Love and Kindness

Last Saturday night, I was sitting at my kitchen table wrapping up the last lesson in a two-part study of 1 Samuel. I do have a perfectly nice, if a bit cluttered, home office, but there’s a more conveniently located plug-in for the space heater by the kitchen table, and my Bible’s always there from my morning Bible study anyway, so a lot of times, I wind up working at the kitchen table. Moving on… 

The final chapter of 1 Samuel is a bit depressing. Saul dies, along with three of his sons. The Philistines are victorious over the Children of Israel, God’s people.  It’s just a bit of a downer. Yet, unexpectedly, while studying and writing from 1 Samuel 31, I was struck by the kindness of God, and it’s stayed on my mind ever since.

Saul was horrid–absolutely horrid.  In a list of Biblical heroes and villains, he would be firmly established in the villains column.  I mean, he blatantly disobeyed the Lord. David did him absolutely no wrong, yet he relentlessly pursued him, trying to kill him over and over again. If not for apparently having really bad aim (After all, Saul had already failed with David–twice.), Saul would have killed or severely wounded Jonathan, his own son, with his spear. Added to all of this, the fact that he was troubled by an evil spirit from the Lord is mentioned more than once, and that says a great deal about how wicked Saul had become for the Lord to judge him in such a way. Oh, and there’s that fun episode right at the very end of his life where he consults a medium when he can’t receive an answer from the Lord. (Why try humbling yourself and good old-fashioned repentance when you can just find a medium?) 

And, what’s worse is Saul knew how wrong he was. He knew God’s will was for David to be king after him. He knew it was wrong to consult a medium. He was the one who had removed them from the land in the first place… Saul’s life and reign were, in a word, tragic. The man he became is, quite frankly, terrifying.

Yet, even though Saul made so many mistakes and was so downright evil at times, even though scripture doesn’t give us a great deal of hope for his eternal state, 1 Samuel concludes with a reminder of what was perhaps Saul’s finest moment. Soon after being anointed king, Saul came to the rescue of the men of Jabesh-gilead. So, after Saul’s death, all the valiant men of Jabesh-gilead risked their lives to recover his body and the bodies of his sons to spare them further indignity and give them a proper burial. God ordained that this be penned in scripture so that their act of loyalty to Saul would remain a lasting memorial. Thus, a bright spot in Saul’s legacy is honored at the end of 1 Samuel. For all his mistakes, Saul’s life mattered. He did some good. And, clearly, God didn’t want us to leave 1 Samuel celebrating Saul’s demise and thinking he finally got what he deserved. 

That’s what I meant when I said I was struck by the kindness of God. Saul had consistently disobeyed the Lord and acted in ways he knew weren’t pleasing to the Lord, yet God was kind in writing the ending of Saul’s story. 

In Matthew 5:44, Scripture commands, “…Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you.” Saul had fallen so far that the Lord had turned away from him and become his enemy (1 Samuel 28:16). And yet, God loved him. God loves and values even those who tragically reject Him and spiral deeper and deeper into sin. To be clear, His love doesn’t outweigh His holiness. If they don’t come to Him for redemption through the blood of Jesus, they have no hope for eternity. Period. Still, when God commands us to love our enemies, He’s not asking us to do anything He doesn’t do. There’s not a soul, no matter how wicked, no matter how lost, that He doesn’t love.

It’s easy to deal with our enemies by simply cutting them out of our lives altogether. It’s easy to avoid the lost, especially those steeped in certain sins we’ve never been tempted by and have therefore self-righteously decided are just really, really bad or those who are downright mean and evil like modern-day Sauls. It’s easy, but it’s not the call. The call is to show them love. The call is to treat them with kindness. The call is to share the truth with them. That’s the call.