The Greek word Paul reaches for here is chrēsteuetai. It is a verb built from the adjective chrēstos, which means useful, good for something, kind in the active sense. In ordinary Greek, a chrēstos tool was one that did its job. A chrēstos slave was one whose work was good. A chrēstos person was one who could be counted on for genuine, practical good. The word does not mean nice in our modern thin sense. It means good at being good to people.
Chrēsteuetai — the verb Paul uses here — appears nowhere else in the New Testament. He pulled a rare, almost-unused word from the older Greek to do exactly the work he needed it to do in this list. Love acts in the chrēstos way. Love is the kind of thing that gets up and does good for someone. Not feels good about them. Not means well toward them. Does good to them.
What was happening in Corinth
If patience was missing in Corinth because the wealthy could not wait for the slaves to arrive for the Lord’s Supper, kindness was missing because of something subtler and uglier: the strong were wounding the weak, and they were doing it on principle.
The whole of 1 Corinthians 8, 9, and 10 is Paul addressing what the Corinthians had done with the question of meat sacrificed to idols. The mature believers — those with knowledge — had figured out that an idol is nothing, that meat sold in the market was just meat, and that they were therefore free to eat without scruple. They were correct. Paul agrees with them on the doctrine. What he will not let them get away with is the way they were carrying their doctrine.
…Knowledge makes arrogant, but love edifies. If anyone supposes that he knows anything, he has not yet known as he ought to know; but if anyone loves God, he is known by Him.
1 Corinthians 8:1–3 (NASB)
The strong, armed with their correct understanding, were eating freely in front of weaker brothers — believers newly converted out of paganism, for whom the smell of idol-meat brought the temple back into the room — and these weaker brothers were stumbling. Paul’s verdict was withering:
For if someone sees you, who have knowledge, dining in an idol’s temple, will not his conscience, if he is weak, be strengthened to eat things sacrificed to idols? For through your knowledge he who is weak is ruined, the brother for whose sake Christ died.
1 Corinthians 8:10–11 (NASB)
Read that slowly. The strong had been right and still managed to ruin a brother for whose sake Christ died. That is what knowledge without kindness does. It uses its rightness as a weapon. It looks down at the weak from a height the weak cannot yet climb to, and it eats its meat in front of them, and it is technically allowed to. And it ruins them.
The same unkindness was at work in the chapter on spiritual gifts a few pages later. The believer with the showy gift was using his gift to elevate himself, not to build up the brother whose gift was quieter. The eye was looking at the hand and saying, in effect, I have no need of you (1 Corinthians 12:21). That is exactly the absence of kindness this verse forbids. Kindness in the gift-giver toward the gift-less would have looked like the strong using his visible gift to make the brother with the invisible gift visible. Instead, the strong used the gift to make himself visible and left the brother in the shadow he was already in.
Now you can hear what Paul is saying in 13:4. Love is kind. You were right about the meat. You were ruinous about the brother. You were spiritually gifted, and you used the gift to puff yourself up rather than to lift the brother sitting beside you. Whatever else you have learned, you have not learned that the truth has a manner, and the gift has a duty. The doctrine has a hand to it. And the hand you have been using has been hurting people. The love you claim to have is not the love I am writing about.
The God who is kind
Paul did not learn kindness as a virtue floating free of God. He learned it as the very character of the God who saved him. The Old Testament returns again and again to the Hebrew word chesed — usually translated lovingkindness or steadfast love — to describe the way God deals with His people. It is the unfailing, unrelenting, unsurprised goodness of God toward those who do not deserve it. It is the kindness that walks back into a relationship the other party has broken, and quietly fixes it again, and again, and again.
The New Testament names the same character in the Greek chrēstos. And it gives the doctrine its sharpest application in a sentence Paul wrote to the Romans:
Or do you think lightly of the riches of His kindness and tolerance and patience, not knowing that the kindness of God leads you to repentance?
