AS WE’VE SEEN, when Paul answers the question that the Corinthians had about spiritual gifts, he wants to make sure, as best he can, that his words don’t fuel further division or competition in the church. That’s why, in First Corinthians 13, he has to hold up love as being of first importance. He tells them what love does to help create a broad vision of what they’re aspiring to, and he tells them what love doesn’t do to remind them of how their current attitudes and behavior need correction.

We’ve explored verses 4 and 5. Let’s read them again, but this time, adding verse 6:

 Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. (1 Cor 13:4-6, NIV)

Can you hear Paul transitioning in verse 6 back out of what love doesn’t do to what love does? But as he does so, he juxtaposes two contrasting ideas that might sound a bit odd together. When he says, “Love does not delight in evil,” the word “evil” could be translated as “unrighteousness” or “injustice” as well. Thus, we might expect the contrast to be that love delights in what is “good” or “righteous” or “just” instead. Or taking it the other way: if the second half of the contrast must be that love “rejoices with the truth,” we’d expect the first half to say that love “doesn’t rejoice in lies.” But instead, Paul contrasts “evil” with “the truth.”

How can we make sense of this? What is Paul trying to say?

TO BEGIN WITH, we should note that this is not the only place Paul contrasts “truth” with “evil.” In Romans 2, he warns believers to stop passing judgment on each other. In verse 4, as I noted in a previous post, he describes God as being both patient and kind; by now, that should sound familiar. But despite God being slow to anger, the day of wrath must still come. God is a righteous judge, and those who un-righteously pass judgment on others will eventually have to face the judgment of God themselves. Everyone, Paul insists, will be repaid for how they have lived:

To those who by persistence in doing good seek glory, honor and immortality, he will give eternal life. But for those who are self-seeking and who reject the truth and follow evil, there will be wrath and anger. (Rom 2:7-8)

One way to live is to persist in doing good. But the other is to “reject the truth” and “follow evil” instead. Here, the words for “truth” and “evil” are the same ones he uses in 1 Corinthians 13 in describing the way of love, albeit in reverse order. And for the contrast to make sense, we need to understand what Paul means by “truth.”

Even in English, the word has different nuances. It’s true, for example, that I’m an Asian-American male with brown hair. These are just a few of the empirical facts about me, just as there are facts about you.

But think of Pontius Pilate’s interrogation of Jesus. He wanted to know the empirical truth about Jesus: was he or was he not the king of the Jews? Jesus could have simply said yes or no. Instead, he responded with a cryptic comment about truth:

You say that I am a king. In fact, the reason I was born and came into the world is to testify to the truth. Everyone on the side of truth listens to me. (John 18:37)

When he heard this, Pilate responded, “What is truth?” (John 18:38). We could read that question as an honest inquiry: here was a man who really wanted Jesus not just to tell him the truth, but to tell him about truth, to tell him what truth in itself was. But what I hear in his words instead is the cynicism of a career politician who lives only to survive.

What Jesus meant is that he had come into the world to testify to the truth about God, a truth whose acceptance also requires the acceptance of the truth about humanity. God is righteous and holy; we are unrighteous and sinful. And yet the truth is also that God is gracious — a truth that has long been known by the faithful but was demonstrated unmistakably in the life and death of Jesus. When we accept the truth about our sin and God’s grace, we begin to live in a way that is true to God, true to who we were created to be.

And when we do that, we will find joy in whatever furthers the gospel.

WE MIGHT BRISTLE at the suggestion that we “delight in evil.” After all, we’re not axe-murderers. We want to be good people, and can think of plenty of other folks who are less virtuous than ourselves. But even in thinking that way, we demonstrate our self-seeking and boastful nature, even our tendency to keep score of where we’re right and others are wrong.

If we’re to grow in love, honestly admitting the ways in which our own attitudes and behaviors are unloving is only the first step. We must also point our imaginations toward the truth about God, the truth of God’s patience and kindness. We must learn to take joy in whatever spreads and embodies that truth.

And…we must embody that joy together. When the New International Version translates Paul as saying that love “does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth,” those two words “delight” and “rejoices” are closely related. In a nutshell, we could translate the first as “rejoices” and the second as “co-rejoices.”

Individually, in other words, we might find ourselves taking private satisfaction in our unloving and self-oriented attitudes and behaviors. But when we come together in Christian community, that must change. Together, we hold up the gospel as telling us the truth about God and the corresponding truth about us, and we celebrate as a community whatever brings that gospel to life.

We don’t learn to be more loving simply by ourselves; we learn it in relationship to others. We each have our own individual work to do, but we also do that work as we live in fellowship and community with others.

Because, after all, that’s what love does.