Love Does Not Rejoice in Iniquity

1 Corinthians 13:6

“Love…does not rejoice in iniquity…”

We are moving on to chapter six now in our study on the great love chapter. Here we find that love never rejoices in iniquity. This, of course, is not simply referring to one’s own iniquity, but all iniquity. In essence, love never rejoices when sin is present.

At first read this may be obvious. Of course we don’t rejoice in sin, right? We never want to see God’s name taken in vain or see violent acts take place. But we need to dive deeper then that. What types of sin do we really rejoice in?

I mentioned gossip in my last article as a subtle sin that the devil uses. I think that is also one we rejoice in at times. Some of us, to some extent, love gossip. We love to hear about what “he did” or what “she said.” Is this not loving sin? Are we not rejoicing in sin? I believe we are, and it shows us yet again how the devil’s subtle sins lead us to not obeying God’s command to love our neighbors.

Another way this can come up is when we see justice being served. We should rejoice in justice, but we should not rejoice in other sins that lead to this justice. One of the most wicked sins in my eyes is human trafficking and pedophilia. I mentioned the subtle sins of the devil, but this is not one of them. This is an obvious sin. There is nothing subtle about the kidnapping and selling of adults and children. There is nothing subtle about having a sexual relationship with a child, whether it is forced or not. Of all the sins in the world, these are the type of sins I hate the most.

Why bring up these crude sins if they are so easy to hate? Because what happens to us when we hear about a pedophile being sent to prison? We rejoice, and we should! But what then happens when we hear he was murdered in prison? I know I certainly rejoice. I believe he deserved to die for his sins and that ultimately justice was served. But should we rejoice in the sin of murder? Of course not! I believe we should rejoice in justice being served, the truth is this man should have received the death penalty. But we should not rejoice in the murder. We need to be very careful.

I think there are a couple passages we can look at to see how Jesus did not rejoice in iniquity, one more obvious, and one more subtle. The obvious one is in Luke 4:1-13 when Satan tempts Jesus. Twice Satan temps Jesus to use His divine power and once he tempts Jesus with fortune, offering Him the kingdoms of the world, but Jesus does not fall into this trap. He does not take the bait. If he had given in to temptation, surely he would have been rejoicing in the bread he would finally eat after fasting for forty days, but He hates all sin, and would not give in.

Another way is when the disciples are discussing who is the greatest among them in Luke 22:24-30. I generally chuckle at this because it seems so foolish to me reading it now. But Jesus did not find the funny side to their pride. He did not laugh at them for their foolish pride but turned around and taught them that they need to be humble. He did not rejoice in their sinful pride but used it as an opportunity to teach them humility in a very loving and gentle way.

Rejoicing in sin seems like a very obvious sin to avoid, but yet we do rejoice in iniquity at times. We can clearly see though that love will never rejoice in iniquity. Love and sin are on the opposite spectrum, or to us a biblical phrase, they are as far as the east is from the west. If we want to be a truly loving person, we need to hate all sin. We need to hate all forms of wickedness. We need to hate all subtle sins. We must never rejoice in a bad word being used in our favorite comedy. In order to love sometimes we must hate.

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