1 Corinthians 13:6

Rejoiceth not in iniquity, but rejoiceth in the truth.

Charity cannot rejoice in iniquity, but must rejoice in the truth

I. Iniquity expresses unevenness or inequality--a want of rectitude or moral principle. In its largest comprehension, as here used by St. Paul, it is the great falsehood brought in by the father of lies, antagonising the goodness of the Creator, and working infinite evil to His creatures. Warring against the love of God, it tends to subvert His authority and spread disorder and anarchy throughout His empire. How, then, can charity rejoice in iniquity? Desiring the welfare of an intelligent universe, how can she rejoice in that which must result only in wretchedness and ruin?

II. The truth is the exact opposite of iniquity, and therefore the legitimate object of charity’s rejoicing it indicates that which is fixed, settled, solid, certain, constant, according to fact or reality, to be confidently believed and relied upon. The truth by pre-eminence is God’s gracious revelation to man contained in His written Word. The truth in human practice and human character is conformity of heart and life to the principles and requirements of that revelation. (J. Cross, D.D.)

The purity of love

I. It has no pleasure in sin.

1. In the commission of it.

2. In the contemplation of it in others.

3. In the sufferings it occasions.

II. Its joy is in the truth (righteousness).

1. In the practice of it.

2. In the triumph of it.

3. The effects of it. (J. Lyth, D.D.)

Rejoicing in iniquity

Some are never content till they have arrested somebody’s career of usefulness or honourable success, or cast a blight over some unblemished reputation, or marred the peace of stone harmonious family, or inflicted a wound upon some unsuspecting heart. For these ends they pry into your business matters, your social relations, your domestic concerns, the sacred privacy of your chambers, with a diligence worthy of the highest virtue, and an impertinence not unworthy of the lowest vice. They whisper a scandalous surmise, and enjoin the strictest secrecy, well knowing that they are giving it to every bird of the air, and sowing it broadcast on the winds of heaven. With a baseness of which Satan himself might be ashamed, they write an anonymous letter, rank with the poison of false kindness; making the postmaster an unconscious partner in their despicable enterprise, and converting the ever-welcome letter-carrier at your door into a messenger of hell. In their cowardly ambuscade they sit concealed, and by proxy play their masked batteries upon their victim, who knows not whither “to turn, nor which way to escape, nor whose the hand that wounds him. With what a fiendish satisfaction do they enjoy the mischief they have done! with what an under-chuckle of infernal glee watch the writhings of the anguish they have caused. The Comanche is more humane in his warfare; the rattlesnake is more honourable in its attack. Such a one could laugh at chains, dance in dungeons, jest over guillotines, amuse himself with inquisitorial engines, enjoy his orgies on battle-fields reeking with blood, and with his boon companions--as my own eyes have seen--make a gambling-table of his brother’s grave! He could trifle at the death-bed of a Paine or a Voltaire, frolic merrily around the Saviour’s Cross, and find his sweetest music in the dirge of ruined souls. (J. Cross, D.D.)

Delighting in the defective

Erasmus tells of one who collected all the lame and defective verses in Homer’s works, but passed over all that were excellent. So these, if they can spy anything defective and evil, they observe it, and gather all they can together, but will take no notice of that which is good and praiseworthy; like the kite who flies over the fair meadows and flowers, and lights only upon the carrion, or like flies that love only to be upon the sore, galled places of the horse’s back. (Jeremiah Burroughs.)

Rejoicing with the truth

The gospel is the truth of God because it is the absolute wisdom, the Divine philosophy, of which all the efforts of the human intellect, and all the partial lights that had broken from heaven, were but the dawn (cf. Galatians 2:5; Eph 1:13; 3 John 1:3; all an echo of John 14:6)

. This revelation of God bursts upon man with the fulness of joy. The Son of Man Himself has been anointed with the oil of gladness above His fellows, and He appoints also unto the mourner beauty for ashes, the oil of joy for mourning, the garment of praise for the spirit of heaviness. Abraham saw the day of Christ and was glad. The gladness of the early Church attracted the notice of the historian (Acts 2:46). We may conjecture that it was her joy that created song and broke forth even in ecstatic utterance. Who is not struck with the profound sadness of the later paganism of Greece and Rome? A Christian apostle alone can address to his readers without irony the exhortation to “rejoice evermore.” In this hymn to love St. Paul personifies the gospel, and represents it as rejoicing. The truth rejoices in its power to create love; for as Augustine says, “the victory of truth is love.” Then love created by the truth rejoices in the loveliness of the truth and rejoices with the truth in its love creating energy. It is the joy of the shepherd when he has found the lost sheep; the joy of the father when the prodigial has returned; of holy angels and of God over one sinner that repenteth. (Principal Edwards.)

