Kindness Opens Doors
Augustine (354-430) has proven to be one one the most influential people in the history of Christianity. Both Protestants and Catholics revere him as a key theologian and biblical interpreter. However, before he came to faith in Christ, he had a number of doubts about the validity of Christianity, including the origin of evil, the nature of God, and a number of challenging passages in the Old Testament. He was searching for answers, intent on finding truth and making sense of this world.
Yet, as Augustine recounts coming to faith, he highlights that it was kindness, not answers, that God used to soften his heart toward the truth of the gospel. In Milan, Augustine met Ambrose (c. 339-397), who was serving as the bishop of that city. Augustine recalls,
“This man of God welcomed me with fatherly kindness and showed charitable concern for my pilgrimage. . . . I began to feel affection for him, not first as a teacher of truth. . . but simply as a man who was kind to me.”
Ambroses’s kindness was the key that opened the door that would lead Augustine to be open to his teaching.
Augustine’s experience with Ambrose aligned with how Paul describes his own work among the Thessalonians. Writing to this church, the Apostle reminds them of when he first worked among them, “So, being affectionately desirous of you, we were ready to share with you not only the gospel of God but also our own selves, because you had become very dear to us” (1 Thess 2:8). Paul’s love for these people is evident: he’s affectionately desirous of them and speaks of how they had become very dear to us. Paul wanted to share not just the gospel with these people but his life as well.
As we seek to live on mission today, we should look to Paul and to Ambrose as models. We make Christ known by both declaring his love with our words and displaying his love with our lives. Moreover, God’s love for us in Christ so transforms us that we become people who love our neighbors so much that we long for them to experience Jesus’s love as well.
