Introduction
Love, it is the key principal in a Christian’s life. God is love and we should respond in love. Jesus said that by our love would people know that we are his disciples. And here in 1 Corinthians 13 Paul shows that everything of value has to be done in love and motivated by love and that great deeds and accomplishments are nothing with out it. We are nothing without love. We have been looking at how Paul describes love in 1 Corinthians 13. We are doing this in a three fold way. First looking at how Jesus showed this aspect of love. Then reflecting on who we do or do not show this and finally looking to see where we can improve and where we need God’s help to do better. While, I offer suggestions for the last two, they are really up to you, to go home and pray through and ask God to show you what you need to do and to ask him to help you. This week we are on verse 6 . “It is never glad about injustice but rejoices whenever the truth wins out.”
Love and justice are typically portrayed as being opposed to one another. I briefly mentioned in my introduction to this subject from 1 John 4, that God’s love and justice are not opposed to each other but rather two sides of the same coin. God is just because God is love. God’s justice is just an expression of his love. But verse 6 gives another opportunity to wrestle with this issue again. And I’m going to take it because I think this one takes more than one explanation to sink in. Besides this gives us the opportunity to take it beyond God’s love and justice to our love and justice.
Love vs Justice, Love is Justice
First the misconception again. We have this idea of two scales on one side is God’s love for us and on the other is God’s justice, a rigid set of rules that we have broken. We set up God’s love vs God’s justice. Which is going to win out, is God’s justice more important to God than his love. We have this picture that up until Jesus, God’s justice was winning out and there was no hope, but because of the cross God’s love could win out over and above the justice. This is completely the wrong picture.
God’s justice is not vs his love. God’s love is his justice. Now this might appear counter intuitive or not what you might have heard before. But please bear with me and we’ll see how this is the Christian truth, not some weird thing I’ve made up. The thing is when you love someone you want what is best for them. You don’t want them to be kicked around, bullied, exploited or abused. For those of you who have kids, you feel protective of them and don’t like it when other kids take advantage of them or are nasty or spiteful to them. In the same way God doesn’t like it when his creatures are abused, exploited or treated badly. He loves them and so he wants what is best for them and so he is angry when others don’t give it to them and treat them badly. God wants justice for us, because he loves us. God’s justice is not an arbitrary code, which must be adhered to. It is a loving God wanting the very best for his creatures, whom he loves. When the ones God’s loves are exploited, abused, bullied or taken advantage of, he cares, he hurts. God wants justice for them because he loves them. God’s justice is God’s love. Of course God’s love is more than justice but God’s justice is not more than God’s love, it is not independent of it or opposed to it. Do you get this, everything else that we’re talking about this morning rests of grasping this. But sometimes it takes a bit to sink in.
Of course this produces a problem for God, because God loves even the one who is the exploiter, the unjust. In fact we all treat other people unjustly, we are all the exploiter. So God’s problem is not so much that his justice is opposed to his love, but rather that all the ones he loves do not love and are unjust to one another. So in this sense it is our injustice which is opposed to God’s love.
So how does this apply to us.
Love is never glad about injustice
Paul tells us that love is never glad about injustice. Paul is telling us that just as God’s justice springs from his love, so our love should also produce a desire for justice in our lives. That because we love, we care for justice. We have already noted how this works in the lives of our children.
So, for the first step in our approach, how did Jesus show his distaste for injustice. In the gospel of Luke it is there right from the very beginning. At the start of Jesus ministry he goes to his local synagogue and reads a passage from Isaiah. Then he sits down as was the custom when you were teaching and says these words have been fulfilled before your eyes. What was the passage he read from Isaiah, well one of things he read was “that the downtrodden will be freed from their oppressors”. There would be justice. When he preached and healed, he showed no preference for the rich or those who could give him things. He healed the poor and rich. He taught the poor and the rich. He gave the same attention to all and treated all with respect. He did not act unjustly. Perhaps the ultimate example of Jesus justice was in how he acted with the woman who was caught in adultery and brought before him. The text makes it clear that the one who brought the woman before Jesus had no interest in the law or the woman or her fate they were trying to trap Jesus. Further they had deliberately flaunted the law. The law they were referring to said that both the man and woman should be stoned. Yet, where was the man. After all the woman was caught in adultery, now as far as I know you cannot be caught in adultery on your own, there must have been a man present, yet where is he. And so Jesus acts justly by pointing out the injustice in the woman’s accusers. Love and justice.
