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I. Love Is Not Easily Provoked (v5b)
II. Love Thinketh No Evil (v5b)
III. Love Does Not Rejoice In Iniquity (v6)
IV. Love Rejoices In The Truth (v6)
Past Sermons of this series:
(1 Cor 13:1-3) The Supremacy of Love (27-Nov-22):
(1 Cor 13:4a) The Nature of Love (Part 1): Love in Relation to Others (17-Sep-23):
(1 Cor 13:4b-5a) The Nature of Love (Part 2): Love In Its Relation to Self (07-Jun-24):
Once again, I greet all of you in the Most Blessed name of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. I praise God for the privilege this evening, and let us continue to study God's word together on the same theme—the theme of love.
We have been studying 1 Corinthians chapter 13, which is known as the Love Chapter, and we have come to verse 5, the first half of verse 5. Today, we will be looking at the last part of verse 5 and verse 6 together. In order to capture the entire idea, let me begin to read it from verse 1. So, if you have your Bibles with you, please turn with me to 1 Corinthians 13, reading from verse 1 to verse 6. (Reading 1 Corinthians 13:1-6)
I want to entitle my message this evening ‘The Nature of Love (Part 3).’ We have already preached three sermons from this passage:
- From verse 1 to verse 3, we dealt with the ‘Supremacy Of Love’, how love is far greater and more important than other virtues and other things in the church. ()
- In verse 4, for the second sermon, we looked at how love is patient, how love bears with others, and how love doesn't envy others. So, ‘Love In Relation To Others’ is very kind; it suffers long and envies not. ()
- In the third sermon, we looked at how love doesn't vaunt itself, is not puffed up, and does not behave itself unseemly, and seeketh not her own. That is ‘Love In Its's relation to itself.
Tonight, we'll be looking at love's relationship to sin and truth. So, that's what we have in the second part of verse 5 and verse 6: ‘The Nature of Love (Part 3).’
Let us look to the Lord in prayer. Let us pray.
Our dear loving Father in Heaven, we thank Thee for saving us by Thy Only Begotten Son, the Lord Jesus Christ. We can never give Thee thanks enough for so great Thy salvation, so free. We also thank Thee for the privilege to serve Thee, to worship Thee, to praise Thee. This evening, we come together to pray unto Thee, and we want to understand Thy truth as we do so. So, we pray for Thy Holy Spirit to speak to us, open our hearts, and help us understand what it means to love, because this is very important in the church, in our life, and in our daily Christian witness to others as well. We pray for Thy Holy Spirit to be our divine teacher. Be with us and guide us into Thy truth, for we pray all this in Jesus' name. Amen.
I. Love Is Not Easily Provoked (v5b)
‘The Nature Of Love’ we have seen it two times. This is the third time, and it relates to sin and truth. First of all, its relationship to sin. How does love behave when it comes to sin? That is what we find in the last part of verse 5. Let me read it to you, and this is the first point: love is not easily provoked. Verse 5: ‘charity is not easily provoked’.
When it comes to sin, love is not easily provoked. A very important word that we need to understand here is the word ‘provoke.’ It is a rare word in the New Testament, only used two times in the entire New Testament. In order to understand what it means, we need to look at the other occurrence, and that is in Acts 17:16. Here we read Luke recording the ministry of the Apostle Paul. Acts 17:16, “Now while Paul waited for them at Athens, his spirit was stirred in him, when he saw the city wholly given to idolatry.” The word translated ‘stirred’ is the same word here, ‘provoke.’ Of course, we have in other verses the word ‘provoke,’ but in the original it is different. So, this—Acts 17:16—and our passage here are the only two occurrences of this word.
Now, what does it mean? It basically means a sudden outburst of emotion for action. ‘Provoke’ means suddenly one is outburst emotionally for action, and it can be for good and it can be for bad as well, so it depends on the context. In the case of the Apostle Paul that we have just read from Acts 17:16, we find that ‘when he saw the entire city of Athens given to idolatry, his spirit was stirred in him.’ In other words, his spirit was provoked in him. Then, what did he do? After he had been provoked, what did he do?
And that’s what we see in the following verse, verse 17: “Therefore disputed he in the synagogue with the Jews, and with the devout persons, and in the market daily with them that met with him.” We have in the following verses the account of his sermon on Mars Hill on the theme of the resurrection of Christ. When the Apostle Paul was provoked in Athens, he did something good. He was stirred in the spirit; he was provoked. In other words, he picked up his Bible and he preached the gospel—the Gospel of Salvation, the Gospel of the Resurrection of Christ to people around him. So, in that sense, the word ‘provoke’ can refer to being emotionally stirred for doing something good.