Rejoicing with the truth

Charity does not only rejoice in the possession of truth, for that would be selfishness, but rejoices with it whenever she finds it in others. Possessing the whole truth herself, and yet being too humble and too loving to be arrogant in the possession of it, she rejoices as a part of herself, as it were very grains of truth in masses of error, by attracting them to herself by the truth which they hold, or seem to hold, or that remnant of a righteousness, which is, or seems to be, still left in them: remnants of righteousness even in the life of the unrighteous. Just as a magnet draws to itself grains of true metals out of a mass of sand, so she draws others to the whole truth. (J. B. Wilkinson, B.A.)

True grace in the heart tends to holy practice in the life

Negatively, the apostle declares that charity is opposed to all wickedness, or evil practice; and, positively, that it tends to all righteousness, or holy practice.

I. Some arguments in support of the doctrine.

1. Holy practice is the aim of that eternal election which is the first ground of the bestowment of all true grace (Ephesians 1:4; Ephesians 2:10; John 15:16).

2. That redemption, by which grace is purchased, is to the same end (John 17:19; Colossians 1:21; Titus 2:14).

3. That saving conversion in which grace is commenced in the soul is to the same end (Ephesians 2:10; 1 Thessalonians 4:7).

4. That spiritual knowledge and understanding, which are the inward attendants of all true grace in the heart, tend to holy practice.

5. From the more immediate consideration of the principle of grace itself, from which the same will be seen. And here--

(1) Because the faculty which is the immediate seat of it is the faculty of the will, which is the faculty that commands all a man’s actions and practice. The will is the fountain of the practice, as truly as the head of a spring is the fountain of the stream that flows from it.

(2) It is the definition of grace, that it is a principle of holy action. What is grace but a principle of holiness in the heart? And if grace be a principle, what is it a principle of, but of action?

(3) The nature of a principle of grace is to be a vital principle.

(4) Grace is an exceedingly powerful principle (2 Timothy 3:5).

II. The truth of the doctrine with respect to the particular Christian graces. This is the case--

1. With respect to a true and saving faith in the Lord Jesus Christ (Galatians 5:6; James 2:18).

(1) The conviction of the understanding and judgment, which is implied in saving faith, tends to holy practice. If men are really convinced of the truth of the things they are told in the gospel, about salvation and an eternal world, it will act in such a manner as will tend to their obtaining this salvation.

(2) So does that act of the will which there is in saving faith. He that, by the act of his will, does truly accept of Christ as a Saviour, accepts of Him as a Saviour from sin, and not merely from the punishment of sin.

(3) So does all true trust in God. And herein a true trust differs from all false trust. A trust in God in the way of negligence, is what in Scripture is called tempting God; and a trust in Him in the way of sin, is what is called presumption, which is a thing terribly threatened in His Word. But he that truly and rightly trusts in God, trusts in Him in the way of diligence and holiness.

2. All true love to God. Love to our fellow-creatures always influences us in our actions. He that loves money is influenced in his practice by that love, and kept by it in the continual pursuit of wealth. And so he that truly loves God is also influenced by that love in his practice.

3. All true repentance. In the original, the word signifies a change of the mind; and men are said to repent of sin when they change their minds with respect to it.

4. All true humility. He that is sensible of his own unworthiness, will be disposed, by a sense of it, to carry himself accordingly both before God and man.

5. All true fear of God which is a holy solicitude or dread lest we should offend God by sinning against Him.

6. The spirit of thankfulness, and praise, which leads us to render again according to the benefits received.

7. Christian weanedness from the world, and heavenly-mindedness.

8. The spirit of Christian love to men. If the spirit of love to man be sincere, it will tend to the practice and deeds of love (Romans 13:9).

9. A true and gracious hope. A false hope tends to licentiousness--to encourage men in their sinful desires and lusts, and to flatter and embolden them even when they are in the way of evil. But a true hope tends to stir men up to holiness of life, to awaken them to duty, and to make them more careful to avoid sin, and more diligent in serving God (1 John 3:3).

Conclusion:

1. We may see one main reason why Christian practice and good works are so abundantly insisted on in the Scriptures as an evidence of sincerity in grace (Matthew 7:16; John 14:21; Ephesians 5:6; Ephesians 5:6).

2. In view of this subject, let all examine themselves, whether their grace is real and sincere.

(1) Has your supposed grace such influence as to render those things in which you have failed of holy practice, loathsome, grievous and humbling to you?

