“31 But eagerly desire the greater gifts. And now I will show you the most excellent way. 1 If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. 2 If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. 3 If I give all I possess to the poor and surrender my body to the flames, but have not love, I gain nothing. 4 Love is patient. Love is kind. it does not envy. It does not boast. It is not proud. 5 It is not rude. It is not self-seeking. It is not easily angered. It keeps no record of wrongs. 6 It does not delight in evil, but rejoices in the truth.”
On this post-it note I’m writing down marks of God’s grace in my character. These are virtues in which I’ve grown. I’m putting these thanksgivings up here.
On this post-it note I’m writing down my secret shames. Everyone has skeletons in their closet and I’m writing mine down and putting the note up here. For now just forget about these notes.
I want you to imagine a husband who is quite happy. He is quite happy because his wife just made an obvious mistake and now it is his turn to rub her nose in it for a change.
I want you to imagine a high school senior who is excited because she got into a rather prestigious university and one of her fellow students did not. She is excited that she got in, but she’s even more excited that this other student did not. This husband and this student are delighting in evil, to use the words of Paul.
Imagine a husband who is excited because his estranged wife is genuinely growing in kindness. She is becoming warmer with the children. She doesn’t seem to be warming to him yet, but she is growing in kindness to the children.
Imagine a student who is excited that the girl she tutors got a great score on the ACT. She is excited for her even though she herself actually has a lower score now than this girl she tutors. This husband and this student are rejoicing with the truth, to use the words of Paul.
I dare say that all of us want to act like the husband who is excited that his wife is growing in kindness even if it isn’t yet to him or like that that student who is excited for that girl’s good score on the ACT. We want to respond that way, but we know how easy it is to pounce on a mistake like that other husband or secretly rejoice when we receive when others can’t have like that other student did. In other words, we know that it is much easier to delight in what is wrong with others than it is to rejoice in what is good about others.
Love doesn’t delight in what is wrong in others. Love rejoices in what is good about others. You can know that you are growing in God’s love if you find yourself more and more excited by what is good rather than what is wrong. That is the claim of this sermon: love is excited by what is good rather than what is wrong.
We will study this in two points. First: love does not delight in evil. Second: love rejoices with the truth. The first point covers the first half of the verse 6: love does not delight in evil. The second point covers the second half of verse 6: love rejoices with the truth.
First: love does not delight in evil. Let’s face it: evil has its attractions. Fault finding can be fun. A critical spirit makes a person feel powerful. If you can recognize this in yourself, then you are ready to recognize shortcomings in your love. You are ready to recognize that you don’t always love what you should. You are ready to recognize that you don’t always love how you should. You are ready to recognize that you sometimes do delight in what is evil.
Now there is nothing unique about us in this regard. The Corinthians found the same delight in what was evil, which is why Paul wrote to them saying, “love does not delight in evil.” We’ve seen that the church in Corinth was full of competition and one-upmanship. They were divided into factions and factions are quick to pounce on each other’s mistakes in Corinth and in Inwood.
Some of the Corinthians were part of a faction that enjoyed running down the apostle Paul. They even found a perverse pleasure when Paul had trouble in life. If you read through the entirety of 1 and 2 Corinthians—which will be in August and September, if you are reading through the 5x5x5 plan—you will see how Paul loved these people even in the face of their delight in his troubles. Paul loved them because he wanted them to grow in the love that both he and they had received at the cross. He didn’t want them to delight in what was wrong in his life. He didn’t want them to delight in anything that was wrong.
Now this delighting in what is wrong has a number of different faces as sin always does. One of these faces is a secret delight in evil. DA Carson describes this as a “fake self-righteousness that feigns moral indignation in the face of salaciousness, but secretly revels in the crudeness and vulgarity.”
You see this at work in the state of political discourse today. I’ve never heard anyone commend the outrage and anger that we see in politics today but there is a reason that it continues. It continues because we secretly revel in the crudeness and vulgarity. We oscillate between wanting civility and rejoicing in running down the other side. Nobody will say that they delight in the scorched earth policy of today’s politics, but we seem to like it when the other side gets burned no matter how you define the other side. In other words, we seem to delight in what is wrong.
Another of the faces of this sin is delight in a critical spirit. Cutting someone down makes you feel as if you are in the right and there is nothing that we humans like more than feeling as if we are in the right. When you publicly criticize someone, you do so, in part, to separate yourself from this person. “They are bad, however, I am good.”
Love doesn’t delight in criticizing. DA Carson is right, “it does not enjoy endless discussions about what is wrong with the churches and institutions we serve.” There is a substantial difference between noticing what is wrong and leaning your shoulder in to help and noticing what is wrong and jabbing your elbow into the soft spot. We all know the difference.
Perhaps you need to inspect yourself. Do you find secret joy in talking about what is wrong with your workplace? Do you find a strange joy in talking about what is wrong with your children’s school? Do you find a perverse joy in talking about what is wrong with church? Are you, by chance, even having roast pastor for dinner this noon? Love doesn’t delight in criticizing.