But obviously in our present verse (1 Cor13:5b), that is not what it means, because it says "not easily provoked." Although we do not have a further explanation, the context seems to suggest that love is not easily provoked to do something bad, to do something which is evil. So, it depends on the context. One is emotionally outburst, aroused to do something—in this sense, to do something not good. So, the loving person, the Christian person, is never easily provoked to do evil. It is very remarkable that one Puritan commented this. He wrote, ‘I am determined so to be angry as not to sin, therefore to be angry with nothing but sin.’ In other words, this godly Puritan was determined to be angry with no one and nothing except sin, because when one is angry with other people or even with the circumstances around us, one can be easily led to further sin. So, what a statement! What a commitment to be angry with no one and nothing but sin! And that is what we need to learn.
In the Corinthian church, they needed this instruction. If the believer in the church is loving, then he must not be provoked easily to speak something bad against his fellow brethren in the church, or he must not be easily provoked to do something bad to his fellow Christians in the church. Sadly, that doesn't seem to be true in the Corinthian church. They had many kinds of problems in the church—division, schism, and many other sins, and even arrogance when it came to spiritual gifts. So, the Apostle Paul is teaching us here that if we practice agape, the Christian love, or the divine love, as revealed to us in the Scripture, then we must guard ourselves not to be easily provoked to sin. When it comes to sin, when it comes to thinking evil, doing evil, speaking evil, we must not be easily provoked.
So, dear brothers and sisters in Christ, when you are tempted to think evil of others, to do something bad to others, or to speak something bad about others, do remember this verse. If you are practicing the love of 1 Corinthians 13, then you must control yourself with the help of the Holy Spirit. We need to be slow to anger, slow to wrath—that's what James teaches us in James 1:19. We need to be slow to wrath so that we will not fall into sin.
II. Love Thinketh No Evil (v5b)
Number two: Let's continue with verse 5, the last part of verse 5: ‘Love thinketh no evil.’ And this is our second point: Love thinketh no evil. Firstly, love is not easily provoked unto sin. Now, secondly, love does not think evil. Now, the word ‘think’ is important here. It is a very common word used some 40 times in the New Testament, and it can mean several things depending on the context. There are three common usages that this word. Let me explain it to you so that we can better grasp what it means:
- The word ‘think’ in the New Testament, in the original (Greek), can mean the simple act of thinking—you think, you are thinking, I'm thinking, that kind of thinking—the simple act of thinking.
- It can mean making a record, as in a book, for future reference. You make a record in order to refer back to it for some reference, and that is the second usage.
- The third usage is imputing or reckoning. We have many instances, many examples of this usage in the New Testament. For example, concerning the last (third) usage, we read in Romans 4:8, “Blessed is the man to whom the Lord will not impute sin.” ‘Impute’ is the same word as ‘think’ here.
In 2 Corinthians 5:19, the Apostle Paul wrote: “God was in Christ, reconciling the world unto himself, not imputing their trespasses unto them;” In other words, the word ‘think’ can mean several things, but if we look at the context here, imputing doesn't fit. Of course, I assume we understand what ‘impute’ means. When a person believes in the Lord Jesus Christ as Lord and Saviour, God imputes the righteousness of Christ to that person, to that believer, thereby declaring him to be righteous. That was imputing—to reckon, to count, to impute. And that is not the idea here (referring to 1 Corinthians 3:5).
The meaning of the Apostle Paul in this passage has been taken by some people as referring to making a record in a book for future reference. If we take it in that sense, the meaning would be something like this: If a person does something wrong to me, I try to remember it. I make a record of it, as in a book, as in my memory, or as in a computer, or whatever it is. Then, the next time something comes up, I refer back to that time: ‘This person did this to me,’ and so on. So, in other words, I remember the bad things others did to me. I keep it, as in an account book, and I refer back to it. And that is a very bad practice, of course, and love doesn't do that. If you love the other person, you don't do that. And that is one possible meaning. So, love does not keep a record or try to remember the evils, the bad things done by others, in order to pay them back. Love doesn't do that. And that is one possible meaning of the words, ‘Love thinketh no evil.’
But according to what we have in the KJV, that doesn't seem to be the idea implied. It simply means the act of thinking. And I prefer this idea because the original word means the simple act of thinking, and that is covered in the meaning. So, if we take it as it is in the KJV, the meaning is this: The loving person doesn't think evil of others. He doesn't want to think something bad about other people. In other words, he maintains, or she maintains, positive thinking, a positive viewpoint, positive ideas about others, unless and until clearly proven otherwise.
In other words, the loving Christian, the loving believer, keeps a pure heart for himself and for others as well. When he sees other people around him, he thinks sincerely, he thinks purely; he doesn't want to see any evil, any bad thing, in others. This doesn't mean that love is naive. But it simply means that it tries to maintain a purely positive view of others until and unless otherwise proven. And that is, dear friends, I believe, one of the best Christian attitudes.
