Reflections on True Love

1 Corinthians 13:6, “Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth…”

Love does not delight in evil. It rejoices with the truth. Evil is a perversion of good, a distortion of what was true and intended. Love, then embraces the reality as it was divinely ordained from the very beginning. God had in mind a picture of beauty, of human value and purpose, of relationships, of society and marriage and sex and family and education and social responsibility and meaningful work. God called His creation ‘very good’. He delighted in His creation. Here the message is that ‘Love does not delight in evil’. In other words, love is not for a distortion of God’s original design. But love rejoices with the truth. There isn’t a sense of rebellion against truth. Man, in his sin, is rebellious by nature. He does not like the fact that he is not autonomous, that he is limited, that he is a dependent and contingent creature.  Recently, man has rebelled against the concept of marriage, of what life is in the whole abortion, euthanasia debate. But closer to home, I think I rebel at what I am like, how I have been created and the discontentment I feel towards the qualities I possess.  I often end up going back to a focus on the self. As a self-centered creature, I end up wishing to be someone else and that causes me to be unable to rejoice with the truth. But if I am fundamentally other-centered, which is what love is, then I will be capable of rejoicing with truth, because I have no apriori commitment to what I should be like. I simply accept people and the world as it is because I am free to celebrate God’s creation and design.