What about us? Well for me, the example that immediately sprang to my mind when I was preparing this sermon was the issue of drugs and young teenagers. I remember when I was working at the youth club in Longsight, that most of these kids of around 11-14 were on drugs. You could just see the change in their behaviour, from being likeable if somewhat cheeky kids, they lost all sense of responsibility and what they were doing or consequences. They would do and act in ways they never would in they were not high. And do you the kind of anger and sadness that generates in me. What kind of society do we have that results in kids of 11 being on these kind of drugs? How can their older brother who’s the local dealer, get his 14 year old brother in peddling this stuff to his young friends. I weep inside for those kids, the injustice, getting hooked and dependant at their age when they should still be innocent, discovering what it means to be an adult. Instead they are learning to destroy their lives. (I seen it the other week, when some of them came in to church as high kites, on alcohol or drugs, I don’t know.) But sense of justice screams within me, this is so wrong, how can we let this happen? I get angry, not at them but at the system and people that puts these kids in that position. I get this deep feeling of sadness and compassion for these kids. There must be something better for them than this. Do you see how my love and justice are hand in hand. Two different sides of the same coin, the same reaction to seeing this.
And then we could return to the issue of fair trade that we have looked at before. That people and big companies, which are after all run by people, who exploit workers in the third world. Who give them pay and conditions that is little more than legalised slavery. They are forced to work long hours in poor conditions with no breaks for barely enough money to feed themselves let alone their family. Oh they get just enough because they’re exploiters need workers who show up to work. But nothing for anything beyond the barest minimum of food. And no hope for improvement because they can’t leave or complain and risk retribution against their families or the loss of what little income they have because the whole system is rigged and all the local employers are the same and they won’t be able to work for them. My love for them compels me to want justice. It compels me to only buy fair trade and reject anything that is not and complain to others who support a system or make demands on price that forces these people into virtual slavery. And when others don’t think this is important, I rage at their injustice. If this was a white person living in Wales or London, we’d be incensed and demand justice and the arrest of their exploiter. Look at the sympathy people had with the fire fighters who went on strike over pay and conditions which if you compared to what these people are suffering is really nothing. Yet, because they are black or Asian and living in a different country half way round the world, we just don’t care. Well, I’m sorry, but to my love and justice this is just not on. God cares for them every bit as much as he cares for us. They are just as important to God. Justice, motivated by love.
And this is a good point to remind ourselves that love and justice are not feeling and emotions. They are decisions to act. Love is shown by acting for justice. It is about more than just disapproving of injustice. It is not participating in injustice and doing what you can to stand against it. What good is it if you disapprove of something, yet do nothing even when it is in your power to do something. We’re not talking about you changing the world, we’re talking about you doing what you can. And if everybody does that the world will be changed, but as long as we all leave it others, or have racist views that says if its not happening to someone I know or in my backyard I don’t care. Love is never glad about injustice.
Those are two of the issues that affect me. What about you? Where does this affect you? Where do you see injustice? Where does it rebel against everything that you are and feel to see the way people are treated? Where do you need to forget your feelings and just make a decision that love means you care what happens to others and that you will act against injustice against people even if you don’t particularly like them. Where do you need to work on love is never glad about injustice.
Rejoices when the truth wins out
Now this verse has two attributes. Love is not glad when .... and love rejoices when ... . Now if the first of these is injustice, we might expect the second one to be justice. Love is not glad about injustice but rejoices when justice is done. But the verse doesn’t say justice it says truth. In what sense can truth be contrasted with injustice. The New Living Translation helps us here. It talks about truth winning out. When there is a trial going on and people agree in general that justice is done, they may say the truth won out, at least that’s what I remember from when I used to watch Ally McBeal. There is a very strong link between truth and justice. Justice is when the truth wins out. When the truth is known and acted on. Love rejoices when the truth is known and acted on.