Of course, we are not to believe every man who may be very cunning and very deceptive naively. We have to be very careful, and we have to apply biblical discernment in whatever we do and whenever we are dealing with others. Because there are many deceptive people, even among preachers, who preach wrong doctrines and wrong ideas.
But dear friends, in the church, among believers, and even among other people around us, let us try to keep a pure conscience, a pure, clean, positive idea about others. We have to be very careful; we have to be very observant in how we need to continue. So that is very, very important. In the church, we need to practice this. There are brothers and sisters coming to church, worshiping with us, praising the Lord together with us, and serving the Lord. First of all, unless clear evidence can be given, let us maintain a very positive view about them. That will help us to pray together, to serve together, to worship together truly in spirit and in truth. At the same time, of course, we have to be watchful spiritually so that harm will not come to us.
III. Love Does Not Rejoice In Iniquity (v6)
Thirdly, look at verse 6: ‘Love rejoiceth not in iniquity.’ Love does not rejoice in iniquity. ‘Rejoice’ is a very common word in the New Testament. I don't think it needs any further explanation. But what is ‘iniquity’? Iniquity is also a common word in the Bible, particularly in the New Testament. In the KJV, this word is translated as ‘iniquity,’ ‘unjust,’ ‘unrighteousness,’ and ‘wrong’ as well. Inclusively, we may understand this word to refer to all forms of unrighteousness, or all forms of sin. In other words, when the Bible says ‘love does not rejoice in iniquity,’ it means love does not rejoice in all forms, any form, of unrighteousness, any form of sin, all forms of sins, anything related to sin, anything about sin. Love doesn't rejoice at all. Love doesn't rejoice when it sees iniquity and sins in itself and in others as well.
Let us remember this: When the loving Christian sees any iniquity, any form of evil, any form of unrighteousness, any shade of sins in himself or in others, he is not glad. He doesn't rejoice. Instead, he is sad, and he weeps over it. Whenever he sees sin, any form of sin, in himself or in others—maybe his fellow believers, maybe other non-believers as well—he's not happy; he weeps over it.
The great preacher John Wesley put it this way: ‘Yea, love weeps at either the sin or folly of even an enemy, takes no pleasure in hearing or in repeating it, but desires it may be forgotten forever.’ Even in one's enemy, if there is sin, if there is any fall, any harm, any unrighteousness, love is not happy. And that is the kind of mentality, the kind of attitude that we need to have as believers in Christ.
And I want to quote from the Puritan commentator Matthew Henry. He explained it this way: Love takes no pleasure in doing injury or hurt to any. It thinks not evil of any without very clear proof. It wishes ill to none; much less will it hurt or wrong any. Love doesn't think evil of others. It doesn't intend any harm that is bad to happen to others. Its heart is pure; its heart is clean. And that is the kind of heart that we need to have, dear friends.
So, love is not easily provoked unto sin, to do sin. And love thinketh no evil. Love doesn't think any evil of others and of itself as well. And love does not rejoice in iniquity—all forms of iniquity in itself and in others. Even if it is our enemy, even if it is another church, even if it is another family, even if it is others who are attacking us, the loving Christian is not happy about any sin, any evil committed by others. How we need to maintain that kind of mentality, that kind of attitude! In short, love is saddened by all forms of iniquity and sins, whether it is in its own life or in the lives of others. That is how the loving Christian behaves.
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IV. Love Rejoices In The Truth (v6)
And fourthly, let us continue with verse 6: ‘Love does not rejoice in iniquity, but rejoiceth in the truth.’ Love rejoices in the truth. And that is our fourth point: ‘Rejoice’, as we have just explained, ‘rejoice’ is a very common word—be happy, glad, rejoice. And the important word to understand here is ‘the truth.’ What does it mean? Because there are many possible meanings conveyed by this word. For example, like in Greek dictionaries will explain that ‘truth’ refers to:
- truthfulness, dependability, uprightness in thought and deed;
- truth in a general sense;
- truth in the sense of the content of Christianity;
- reality as opposed to mere appearance;
- truth in the sense of reality and verity
- The reality before our eyes as opposed to mere appearance
- Factual truth: true in itself, pure from all errors or falsehood
- Truth in the sense of sincerity and veracity, as opposed to hypocrisy and lies
These are possible explanations and are certainly covered by the word ‘truth.’ Truth refers to:
- Conduct conformed to the truth
- Integrity
- Virtue
- True deference to reality as opposed to types, emblems, and shadows
- True deference to integrity and rectitude of nature
There are people who understand the word ‘truth’ here (1 Corinthians 3:6) to refer to the life of truth—righteousness, sincerity, the truth that is being lived out. But there are others who understand this word to refer to the Word of God itself. And I believe that is the true understanding. The word ‘truth’ here refers to the truth of God's Word—the objective truth. Not like sincerity, not like genuineness, although these are important. Honesty, being genuine, being sincere, being real—these are all encompassed by the word ‘truth.’ But here, the Apostle Paul, I believe, is talking about the objective truth that is God's truth—the Bible. In other words, love rejoices in the Bible, in the truth of God's Word.
