The city of Corinth had been an evil place, full of idol worship. After Paul came into the city and preached to them, and they had been converted, they had a difficult time shaking off the old ways. There was still a lot of immorality in the city, perversion, and evil behavior. Paul teaches them in this scripture that love does not delight in evil, but that it rejoices in the truth. It’s very common for people to enjoy watching other people mess up. We see television evangelists, for example, who fall into sin publicly and people seem to take some kind of pleasure in that. We see celebrities who seem to have it all and get involved in some scandalous lawsuit and we take delight in their mistakes. That’s not love. We shouldn’t love seeing people make mistakes, and we certainly shouldn’t love the fact that any other person is trapped in an immoral life. Love seeks the truth; love rejoices in the truth. When we love somebody, when we truly show the love of Christ, we look for good things, we look for positive things. We should love seeing somebody get clean from drug addiction or alcohol addiction. We love seeing people change their lives for the better. When someone has lived an immoral life and behavior and he begins to live a clean life, we should rejoice in that. We should be encouraging. We shouldn’t be waiting for that person to fall. That’s not our job as Christians. Our job is to love that person and if we love that person, we want to see him be successful. We do not rejoice in the evil thing they’ve done but we should rejoice in the truth and the good things that they have chosen to do in their lives.
And we pray:
Father, I thank You for giving me a choice. I ask You always to help me choose the truth and not evil ways. Please do nott let me take pleasure in another person’s pain. Remind me that my job is not to delight in their suffering or in their evil practices but to rejoice in the good decisions that they’ve made and the truthful decisions that they’ve made. Help me to be a part of the solution and not a part of the problem. Amen.