Romans 2:4 (NASB)
The kindness of God leads you to repentance. That is what Paul names as the engine. Not the wrath. Not the threat. Not the argument. The kindness. God’s persistent, unearned goodness toward sinners is what He uses to melt them and turn them toward Him. The wrath is real, but the wrath does not, by itself, draw anyone home. The kindness draws. The kindness is what God uses to do the work that wrath alone could never do.
And this kindness was not abstract. It came in a Person:
But when the kindness of God our Savior and His love for mankind appeared, He saved us, not on the basis of deeds which we have done in righteousness, but according to His mercy…
Titus 3:4–5 (NASB)
The kindness of God appeared. Paul does not say it was thought about, or felt, or promised. It appeared — in Christ Himself, who came in the flesh and ate with sinners, touched lepers, wept at gravesides, washed feet, and went to the cross. The kindness of God is not separable from the Son in whom it was made known.
That is the kindness 1 Corinthians 13:4 is calling believers to. Not the thin politeness of a culture that says be nice and means do not make anyone uncomfortable. The kindness that imitates the Christ whose own kindness reached down to where we were and lifted us out.
Patience absorbs; kindness gives
There is a reason Paul puts patience and kindness back to back at the head of his list. The two of them form a pair, and the pair is the whole shape of how love treats other people. Patience is the negative side. Kindness is the positive side. Patience absorbs. Kindness gives.
Patience says: I will not strike back, even though I could. Kindness says: I will do good for you, even though I do not have to.
Patience is the restraint of a justified reaction. Kindness is the initiation of an unrequired good. Patience is what love does not do. Kindness is what love does.
You can be patient without ever being kind. We have all known people like this. They never lose their temper, never raise their voice, never strike back when wronged — and they also never reach out. They are not warm. They simply absorb. That is half of love, and it is not the whole. Paul does not let the believer settle for half.
You can also try to be kind without first being patient, and it never lasts. The man who has no patience explodes at the people he was trying to be kind to the moment the kindness is not appreciated. Kindness with a short fuse is not really kindness; it is performance, with the performer waiting to be paid. The kindness that lasts grows out of patience, because it is the same root putting out two branches.
That is why Paul names them in this order. Love is patient. Love is kind. The restraint comes first because nothing else can grow on rubble. Once the believer is no longer reacting, kindness can begin to act.
What it looks like
Kindness looks like a teenage daughter who, when her mom or dad walks in from a hard day at work, hands them a glass of cold water or a snack before being asked.
It looks like an older sibling who, on her way home from a shopping trip, picks up a small thing her younger brother has been wanting, not because he earned it, but because she remembered.
It looks like a teenager who, walking past a younger child sitting alone at the lunch table, sits down and starts a conversation, not because the younger child is interesting, but because the younger child is alone.
It looks like a high-school boy who notices the girl in his class being teased by a louder boy in the hallway, and who steps in beside her, quietly, and walks her to her next class without making a scene about it.
It looks like a high-school girl who texts a classmate she barely knows after hearing the classmate is having a hard week — thinking about you, praying for you — and asks nothing back.
It looks like a neighbor who, when the elderly woman across the street comes out to check her mail, walks her box up the driveway for her without being asked, and does not stay to be thanked.
It looks like a believer who, when the slow learner in the Bible class is still struggling with the same question three weeks later, opens his own notes and walks the question through again, gently, as if it had never been asked before.
It looks like a student who pays for the lunch of the kid behind him in the cafeteria line who forgot his money, and walks off before the kid can thank him.
It looks like a friend who notices that something is wrong and asks once, without prying, and waits.
It looks like Christ. The One who saw the woman at the well and offered her water she did not know existed. The One who saw Zacchaeus up a tree and invited Himself to dinner. The One who stopped a whole crowd to find the woman who had spent twelve years and her last coin on doctors and reached out for the hem of His robe. The One who, hanging on a cross, looked at a thief and promised him paradise. Story after story in the Gospels shows kindness initiating where it was not required to initiate. He owed those people nothing. He gave them what they did not earn.