In John, the gospel, John 17:17, we read: "Sanctify them by thy truth. Thy word is truth." So, the word ‘truth’ here refers to the truth of the Bible—God's word itself. Have you ever given serious thought about how truth and the life of righteousness are related? In fact, righteousness is predicated on God's truth. There can be no righteousness, no justice, no sincerity, no genuineness, or no reality apart from God's word—God's truth. Love always rejoices in God's truth. On the opposite side, it does not rejoice in any falsehood, or any lies, or any false teaching that is contrary to God's will. Therefore, love does not tolerate wrong doctrine, wrong teaching, lies, and falsehood being propagated in the church.
Very sadly, people often make this kind of argument: ‘It doesn't really make a big difference if people don't agree with us on doctrine. What is important is that we love them.’ So, love is being placed above truth, and that is what we call ‘ecumenical love.’ Love is the most important thing, the most important thing in the Christian life. Truth is important, but love is more important. Just love them, just give them love. They don't have to agree with us on every point, every doctrine. Very often we hear that kind of argument. But if we really examine that kind of argument, it doesn't hold water. Because if we truly love the person, we must be concerned with whether what he or she believes is true or not, because it concerns his or her soul. It concerns his or her destiny. If the person believes wrong doctrine and is being led into that doctrine deeper and deeper, finally the person may perish.
If we truly love others, we must be concerned about their doctrine, their beliefs, and other aspects as well. Of course, I want to quote from one Old Testament scholar, one theologian, a godly man who explained the importance of truth and the relationship of truth with love, and that is Dr. John Whitcomb. Let me quote from him now; please listen carefully in order to capture its meaning: ‘Faith, hope, and love are virtues, but truth has an altogether different status. It is the frame of reference, the foundation, the atmosphere without which virtues such as love cannot exist at all. Love rejoices in the truth. Why? Because without truth to define it, to interpret it, to protect it, to guide it, to channel it, love can become a total disaster.’ Let me repeat it; please listen carefully: ‘Love rejoices in the truth. Why? Because without truth to define it, to interpret it, to protect it, to guide it, to channel it, love can become a total disaster.”
We dare not place truth on the same level as virtues. Virtues would shrivel up and die if it were not for truth. We cannot imagine life on this planet without water. Water is absolutely essential for life as long as it stays within proper channels—within its cells, aqueducts, and pipes. But when water gets out of control, it is the second greatest catastrophe that can happen to this planet, second only to fire. On the one hand, it is an absolutely essential blessing, but on the other hand, it may become a near-total disaster. So it is also with love.
And of course, dear friends, in the name of love, many sins are being committed today by people around the world. Love rejoices in the truth because love needs definition, love needs guidance, love needs protection, and the one that defines, the one that guides, the one that protects, the one that defends it, is truth—the truth of God's Word. If you have love, if I have love, the right way to express it, the right manner to give it to others is defined by God's Word. Therefore, love rejoices in the truth—the truth of God's word.
Dear brothers and sisters in Christ, are you rejoicing in the truth? Love rejoices when it sees people read God's truth, study God's truth, and obey God's truth. Love rejoices in itself in obeying, doing God's word, reading it, studying it. The loving Christian simply loves the truth of God's word, studies it, and spreads it as far and wide as possible. Love is happy to see the same thing done by others.
So dear brothers and sisters in Christ, let us remember these four points today in relation to sin:
- Love is not easily provoked. (Verse 5)
- Love thinks no evil.
- Love rejoices not in iniquity, but
- Rejoices in the truth.
We need love in our church, we need love in our family, in our friendships, in our workplace, in our ministry. But that love is always defined, explained, defended, and protected by the truth of God's Word. May that love be lived out in our church, and may our church be known as a loving church. In 1 John 4:8 and verse 16, God himself said, "God is love." God wants to be known as the God of love. When we practice love concerning others, concerning ourselves, concerning sin, and when we practice love in the framework of God's truth, we manifest the character of God himself. The Lord will be pleased to bless us if we do so.
Let us look to the Lord in prayer.
Father, we thank You for Thy truth. We thank You for Thy word in which we have the truth explained to us. We pray, O Lord, that Thou wilt help Thy children in this church, especially to lift up the love that we find in 1 Corinthians 1. Help us, O Lord, in our weaknesses. Help us, O Lord, to truly practice this Agape so that we can be known as a church that is loving.
We thank You for Thy word. We pray in Jesus' name, Amen.
Thank you very much. The Lord bless all of you.