Another face of this delight in what is wrong is delighting in someone’s fall. Perhaps you’ve got a brother-in-law and life always seemed so easy for him. Now his company is tanking, and you find yourself oddly satisfied that he is going to find out how the other half lives. Perhaps there is another girl at school and all the boys want to date her. Well, little miss perfect just got dumped and you tell yourself it is for the best because it will teach her a little humility. Perhaps your husband’s disorganization has finally caught up with him and you are a little too excited to bring up that day-planner you bought him for Christmas. ‘True love never gloats at someone’s failure, nor thrills at the thought of being able to lecture someone on his or her shortcomings,’ says Anthony Thiselton. ‘Love never relishes the opportunity to say, “I told you so.”’
Perhaps the most notorious form of delighting in what is evil, particularly in small towns, is what is called gossip. Now I have never talked to anyone who says that they love to gossip and yet gossip continues like a cancer. Perhaps we all need to be more honest with ourselves and acknowledge that gossip continues because we, the people who live here, must take some delight in what’s wrong. We must take some delight in hearing what’s wrong, speculating on what’s wrong, and sharing what’s wrong.
Gossip is perhaps the clearest form of delighting in evil and this clearest form is also one of the most destructive. I imagine that each church in this community has been harmed in any number of ways as incomplete facts are interpreted and passed on as stories which are believed and embellished. People become polarized and grudges are born, and the best of intentions are forgotten. Everyone loses. Only the devil wins. The gossiping tongue is, “a fire, a world of evil… it… sets the whole course of one’s life on fire, and is itself set on fire by hell.” Many of us has been hurt by it. Many of us have hurt others by it. It is not love. It is sin.
You cannot simultaneously be excited about what is wrong and excited about God. Whenever you delight in what’s wrong you tell God that He is unattractive. God is good and when you delight in what isn’t good, you are telling God that He isn’t enough for you. In some ways, delighting in evil is the equivalent of pornography in marriage. You may not mean to communicate that there is something unsatisfactory about your spouse but that is what the sin communicates. That is what God experiences when you delight in evil.
Delighting in evil is loveless. You know that it is loveless because it all about yourself. CK Barrett explains this well saying that, “Love does not seek to make itself distinctive by tracking down and pointing out what is wrong.”
We find joy in criticizing because we think it makes us distinctive. We think that judging others somehow puts us above the mass of humanity. We think that looking down on others somehow implies that we must be special. We judge so and so in order to make clear that we are not like so and so. We are special and we must keep judging others to preserve this view of ourselves as special people.
This mindset is quite different from what we see in Jesus. Unlike us, he actually is above the mass of humanity, which, of course, includes us. Unlike us, he actually has reason to look down on others and yet he found no joy in criticizing. In fact, he made it his life’s purpose to pull others up toward his level. He died so that others could enjoy what he enjoys.
Now, if have been born again by the Spirit, you can grow to love others as he has loved you. You can delight less in criticizing others and delight more in benefitting others.
If you are a Christian, you have seen what love does not do—it does not delight in evil. You have hopefully seen some shortcomings in your love; we all have them. Please don’t view these shortcomings as indications that you are a bad Christian. View them as opportunities to become more like Christ, which is what you want out of life.
You are about to hear what love does—it rejoices with the truth. As you see any virtue within yourself in this regard, don’t consider that a justification for thinking that you are a good Christian. That justification comes only by way of the cross. Your growth in grace is just a verification of what God has already done. He has justified you.
Now if you are not a Christian, I beg you to recognize that coming to Christ is the only way you will ever stop delighting in what is evil. When you come to Christ, you will come to recognize that the evil which has delighted you was the cause of the death of the Son of God. You will come to recognize that you are, in some sense, culpable for the death of the only one who loved you perfectly as you are. You will recognize this truth and still put yourself in the hands of the Father of the one you killed. When you do, you won’t find wrath for what you have done. You will find grace. You will find that you have been born of the Holy Spirit.
The Holy Spirit will change you. He will change you daily. Yes, you will still find some delight in evil, but you will find less and less delight in it. You will find increasing delight in what is true and good. That’s a fair description of the people of God—the people of God are born again to find the decreasing delight in what is wrong and increasing delight in what is good. You can join them. Let’s see the direction of this transformation in our second point: love rejoices in the truth.
Now rejoicing in the truth doesn’t refer to rejoicing in the facts as in one plus one equals two, or delighting in the fact that James Madison, after whom the street outside this church was named, was the fourth president of the United States. Paul wasn’t imagining people running around rejoicing over facts.
When he told the Corinthians that love rejoices in truth, Paul was thinking of truth in terms of what corresponds to God. Love delights in what is like God. Love is excited about anything that is like God. Love is ecstatic about grace. Love finds generosity attractive. Love is thrilled about promise-keeping. Love loves righteousness. Wayne Mack gets it right when he says that, “what brings pleasure to [the man who rejoices in the truth] is to see the truth of God put into practice.”