How did Jesus exemplify this aspect of love. Well Jesus was certainly about truth. He claimed I am the way, the truth and the life. But how did this work out in his life. He complained about hypocrisy. About showing one face to the world, while a different motivation existed on the interior. He was about exposing that which was hidden. He didn’t shrink from telling the woman at the well about her sinful past and present, but he did this in love not in condemnation. In the case of the woman caught in adultery that I mentioned early, he exposed the woman’s accusers for their true motivation by saying that those who were without sin should cast the first stone. In his clashes with his enemies in John chapter 8, he is honest with everyone, telling them who he is and what he is about and exposing their lies for what they are, they are out to seek a way to kill them, while they deny everything. Jesus is like a light that shines in the dark places exposing sin, but so that it can be healed not condemned. Love wants the truth to win out.
So what about us? Do we like it when the truth wins out. I’ve mentioned before in my sermons that I am a fanatic with truth. And that I tell the truth even when other people would use a social lie. But what about the truth winning out. The classic story here, is one from childhood. My grandparents used to have a cheese plant. You know those ones that have holes in their leaves. Well when I was very young about 5 or 6 I decided that someone must have cut the holes and that one leaf needed some more holes, so I took it upon myself to cut the holes. Now the way I remember the story, I was found out and of course being me admitted to it. I remember my mum being quite cross. But whenever she told the story in the future, she somehow forgot and blamed it all on my brother. So for years, unbeknownst to me he got the blame. Then the other year they were talking about it with me in the room and I said, that wasn’t him, that was me. And brother cried out, see I told you for years it wasn’t me and you didn’t believe me. Now of course it was in character for my brother to do that kind of thing and then attempt to hide it. But the truth won out.
Or in one my novels was the story of Marcão, and yes that’s a Brazilian Portuguese name, that I never knew how to pronounce until recently. He was bigger than all the other kids. He was heavily built and really strong. He towered over all the rest. Therefore the kids shunned him and didn’t want anything to do with him. Marcão was a gentle soul and never hurt anyone, but kids being kids teased him for being different and the outsider. And when kids want to provoke someone who is not being provoked, they can be very cruel. So they began to poke him and hit him and kick him. And eventually he cracked and he swung out and hit one the kids, but he was so much bigger and stronger that he broke the kids arm. So the teachers show up and there is this small injured kid and this big strong kid and all the other kids are claiming he just hit him totally unprovoked. But then one other kid, a small girl Novinha, who is also an outsider and makes no friends, speaks up and tells them what really happened. The truth wins out. Justice is done. Of course in the story, Novinha speaks out not because she cares for Marcão but because she doesn’t want the others to get away with anything. This doesn’t fit with the kind of love we are talking about, although the action did.
But how does this work in our Christian lives. We can apply it to some of the social conditions that we mentioned earlier, that the shameful and dreadful way that some companies treat their workers in 3rd world countries, comes out and is known and people act accordingly. Now if those companies suffer financially or are prosecuted then the truth will win out. Or in our own personal lives, does the truth win out there. Are we people of honesty who hold our hands up and say, ok it was me. Rather than letting someone else take the blame. Are we people who seek to do everything we can to bring the truth to light and to see justice done.
But in all of this why are we motivated to care about justice or truth. Do we care because we love people and have made a choice to regard them as more important? Or because we have this list of things that people can’t do and we don’t want to see them get away with it. This is not about getting revenge for you, getting even or even seeing justice done when people do wrong to you. This is about loving others and caring that others are exploiting them or acting unjustly towards them. If you’re concern for justice is about a sense of order or a list of rules that people should just not break and they should get whatever’s coming to them, if you’re just like Novinha who only cares that people don’t get away with stuff then this is not the love that wants the truth out and is not the justice of God. The justice of God and the desire for truth of God, is because he loves people and wants the best for them. Our desire for justice, our desire for the truth to win out should be because we value people and want the best for them.
Conclusions
So in conclusions we have seen that love is never glad about injustice but rejoices whenever the truth wins out. We seen what that means in the life of Jesus. We’ve looked at some of what it has meant in my life. I have made some suggestions about the difference it could make to you. But again the real work is done by you here? Is this something that God is speaking to you about? Again, I urge you to go home and pray through the issue and saying to God, is there anything here that you need to work in me.
