1 Corinthians 13:6

1 Corinthians 13:6

The Rejoicing of Charity.

As St. Paul depicts the features and behaviour of his Divine charity, are there not many whose feeling would be, that while beautiful and sublime enough, it could hardly have much to do with joy? She suffereth long, is slow to assert herself, or insist upon her rights, seeketh not her own, refuseth under grievance to be easily provoked, beareth all things, endureth all things. And then in the midst of the Apostle's description of what love does, and how she comports herself, comes the word "rejoiceth." Yes, unloving men may not understand it, unloving men may not credit it, but love is far from being a joyless thing. Great joy-waves visit and sweep it, great joy-swellings rise within it, that are all its own, and which no man knoweth save he in whose breast it rules; while in the very heart of its painfullest yearnings and solicitudes, and its hardest sacrifices, a secret bliss lies smiling, like green verdure beneath the snow.

I. It is the distinction of St. Paul's charity that its moral sensibilities are too delicate and acute to admit of its rejoicing in aught that covers any iniquity or bears any taint of it, that where others can be satisfied and happy because the injustice of the thing is not apparent to them, does not strike them, discerning it at once, and deeply feeling the injustice, cannotbe content or pleased. The secret of the difference lies in its superior fineness and purity of nature.

II. But see now, when the Apostle proceeds to exhibit the joy of that love whose withholding from joy has been noted, what do we find him placing over against iniquity as its opposite? We might have expected that it would be rectitude or integrity, instead of which he writes "rejoiceth not in iniquity, but rejoiceth in the truth." The reference is, of course, to the truth of Christ. That was the truth which absorbed him, the truth that fell from the lips and breathed in the life of Christ; and in it he saw the inspiration and the strength of all goodness, a Divine power for the purification of man and society, the grand instrument of moral quickening and nutrition; he opposed it, in writing, to iniquity, out of the fulness of his persuasion that it was pre-eminently a righteous-making force, mighty above all else to cleanse and rectify. Theology was to Paul the most practical and sweetly useful of sciences even the science of raising men to truer, purer life, through the knowledge of God in Christ Jesus the Lord. Hence the joy of the love that could not abide iniquity, and mourned over it, must needs be found, his heart told him, in the diffusion of truth.

S. A. Tipple, Sunday Mornings at Norwood,p. 126.

References: 1 Corinthians 13:7. G. Salmon, Gnosticism and Agnosticism,p. 213; Spurgeon, Sermons,vol. xxvii., No. 1617; Homiletic Quarterly,vol. iv., p. 513. 1 Corinthians 13:8. H. J. Wilmot Buxton, The Life of Duty,vol. i., p. 123; Homilist,3rd series, vol. iv., p. 164; G. Dawson, Sermons on Disputed Points,p. 152; A. Murray, The Fruits of the Spirit,p. 452; 1 Corinthians 13:8. Roberts, Church Sermons,vol. ii., p. 332. 1 Corinthians 13:8. H. W. Beecher, Christian World Pulpit,vol. ix., p. 401.