Be merciful, just as your Father is merciful.
Luke 6:36
Who He's Kind To
Jesus tells us who the Father is kind to one verse before he tells us to be like him, and it isn't who most people would guess.
He's been describing a way of living that sounds impossible. "Love your enemies. Do good to those who hate you. Bless those who curse you." Lend without expecting anything back. Then he gives the reason for all of it, and the reason turns out to be a description of God, who "is kind to the ungrateful and wicked."
We usually picture God's kindness going to people who are at least trying. Jesus says the Father is kind to the ungrateful, meaning people who take what he gives them and never once turn around to thank him, and kind to the wicked, who are actively working against him.
Then comes verse 36. "Be merciful, just as your Father is merciful."
Jesus could have given us a number here, some count of times we have to forgive somebody before we're clear of them. He gave us his Father instead. So we stop asking whether this particular person has earned our mercy, and we start asking what our Father is like.
Children take after their parents, and Jesus is describing what it looks like when the likeness starts to show.
The Family Resemblance
That means being kind to somebody who will never know you were kind to them. That means letting the friend who never apologized stay in your life, without you keeping a running tally of the apology they still owe you. That means finishing the part of a project a coworker dropped, when that coworker's never once finished yours. That means giving the driver who cut you off the benefit of the doubt, and giving the same benefit to the cashier who's moving slowly, and to the relative who says the same line every year at the same table.
Most of them won't thank you, and Jesus said as much when he called them ungrateful.
I wrote about a related instruction in Repay Evil With Something Better, where Paul tells a church to make sure nobody in it pays back wrong for wrong. Paul is telling us not to retaliate, and Jesus is telling us to take after a Father who never has.
Mercy on that scale is something we've been given rather than something we work up on our own, and the Spirit gives it back out through us when we ask him to. So ask him for it today, before you know who it is for.
Prayer
Father, you've been kind to us on days we never thanked you, and kind to us while we were working against you. Bring one person to mind today who has no claim on our kindness, and help us to be kind to them anyway. Let our likeness to you start to show in the way we treat them. We pray all this in Jesus' name. Amen.