Convictional Kindness (Part 2)

More from Russell Moore on 'Convictional Kindness':

I remember several years ago reading the account of a man who, while yet an unbeliever, started visiting the Sunday evening services at London’s Westminster Chapel. This was after World War II, in the ascendancy there of the famed preacher D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones. The seeker said that he was in awe of the authority of the Word preached there. He said that Lloyd-Jones was “a steamroller” of biblical truth. But, he said, he was “a very gentle steamroller.” At first, I laughed at what seemed to me to be a mixed metaphor. How can a steamroller, of all things, be “gentle”? 

But the more I have thought about it, the more I realize that this is precisely what Jesus was, and is—a gentle steamroller. Because he is not in bondage to fear of man, Jesus rebukes and exposes that which is wrong. But, also because he is not in bondage to fear of man, Jesus seeks to save, not to condemn, and he is unafraid to be in conversation with those the rest of society would see as “immoral” or “not our kind of people.” He wrecks lives, pulling us away from our chosen paths, and strapping on our backs a cross. At the same time, he doesn’t break a bruised reed, doesn’t snuff out a wavering wick. That is our calling too.

******

Paul concluded a section of horrifying pessimism with the words, “But they will not get very far” (2 Tim. 3:9). This is crucial.

If all we have to go on is what we see around us, then, of course, we will become scared and outraged, and our public witness will turn into an ongoing temper tantrum, designed just to prove to our opponents, and to ourselves, that we are still here. And in so doing we would employ the rhetorical tricks of other insecure movements: sarcasm, vitriol, ridicule. But we are not the voice of the past, of the Bible Belt to a post-Christian culture of how good things used to be. We are the voice of the future, of the coming kingdom of God. The message of the kingdom isn’t “You kids, get off our lawn.” The message of the kingdom is, “Make way for the coming of the Lord.”

******

We speak with kindness and gentleness and with conviction and with clarity because we are targeting the right enemy.

We overcome, not because we’re a moral majority or a righteous remnant, but because we’re blood-covered sinners who know that if the gospel can change us, it can change anyone. We speak with kindness and persuasion not because we’re weak but because the gospel is strong. We speak the truth, with conviction and with gentleness, as those who have nothing to prove. 

The gospel commands us to speak, and that speech is often forceful. But a prophetic witness in the new covenant era never stops with “You brood of vipers!” It always continues on to say, “Behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world.” We make arguments, even as we understand that arguments are merely the equivalent of brush-clearing, to get to the main point: a personal connection with the voice that rings down through the ages from Nazareth. We want not simply to convey truth claims, but to do so with the northern Galilean accent that makes demons squeal and chains fall. Kindness isn’t surrender. Gentleness isn’t passivity. Kindness and gentleness, when rooted in gospel conviction, that’s war.