Redefining Love - 1 Corinthians 13:6

All through the month of June, we’ve been rewiring our understanding of love from the Biblical standard and contrasting that with our more modern ideas of love. In 1 Corinthians 13:6, we read that love “does not rejoice in wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth.” This presents a real challenge for the typical American reader in 2022. I mean, who determines right and wrong? Who determines what is true? Isn’t the truth subjective? What about my truth?

Imagine a couple in a long distance, online relationship. They met on one of those dating apps with the long personality profile questionnaires and really clicked. The messages went back and forth for over a year and when they decided to both fly to Vegas and meet at the altar for their first time seeing each other in person. It was all so romantic. The big day finally came, they come face to face at the altar, everything seems perfect but then she begins to read her personalized vows. Rather than the traditional words of affection, she begins rattling off a list of demands and expectations that she has for her soon-to-be husband. Bewildered, he looks at the wedding officiant dressed like Elvis and then back at his betrothed and asks, “It’s like I don’t even know you. Where is all of this coming from?” She answers, “All the other guys I dated left because they said I was ‘too demanding,’ so I figured I'd wait until you fell in love with me first so you wouldn’t run away.” As she was talking, her now ex-fiancé was running out the door! When it comes to love, truth matters. If you utilize lies, deception and manipulation to draw someone in, you’ll need to continue to use lies, deception and manipulation in order to keep them. On the flip side, we also have to be careful not to fall in love with an ideal person that we’ve created in our minds instead of the real person in front of us. Love cannot exist without truth.

So, why is the concept of “wrongdoing” staged as the antithesis of truth in this verse? The original Greek word for “wrongdoing” that is used here is Adikia (ἀδικία) which, when directly translated means non-justice or injustice. So, love does not rejoice in injustice but rejoices with the truth. This passage is getting heavier by the minute. The terms justice and injustice are also heavily laden with modern cultural context and could easily be co-opted by anyone trying to defend their social positions or tear down someone else’s. This is why all of three of these concepts, love, injustice and truth, are held together in this verse. The idea here is that, regardless of your intentions, if your perception of justice is not grounded in truth, then it’s not real justice and it’s not real love. So, who gets to determine what is true?

When it comes to arguments, there’s an old saying, “There’s your version, my version and then there’s the truth.” Truth is an external reality. Truth is often rigid and unyielding to popular culture or social fads. The truth is a constant. This is why truth, to an increasing number of people, is offensive. Instead of basing our understandings of reality off of what is objectively true, many of us have found that it is far more comfortable to pretend as if truth is a relative concept. You can have your truth and I can have my truth and as long as our truths are not hurting anybody else, then they are all equally valid to be accepted and celebrated. This sounds like a very nice, happy and utopian kind of world where everyone can choose to be whoever or whatever they want without any social consequence. The problem is, we can’t actually create a world like that and when we ignore reality in order to manufacture a superficial one, we are not actually being loving.

In order to live in a society and interact with other people, there has to be an underlying agreement as to what is true, otherwise we will constantly be talking past one another and getting into loads of unnecessary conflict. When we go to our annual check-ups at the doctors office, the underlying agreement is that it is their job to tell me if I am healthy or unhealthy and, if I am unhealthy, what I need to do to change that. If the doctor, in an attempt to be more compassionate towards me, decided to change those terms and instead encouraged me to continue in unhealthy eating and activity patterns, assuring me that everything was just fine, then who was the doctor really showing compassion to? This of course, is a very specific kind of interaction with a very specific type of agreement to terms, however, every type of relationship we encounter has its own often non-verbalized terms of agreement. As friends, we make the agreement to have one another's back and look out for each other. This relationship also constitutes that I am looking out for the wellbeing of my friend and also comes with the expectation that I will tell them the truth when I see that a choice they are making is not actually in their best interests. By ignoring the truth, I am not loving them but, instead, I am just looking out for myself. I wouldn’t want to risk their rejection by saying something that they may deem offensive. Of course, this doesn’t give us the license to go out and say whatever we want, in any way we like to whomever we please. That is not loving, either. But, in order for us to actually love, we cannot rejoice or participate in the in-justices of the world, celebrating sin and embracing lies. Instead, love rejoices in the truth.

We have just one week left in our June series and we will be finishing up with 1 Corinthians 13:7. We recognize that standing for truth and righteousness is not always easy, but it is actually the most loving thing we can do. When you do it, though, make sure that you’re not beating the other person over the head with it or allowing your personal fears or hatred to disguise themselves as “just sharing the truth,” either. Fear and hatred are just as sinful as lying and deception. Look to the example of Jesus, speaking the truth in love, calling to repentance and demonstrating His love on the cross, not just through words.