Love is joyful when people act like God. This is why there was so much joy at Fonda’s funeral. There was so much joy at Fonda’s funeral because love rejoices in what is like God; and Fonda was becoming more like God. In case you are visiting this morning, Fonda was the wife of Pastor Rich Kooistra. She was a sinner as we all are, but it was obvious that she was becoming more like God and hearts filled with Christian love found that delightful.
Love wants to celebrate what is good in others. I fear that the Reformed attention to the glory of God alone inadvertently prevents us from celebrating the grace in one another. Love celebrates the grace in one another. Love celebrates the good in one another. We did that at Fonda’s funeral. Why not do that when people are alive?
Wayne Mack notes that the book of Romans ends with a long list of celebrations of what is good in people. This great epistle outlining the grace of God ends with a celebration of what is right in Priscilla and Aquilla, Urbanus and Rufus and his mother, and 24 others. At the conclusion of what is rightly called the most influential letter of all time, Paul focused on 29 people who aren’t that different from us gathered here. He did so because he loved and love, as John MacArthur put it, “looks for the good, hopes for the good, and emphasizes the good… Love appreciates the triumphs of ordinary folk.”
Now, how can you do that? I dare say you want to do that. How can you do that? First, you must be born of the Spirit. You won’t delight in what delights God unless you are born of God. Since we’ve already considered this, let’s move on. To delight in what is like God you must forget yourself. You see this in Jesus who was the most self-forgetful human who ever lived. He lived out what CK Barret said about love; “love does not seek to make itself distinctive by tracking down and pointing out what is wrong; it gladly sinks its own identity to rejoice with others at what is right.” You can say that, “Jesus does not seek to make himself distinctive by tracking down and pointing out what is wrong; he gladly sinks his own identity to rejoice with others at what is right.” He sunk his identity to the point of death on a cross to make you right. If you are going to love like God, you need to get over yourself. Stop trying to be special. Remember to forget yourself. Chesterton is right, “angels can fly because they take themselves lightly.”
You also need to be serious about making a difference with your life. Remember, love makes a difference. “If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. If I give all I possess to the poor and surrender my body to the flames, but have not love, I gain nothing.”
Great intelligence, eloquence, resources, and piety do not make the difference. Love makes the difference. That is why criticizing your husband, no matter how right you might be, has never changed him for the better. It doesn’t change him because, “love does not delight in evil.”
Consider who has made a difference in your life. I dare say they did so by way of love. Consider how God has made a difference in your life. He didn’t do so by condemning everything in you that was worthy of condemnation. It wasn’t His delight in pointing out what was wrong with you that changed you. It was His love that changed you.
Love makes a difference. If you want to make a difference in this church start noticing and celebrating what is right. Notice and affirm the godliness you see in the young people in this congregation. Notice and affirm the eagerness to learn that you see in the children of this church. Notice and affirm the industry you see in the maturing adults. Notice and affirm the wisdom and long-suffering spirit you see in the older members of our church. If you do all of that, you will make a tremendous difference in this congregation. If you spend your time fault-finding, you won’t make much of a difference no matter your intelligence, eloquence, resources, or piety.
So if you want to love others with 1 Corinthians 13 love, you need the Holy Spirit, you need to remember to forget yourself, you need to be serious about making a difference, and, finally, you have to ask yourself what you want to focus on for eternity.
If you find such great joy in criticizing what is wrong, God might put you in place that is full of wrong for you to spend forever criticizing.
One way to think about your spiritual position and direction today is to ask what it is that you are becoming. Are you becoming someone who delights in what is evil? If so, follow that trajectory twenty years, then forty years, and recognize that you will increasingly delight in evil. Now follow that trajectory out one hundred years, one thousand years, and recognize that your delight in evil will have growth exponentially.
Wouldn’t you rather spend the next thousand years focusing on whatever is good? Then rejoice in it today. Ask yourself what you want to excite you for all eternity and get excited about it today.
Now back to the post-it notes—this one lists my secret shames. That one has a list of that which is good within me. Which one did Christ die to erase? Which one would interest him if he were here? He would be legitimately excited about what is good in me. He would be thrilled with the marks of his grace in me because he takes delight in what is good.
If you love Jesus, I hope you believe that Jesus is genuinely thrilled with what is good in you. Remember, he died to make that goodness a reality. He doesn’t delight to find what’s wrong with you, and he loves to rejoice in what’s right with you..
Now, I know that this post it note listing my secret shames might still hold attraction for you; you don’t yet love exactly as Jesus loves; neither do I. So what I want you to do is ask yourself if this one with the secret shames interests you less today that it would have when I first came here. Ask yourself if you want this one with the secret shames to interest you less in five years than it does today. Ask yourself if you hope that in eternity, there is no list of the secret shames that is of any interest to you. Ask yourself if you want to rejoice in what is good in others rather than what is wrong with others. Ask yourself how you want to spend your eternity. Amen.