The world’s kindness, and ours
The world’s kindness is transactional. The world is kind to the people who can return the favor, kind when there is a camera in the room, kind to those who agree with it, kind to those whose kindness in return is expected to be prompt. Strip those conditions away and the world’s kindness disappears, because the world’s kindness was not kindness in the first place. It was investment. The world does not give without expecting return.
Christian kindness is different at the root. It is kindness because the One who showed it to us first did not expect return, and could not have been repaid if He had. While we were yet sinners, Christ died for us (Romans 5:8). That is the foundation under every act of Christian kindness ever performed. The Christian who is kind is doing it because he has received a kindness so total that to withhold his own would be to forget where he came from.
That is why Paul is so hard on the strong Corinthians who were right about the meat and cruel about the brother. The strong had forgotten that the only reason they were strong was that someone had been kind to them when they were weak. They had received the kindness of God in Christ, and then turned around and used their knowledge as a club on the very people for whom Christ had died. They were not being unkind by accident. They were being unkind by forgetting.
The Christian who finds himself unkind to a brother is, in some real way, in the same position. Somewhere along the way he has forgotten the kindness he was shown. The remedy is not to grit his teeth and try harder. The remedy is to return to the cross and remember. The man who remembers what Christ did for him cannot, for long, treat his brother the way he is treating him. The memory of the cross is what fuels kindness in the believer. When the kindness runs dry, the believer goes back to the well.
A note for the reader who is not yet in Christ
The kindness of God has already touched your life many more times than you know. Every meal you have eaten, every friend who has stood by you, every parent who has fed you, every stranger who has done you an unexpected good — all of it has been the kindness God extends to every human being whether they acknowledge Him or not. The sun has risen on you and the rain has fallen on you the same as on those who love Him (Matthew 5:45). That is kindness.
But there is a deeper kindness still, and it is the one that matters most. The kindness of God appeared — in His Son, who came into the world for sinners, and who is right now waiting for you to come home. The kindness that has kept you in the world is one thing. The kindness that has prepared a way out of judgment, through the obedience of His Son, is another. The first you have received without asking. The second you must receive on its own terms.
Romans 2:4 was written for you specifically. The kindness of God leads you to repentance. It is not the wrath of God that will move you. It is His kindness. The good things you have known in your life — and you have known some, even if you would not say so quickly — were not random. They were small messages, dropped along a path you may not have known you were walking. The path leads home.
When you obey the gospel, you do not become a recipient of kindness for the first time. You become a man or woman who can finally see the kindness for what it has always been. And you become, by that same act, a vessel for it to flow through to others. Kindness in the believer is not generated. It is received and passed along.
Where this leaves us
Patience and kindness, together, are the floor of the building Paul is putting up in this passage. Everything else in 1 Corinthians 13:4–7 — the not-jealous, the not-bragging, the not-arrogant, the not-seeking-its-own, the bearing and believing and hoping and enduring — sits on this floor. Without patience, the believer cannot stop reacting long enough to do any good. Without kindness, the believer who has stopped reacting has not yet begun to love.
A man can become more patient over a year and not be more loving, if his patience is only restraint. A man who becomes more kind in the same year, who reaches for the unrequired good, who initiates small graces that no one will notice and no one will repay, that man is being made into the image of the One whose kindness appeared in the form of a servant and went to a cross.
That is the work this attribute is calling you into.
THINK
Think of one person you will see this week whom you do not naturally feel kind toward — the difficult coworker, the demanding parent, the friend who has been a drain, the brother in the church whose voice grates on you. You owe them nothing extra. You have not been unjust to them. Patience would already be enough; the rest of the world would call patience excellent. Kindness asks more. What is one unrequired good you can do for them this week, expecting nothing back, with no audience and no record? Now do it. Not because they have earned it. Because you have received a kindness that was infinitely beyond your own earning, and the only honest response to that is to pass it along.