(2) Do you carry about with you, habitually a dread of sin (Genesis 39:9)?

(3) Are you sensible of the beauty and pleasantness of the ways of holy practice?

(4) Do you find that you do particularly esteem and delight in those practices that may, by way of eminence, be called Christian practices, in distinction from mere worldly morality?

(5) Do you hunger and thirst after a holy practice?

(6) Do you make a business of endeavouring to live holily, and as God would have you, in all respects?

(7) Do you greatly desire that you may know all that is your duty? (Jon. Edwards.)

Charity rejoicing with truth

There is a bold double personification--Charity is one person; Truth is another. Truth is rejoicing, and charity, or Christian love, rejoices with her. Truth is by definition reality, or the thing that is; and for St. Paul the sum of all reality, the embodiment of all that is, the revelation of God in Christ. Moral truth, intellectual truth, all meet and harmonise in truth revealed. There is nothing in nature, there is nothing in thought, there is nothing in virtue outside and apart from Him who calls Himself in so many words “ the Way, the Truth, and the Life.” “Charity rejoiceth not at iniquity, but rejoiceth with the truth.” It is not needful to dwell at any length on the negative statement, “Charity rejoiceth not at iniquity.” It can be no charity to take pleasure in unrighteousness. St. Paul makes it the very climax of wickedness to do so. But there are, at least, two cautions on this subject which ought never to be left unspoken. Records of crime solemnly judged, and terribly punished, if in any sense capable of corrupting us, carry with them their formidable lessons of consequence and of retribution. Even these, in all journals fit for circulation, are records not of offensive particulars, but of reserved and reticent generalities. What shall we say, then, of fictitious narratives of vice, vulgar or fashionable, of tales of which the very point of interest lies in their immorality, of novels presupposing and taking for granted a state of opinion in which profligacy is the rule, and virtue is the exception, in which modesty is made silly and ridiculous, and vice interesting, heroic, and charitable? Can any reprobation be too strong for the writers of such fiction, or any prohibition be too positive of its tolerance in Christian homes? The second caution needs to be spoken. Take heed how ye hear, and how ye read, in what spirit you look upon the crimes and vices of the sinful, what mind and heart you bring to the contemplation, whether it be the “considering thyself lest thou also be tempted,” or the proud feeling which thanks God that he (the beholder) is not as other men are; whether it be the wicked sympathy which gloats over the sin, or the Christian which bewails and weeps over the sinner. “Charity rejoiceth not in iniquity, but rejoiceth with the truth.” Other texts tell, as we have seen, of the struggles and hardships here below, of the truth which is the gospel. This one passage, perhaps almost alone tells of its joys. Then truth sometimes rejoices. It is a delightful thought. Let us give it room. Have we seen no triumphs of the gospel? By the nature of the ease they will come, on different evidence than that by which the victories of earthly conquerors are decided. There will be no assaults, no bombardments, no smoking ruins, and no blood-stained battle-fields to show where the gospel has taken an onward step towards that universal reign which is not the dream nor the vision, but the sure word of prophecy for the Christian. And yet the gospel triumphs have not been few. Traceable directly to the influence, slow, but sure, of Christian principles--of principles which had no place and no existence until Christ died--there have been such results as these: the elevation of women; the emancipation of the slave; the higher conception of the sanctity of life, whether shown in the diminution and greater mercifulness of war, or shown in the mitigation of a Draconic statute-book; the amelioration of the lot of the pauper, the lunatic, the prisoner, and the captive; the institution of hospitals for every form of disease, and associations for every enterprise of benevolence; the advance, let none gainsay it, of public opinion in its estimate of honour, humanity, and virtue; the improvement of habits, domestic and national; and the gracious and generous sacrifices by which education has become the enthusiasm of senate and people--its promotion recognised as a primary duty; its condition made a very test of a standing or falling State. Surely all these things, and a thousand others not included in that enumeration, show that the truth has rejoiced, and charity has rejoiced with her. But it is, no doubt, in her more through and more secret workings that the words of the text are more strikingly justified. It is but a tentative and distant approach that we can make to St. Paul’s feeling, while we speak only of the triumphs of the gospel in a wide field and on a large scale. It is in the individual life that truth exercises the most salutary and saving of her influences. It is there that the light is kindled that is to shine before men to the Father’s glory. Oh! it is not by magnificent attempts of a feeble or shallow conviction, aiming at great things in proportion to its neglect of the smaller, that the real cause of the real gospel is promoted, and made honourable. (Dean Vaughan.)