesus’ words, the parallel term that he uses, translated “mercy,” is in the original Greek of the New Testament the word eleos. This term has the sense of both compassion and forgiveness. It is the gracious attitude that God displays toward all those who are needy and who recognize their own sin; and it is the attitude that we now are called to show forth to the world! Thus we are drawn to do far more than simply “be nice to others.” We are led by Jesus to show his kind of unceasing compassion and boundless forgiveness to the broken world of our own time.

Prayer – Fill us, O Lord, with your steadfast love, that it may flow from us to others. Click To Tweet

If you missed Sunday worship, you can join with the recorded service of either the 9:30 or 10:30 worship hours at live.kentmethodist.org

About the Author

Dr. David A. Palmer has been the senior pastor at the United Methodist Church of Kent since 1995. He has a B.A. from Wittenberg University, a Master of Divinity from Duke University, and a Doctor of Ministry from Princeton Theological Seminary. A native of Wooster, Ohio, he has served three other churches in east Ohio before coming to Kent. He and his wife, Mavis, have three children.